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Eckford of Brooklyn, or simply Eckford, was an American baseball club from 1855 to 1872. When the pioneering Union Grounds opened for baseball in 1862, the Eckfords must have been the most important tenant, for they played more games than any other club that year (16) and won the "national" championship, repeating the championship in 1863. In the late 1860s, they were one of the pioneering professional clubs, although probably second to Mutual of New York at the home park. In its final season, Eckford entered the second championship of the National Association, the first professional league, so it is considered a major league club by those who count the NA as a major league. Established in July 1855, the Eckford Base Ball Club was named for shipbuilder Henry Eckford whose base of operations from the late 1790s until the early 1830s was Brooklyn, New York. He designed many American warships that participated in the War of 1812. From the sports page of Chicago's (Daily Inter Ocean ) newspaper, December 20, 1879, p. 3: "Peter Tostevin, whose name was identified with the early history of the once famous Eckford Club of Brooklyn, N.Y., died in that city Dec. 8, aged 52. He assisted in organizing that club, and played first base during the seasons of 1856-57, and third base during 1858, filling the office of President in the latter year." Immigration and census records show that Peter Tostevin, a resident of Brooklyn, was born in France in about 1827, that he immigrated to the United States on May 31, 1852, and that he was a mason and master builder. Eckford was one of 16 participants in the 1857 convention, all from modern New York City. There the pioneer New York Knickerbockers essentially transferred baseball governance to the leading clubs as a group, so the event is traditionally considered the birthday of the National Association of Base Ball Players and the participants are considered the NABBP charter members.〔The annual convention was established in 1858 and the standing organization in 1859.〕 == Name == Today the Eckford club and its teams are commonly called "the Brooklyn Eckfords". ''The Eckfords'', plural with definite article, was used by contemporary writers in prose, perhaps for the grammatical parallel to ordinary nouns used with plural verbs ("the visitors are staying downtown" or "the men are playing well"); perhaps by direct analogy to plurals formed from family names ("the Millers are coming to dinner"). "Brooklyn" in the team name is a later development, matching the later convention that a club or team should be named for a locale or region that it represents. The Eckfords never represented Brooklyn. First, they did not survive to the era of exclusive territories, sometimes called "sports franchising", which the new National League instituted in 1876. Second, Brooklyn was populous enough to maintain several strong teams and support the construction of two enclosed ballparks during the amateur days when few players migrated to baseball jobs. Third, New York and Brooklyn had the early start, as the hotbeds where multiple clubs developed prior to cooperation. At the first convention, eight of 16 clubs were based in Brooklyn; three years later, it was 20 of 59. For all these reasons, When the NABBP permitted open professionalism in 1869, Eckford and Atlantic among dozens of Brooklyn members were both viable in following that route, and in 1872 they both joined the National Association league for its second season. ''Eckford of Brooklyn'' may be another latterday coinage. Contemporary readers would probably understand it as an abbreviation for something like ''Eckford Base Ball Club, of Brooklyn'' in contrast to "Eckford" clubs in other cities. "Eckford" was not common as the root of a ballclub name — in contrast to "Athletic", "Atlantic", and "Mutual" — so there must have been little need to distinguish the Brooklyn rendition. (Wright (2000) mentions "Eckford" clubs in Albany 1864-1867, Syracuse 1870, and Newark 1870, as well as the distinctly named "Henry Eckford" club in New York 1860-1864. The other Eckfords were not prominent and did not travel so there must little occasion to qualify the "Eckford" name except locally.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eckford of Brooklyn」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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