Baseball is considered the national sport of the United States. Fans cheer on their favorite teams with opening day marking the beginning of summer and the World Series championship concluding the season. The Baseball Hall of Fame says: “the first professional baseball games were played in the wake of” the American Civil War and by the 1840s “baseball mania” was in full swing. They go on to say that “from the Civil War to Civil Rights and all points in between and beyond, the game of baseball supports and reflects many aspects of American life, from culture to economics and technological advances. It inspires movements, instills pride and even heals cities.”

On May 18, 1875, Clemens and his friend Rev. Joseph Twichell took in a baseball game in Hartford—The Hartford Dark Blues versus the Boston Red Stockings. Over the course of the game (which Boston won) Clemens’s brown umbrella went missing, prompting the following newspaper advertisement:

TWO HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS REWARD – At the great baseball match on Tuesday, while I was engaged in hurrahing, a small boy walked off with an English-made brown silk UMBRELLA belonging to me, and forgot to bring it back. I will pay $5 for the return of that umbrella in good condition to my house on Farmington Avenue. I do not want the boy (in an active state) but will pay two hundred dollars for his remains. SAMUEL L. CLEMENS

Several years later, during a summer stay in Elmira, New York, Clemens went from spectator to participant. He agreed to serve as umpire for the local baseball game as long as he was provided with a chair, fan, umbrella, and a pitcher of ice water. He was to be joined in his duties by friend and fellow umpire, Thomas Beecher, reverend of the Park Church. But Clemens changed his mind, a newspaper reported, saying “he could not make a martyr of himself, notwithstanding the fact that he would be glad to perish in a good cause.” He “used a big fan in a vigorous manner and said that he would encourage the players with his presence, but he must refuse to go out in the sun.” Despite his lack of cooperation in that game Clemens vigorously exclaimed, “Baseball…is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century!” Clemens’s appreciation of the sport continued throughout the years, even attending games during his visit to Bermuda in 1908, a couple of years before his death.