Spring is here and baseball season is upon us! Which always brings to mind Ted Sullivan, right?!? I mean who doesn’t remember Timothy Paul “Ted” Sullivan? Truth be told, I fell upon his name while researching Chesapeake Beach, but what a fun stumble!
Turns out, he is pretty instrumental in putting the baseball game we know today, on the map! This is a very abbreviated tale about a man who was a self-made baseball manager, league organizer, scout, inventor of trendy words, storyteller, public relations master … who of course had a tie to Chesapeake Beach, MD.
Timothy Paul “Ted” Sullivan, was born in Ireland around 1856. His parents moved to the U.S. soon after his birth, and he grew up in Iowa. He learned and fell in love with baseball as a child, played it in college, and made it his life’s work.
[Fun Baseball History Fact: In college Ted Sullivan met Charlie Comiskey; the founding owner of the Chicago White Sox, and namesake of Comiskey Park in Chicago, they were lifelong friends]
Ted Sullivan was in on the ground floor of baseball, the late 1800s/early 1900s, making the rules and molding it into the national pastime it is today. He was not one single thing to baseball; he was truly a jack-of-all baseball trades.
The details of how the minor and major baseball leagues formed are dense, and the players, so to speak, are many, some remembered, some forgotten (Tom Loftus, Charlie Comiskey, Ban Johnson to name a few)… but bottom line, Ted Sullivan was instrumental in their formation. After college, Ted Sullivan involved himself in all realms of the baseball world. He played in minor league teams, he created and coached teams, he umpired, and early on he was savvy enough to get backers to create a league with a set season … he started baseball projects, left baseball projects, zig-zagged back and forth between coaching, playing, umping… he even started a soccer league (spoiler, that venture failed… he was about a century too soon for that in the U.S.).
He had a knack for finding amazing players and made “scouting” a thing. He scouted for multiple teams, poached athletes from one team to give to another, and then back again. Trains were the main mode of transportation in his day, so that’s what he did… he rode the trains all over the country in search of players and knew how to sell the game! On his travels he would visit newspapers and share stories, tell some fun anecdotes, all the while promoting baseball. Articles about Ted Sullivan, whose name was synonymous with baseball, ran across the country; he was the perfect public relations ambassador for the game!
Ted Sullivan coined the word FAN!
Ted Sullivan has been coined with coming up with popularizing the word “FAN”… shortened from the word “FANTICS” (although there are various origin stories, some variations even from his own words).
[More fun baseball fun facts: prior to “fan” becoming what we know today, lovers of baseball were called “cranks” & “fiends.”]
What does all this have to do with Chesapeake Beach?
Well, it just so happens that on February 15, 1922, The Washington Post reported that Ted Sullivan purchased a residence in Chesapeake Beach, MD!
I would love to be able to report exactly where in Chesapeake Beach Mr. Ted Sullivan, baseball fiend… crank… fan lived… however, that is a mystery (for now!). What I will say, is that Ted Sullivan was “the man” in his day, he was baseball... and once again, Chesapeake Beach, MD figures into the equation as the place to be! And while I can’t say with 100% certainty that Ted Sullivan rode our beloved railway, I can certainly imagine him catching the train to DC on his next scouting trip and regaling the passengers with some tall tales of the game!
Play Ball!