{"id":5063,"date":"2024-03-28T07:44:56","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T11:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/?p=5063"},"modified":"2024-03-28T07:52:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-28T11:52:27","slug":"baseball-fan-crank-or-fiend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/?p=5063","title":{"rendered":"Baseball Fan, Crank or Fiend?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ted Sullivan: “Baseball in ’93” The Tennessean,\u00a0 12\/14\/1893<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Spring is here and baseball season is upon us!\u00a0 Which always brings to mind Ted Sullivan, right?!?\u00a0 I mean who doesn\u2019t remember Timothy Paul \u201cTed\u201d Sullivan?\u00a0 Truth be told, I fell upon his name while researching Chesapeake Beach, but what a fun stumble!<\/p>\n

Turns out, he is pretty instrumental in putting the baseball game we know today, on the map!\u00a0\u00a0This 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 \u2026 who of course had a tie to Chesapeake Beach, MD.<\/p>\n

Timothy Paul \u201cTed\u201d Sullivan, was born in Ireland around 1856.\u00a0 His parents moved to the U.S. soon after his birth, and he grew up in Iowa.\u00a0 He learned and fell in love with baseball as a child, played it in college, and made it his life’s work.<\/p>\n

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Allen & Ginter, Sponsor. Charles Comiskey, St. Louis Browns, baseball card portrait. Photograph. Library of Congress<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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[Fun Baseball History Fact:\u00a0 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]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 He was not one single thing to baseball; he was truly a jack-of-all baseball trades.<\/p>\n

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Headlines from newspapers across the country.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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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)\u2026 \u00a0but bottom line, Ted Sullivan was instrumental in their formation.\u00a0 After college, Ted Sullivan involved himself in all realms of the baseball world.\u00a0 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 \u2026 he started baseball projects, left baseball projects, zig-zagged back and forth between coaching, playing, umping\u2026 he even started a soccer league (spoiler, that venture\u00a0 failed\u2026 he was about a century too soon for that in the U.S.).<\/p>\n

He had a knack for finding amazing players and made \u201cscouting\u201d a thing.\u00a0 He scouted for multiple teams, poached athletes from one team to give to another, and then back again.\u00a0 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!\u00a0 On his travels he would visit newspapers and share stories, tell some fun anecdotes, all the while promoting baseball.\u00a0 Articles about Ted Sullivan, whose name was synonymous with baseball, ran across the country; he was the perfect public relations ambassador for the game!<\/p>\n

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Ted Sullivan coined the word FAN!<\/em><\/h2>\n
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The Salt Lake Tribune 9\/12\/1920<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Ted Sullivan has been coined with coming up with popularizing the word \u201cFAN\u201d\u2026 shortened from the word “FANTICS”<\/em> (although there are various origin stories, some variations even from his own words).<\/p>\n

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The Buffalo Enquirer 1\/13\/1898<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

[More fun baseball fun facts:\u00a0 prior to \u201cfan\u201d becoming what we know today, lovers of baseball were called \u201ccranks\u201d &\u00a0\u201cfiends.\u201d]<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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What does all this have to do with Chesapeake Beach?<\/em><\/h2>\n

Well, it just so happens that on February 15,\u00a01922, The Washington Post<\/em> reported that Ted Sullivan<\/strong> purchased a residence in Chesapeake Beach, MD!<\/p>\n

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The Washington Post 2\/15\/1922<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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!<\/em>).\u00a0 What I will say, is that Ted Sullivan was “the man” in his day, he was baseball<\/em>.<\/strong>.. and once again, Chesapeake Beach, MD figures into the equation as the place to be!\u00a0 \u00a0And 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!<\/p>\n

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Play Ball!<\/em><\/h1>\n

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Spring is here and baseball season is upon us!\u00a0 Which always brings to mind Ted Sullivan, right?!?\u00a0 I mean who doesn\u2019t remember Timothy Paul \u201cTed\u201d Sullivan?\u00a0 Truth be told, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187265666,"featured_media":5074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc4OIF-1jF","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/ted-sullivan.jpg?fit=1944%2C2592&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/187265666"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5063"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5117,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5063\/revisions\/5117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chesapeakebeachrailwaymuseum.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}