Philly Sports: Teams, Games, and Athletes from Rocky's Town

Other Titles in This Series

DC Sports: The Nation’s Capital at Play

Frank Merriwell and the Fiction of All-American Boyhood: The Progressive Era Creation of the Schoolboy Sports Story

Democratic Sports: Men’s and Women’s College Athletics during the Great Depression

Sport and the Law: Historical and Cultural Intersections

Beyond C. L. R. James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity in Sports

A Spectacular Leap: Black Women Athletes in Twentieth-Century America

Philly Sports

Teams, Games, and Athletes from Rocky’s Town

EDITED BY

RYAN A. SWANSON AND DAVID K. WIGGINS

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS

FAYETTEVILLE

2016

Copyright © 2016 by The University of Arkansas Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-55728-187-6

e-ISBN: 978-1-61075-587-0

20   19   18   17   16      5   4   3   2   1

Text design by Ellen Beeler

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960126

To Larry Malley, who has always taken the study of sport seriously,

but himself and life a little less so

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Wickedness and the Holy Experiment: Sports in Colonial Philadelphia

COURTNEY SMITH

2. Black Baseball’s Pioneers: The Philadelphia Pythians

MICHAEL E. LOMAX

3. Philadelphia Cricket Comes of Age: The Movement for Consolidation and Centralization, 1874–95

J. THOMAS JABLE

4. How Did They Compete?: Philadelphia High School Girls’ Sports, 1904–44

CATHERINE D’LGNAZIO

5. The Philadelphia Eagles, the Crisis of Post–World War II Masculinity, and the Rise of Pro Football, 1946–60

STEPHEN H. NORWOOD

6. Bigger Than His Britches: Wilt Chamberlain and Philadelphia

ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN

7. The Philadelphia Jewish Y’s: Sport and Physical Health in American Culture

LINDA J. BORISH

8. Blood Stirs the Fight Crowd: Making and Marking Joe Frazier’s Philadelphia

ANDREW R. M. SMITH

9. Philadelphia’s Greatest Sports Hero?: The Case for Rocky Balboa

JAIME SCHULTZ

10. Making Ice (Hockey) in Philadelphia: Leadership, Organization, and the Tale of Two NHL Franchises

JOHN WONG

11. The Game That Made Penn Basketball Great: Penn vs. Villanova, January 1969

CHRIS ELZEY

12. More Than An Ugly Cement Doughnut: Veterans Stadium and the Philadelphia Phillies

CHRISTOPHER THRESTON

13. Philadelphia’s Buried Treasures

DAVID ZANG

14. The Penn Relays: Celebrating the Black Woodstock of West Philly

DENNIS GILDEA

15. A Philadelphia Nocturne

MIKE TANIER

Notes

Contributors

Index

Series Editor’s Preface

Sport is an extraordinarily important phenomenon that pervades the lives of many people and has enormous impact on society in an assortment of different ways. At its most fundamental level, sport has the power to bring people great joy and satisfy their competitive urges while at once allowing them to form bonds and a sense of community with others from diverse backgrounds and interests and various walks of life. Sport also makes clear, especially at the highest levels of competition, the lengths that people will go to achieve victory as well as how closely connected it is to business, education, politics, economics, religion, law, family, and other societal institutions. Sport is, moreover, partly about identity development and how individuals and groups, irrespective of race, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class, have sought to elevate their status and realize material success and social mobility.

Sport, Culture, and Society seeks to promote a greater understanding of the aforementioned issues and many others. Recognizing sport’s powerful influence and ability to change people’s lives in significant and important ways, the series focuses on topics ranging from urbanization and community development to biographies and intercollegiate athletics. It includes both monographs and anthologies that are characterized by excellent scholarship, accessible to a wide audience, and interesting and thoughtful in design and interpretations. Singular features of the series are authors and editors representing a variety of disciplinary areas and who adopt different methodological approaches. The series also includes works by individuals at various stages of their careers, both sport studies scholars of outstanding talent just beginning to make their mark on the field and more experienced scholars of sport with established reputations.

Philly Sports: Games, Teams, and Athletes from Rocky’s Town illustrates the love affair with sport in the city founded by William Penn and the meeting place for the founding fathers who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The second book in the series to be published on sport in major American cities, the collection is edited by Ryan Swanson and myself and includes fifteen essays written by well-known academics and writers. Portrayed in the book are less famous players and teams from various levels of competition as well as local heroes Wilt Chamberlain and Joe Frazier and such legendary professional sports franchises as the Eagles, Phillies, and Flyers. The book, which includes a mix of traditional scholarly essays and those that are more personal and autobiographical in nature, makes clear the avid fan base in Philadelphia who have loyally, yet not always patiently, lived through the various triumphs and defeats of the city’s athletes and teams. Like their beloved city, Philadelphia’s sports fans have seemingly always viewed themselves as underdogs, which might explain why the fictional boxer Rocky Balboa, the ultimate underdog, resonates with them with such passion and level of intensity.

David K. Wiggins

Acknowledgments

This project came together because when we asked (OK, begged a bit too) these talented fifteen scholars to take time away from their many other projects and responsibilities in order to think seriously about the history of sports in Philadelphia they generously agreed to do so. We are very grateful that they did. It has been a pleasure to work with such an innovative and accomplished group. The book has truly been a collective effort.

The University of Arkansas Press editorial staff provided invaluable help in bringing this project to fruition. Larry Malley (former director of the University of Arkansas Press) worked through the initial proposal for Rocky’s Town and provided sage advice during the early phases of the project. Mike Bieker (director), David Scott Cunningham (senior editor), and Deena Owens (editorial assistant) proved to be a wonderful team to work with as the book began to take form. Each provided answers to our big and small questions. We are grateful for their support and guidance.

In addition to the authors and editors, we were fortunate to have support from the archival staff, Leslie Willis and Josue Hurtage in particular, at Temple University as we looked high and low for images to accompany each chapter. Thanks!

Lastly, as we talked about Philadelphia and its sports constantly over the past couple of years, we both enjoyed the steady support of our families. Unlike the teams and athletes of Philadelphia that this book covers, we hardly ever got booed at home. Thus a quick word of thanks is a must here. Ryan—Thanks to my wife, Rachael, and my three kids, Carter, Tyler, and Kate. I am blessed to be onboard with you all. Dave—I would like to thank my wife, Brenda, two boys Jordan and Spencer, and my favorite new daughter-in-law Courtney for all their love, understanding, and support.

A Philadelphia Nocturne by Mike Tanier is from Rooting for the Home Team: Sport, Community, and Identity, edited by Daniel A. Nathan. Copyright 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Introduction

Philadelphia sports fans have experienced more than their share of losing and disappointment. Like Boston and New York City, Philadelphia has had a constant presence in major college and professional sport for more than a century. The Philadelphia Phillies came first, starting in the City of Brotherly Love in 1883. The Eagles and 76ers brought major professional football and basketball to the city in 1933 and 1946. In hockey, the Philadelphia Flyers began play in 1967. And in the college ranks, Philadelphia’s Big 5 basketball programs began their round-robin competition in 1955. But despite the consistent presence of high-profile sports teams in Philadelphia, success has come haltingly. The city, once described by Lincoln Steffens as the most American of our greater cities, has looked on too many times as Bostonians and New Yorkers have held their season-ending celebratory parades at the expense of Philadelphia teams. Meanwhile Philadelphia’s most famous athlete, the fictional underdog-turned-champion Rocky Balboa (who reminds us that the world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows), keeps appearing on movie screens across the country looking older and more punch drunk with each new film.

Philadelphia sports fans have never enjoyed a dynasty. They have not had the experience of rooting for a year-after-year success like the Celtics or the Yankees, although the Flyers did win back-to-back NHL titles in 1974 and 1975. While Boston and New York City teams have won fifty-four and thirty-six championships, respectively, in America’s four major sports leagues (Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball League, and the National Hockey League), Philadelphia teams have captured only sixteen titles. And that number is lopsided by long-ago wins. As the New York Times noted, cruelly, No city with so many teams had failed for so long. The acerbic statement came as the Phillies won the World Series in 2008, breaking a twenty-five-year drought of championships.¹

Adding to the city’s collective insecurity, Philadelphia’s places of sport, with one notable exception, have not been particularly inspiring. Philadelphians have not enjoyed the equivalent of Fenway Park or the House that Ruth Built (Yankee Stadium) to watch their baseball teams. Shibe Park, located at Lehigh Avenue and Twenty-First Street in north Philadelphia, served both the Philadelphia Athletics and the Phillies during the middle of the twentieth century. The square field dimensions and French Renaissance design were interesting, but the structure did not stand the test of time. As the neighborhood surrounding the park in the 1960s changed, attendance fell off significantly. Philadelphia’s professional football and baseball teams moved to Veterans Stadium in 1971. The multipurpose stadium was practical at best (it hosted baseball and football, and was the first American stadium to have its own jail); during its last decade of use the stadium earned the designation as the worst in professional sports.

Basketball players and fans have had it better in Philadelphia. The Palestra, which is located on Penn’s campus and has hosted more games than any other college basketball facility, is a treasure. As John Feinstein remarked, matter-of-factly, Even a bad game in the Palestra is worth the effort.² For professional basketball, the Spectrum served the city adequately (although it left behind a stunting legacy of debt) from 1967 until 2009. The Spectrum did not, however, compare to the Gardens—the Boston Garden or New York’s Madison Square Garden. Even the athletic competition on the roads don’t have quite the same legacy in Philadelphia as they do northward. The Philadelphia Marathon, begun in 1954, remains one of the largest road races in the United States, attracting more than 30,000 participants annually. But the Boston and New York Marathons reign nearly unchallenged as the crowned jewels of American marathons.

Philadelphia’s fans have responded with passion and anger to their teams’ up-and-down fortunes. Lines of cheering decorum have been occasionally crossed. Anecdotal evidence has earned the city the reputation for having particularly unruly fans. Rival American cities comfort themselves with the theory that, whatever their problems might be, they do not have to deal with the violent behavior of Philadelphia fans. In 1973, for example, the Los Angeles Times nearly taunted an exiled Ram heading to Philadelphia: Roman Gabriel, who doesn’t like fans who boo, has gotten himself traded to Philadelphia. Losing begot more boorish behavior—so the argument went. In Philadelphia, of course, the teams themselves do the getting behind, leaving the fans free to concentrate on getting disorderly.³

Philadelphia fans, unfairly in some cases, became the standard by which to measure uncouth behavior. Are our fans worse than Philly’s? the Chicago Tribune asked its readers in 1973, hoping clearly for a negative response.⁴ Out-of-town reporters leveled two charges in particular at Philadelphia fans. In an article describing the installation of a makeshift courtroom in the Vet in order to allow for quick prosecution of unruly Philadelphia fans, the New York Times laid out the case against Philadelphia. General unruliness certainly abounded in other American stadiums, but only Philadelphia fans would go so far as to cheer the injury of an opposing player (the Dallas Cowboys’ Michael Irvin in 1999) and assault Santa Claus with snowballs (during a December 1968 game at Franklin Field). These incidents, according to some ill-defined criteria, set Philadelphia sports fans apart.⁵ The reputation has stuck.

The city of Philadelphia anchors American history. William Penn received a charter from England to establish the Pennsylvania colony in 1681. He arrived in America a year later and chose a plot of land between the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers for his Quaker City. If Penn had John B. Kelley and rowing in mind, he could not have chosen a better location. Ideas of religious freedom and vibrant trade drove early settlement. The settlement persisted for four decades before catching a break—Benjamin Franklin fled New England (take that Boston!) to make a new start in Philadelphia. Franklin helped organize the city’s defenses during the French and Indian War. He advocated for swimming and regular exercise. He started the institution that would become the University of Pennsylvania. Franklin guided Philadelphians toward revolution as the British Intolerable Acts became more onerous. In 1774, the city gave sanctuary to a treasonous group when it hosted the First Continental Congress. Two years later, on July 4, America began in earnest at the Pennsylvania State House. Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence first breathed air in Philadelphia.

Looking for a safe haven as revolutionary unrest threatened America’s political leaders, the United States Congress moved the US capital from Philadelphia to New York City in 1783. The capital never fully returned to Philadelphia. While Philadelphia housed the US Congress during the 1790s, it was only a temporary arrangement while Washington, DC, could be laid out along the swampy banks of the Potomac. Still, Philadelphia grew. The city’s port swarmed with ships. The city attracted settlers from abroad and other parts of the United States.

The nineteenth-century American Civil War revealed Philadelphia’s divided loyalties and complex demographics. Philadelphia, as a part of Pennsylvania, supported the Union. But the racial politics of the city, labeled an Up South city by one scholar, defied easy categorization.⁶ Slavery had only a small footprint in the city. Free blacks had enjoyed a significant level of autonomy and opportunity in the city, although it was far from an equal society. After the Civil War though, white Philadelphians roundly rejected calls for black suffrage and equality. The divided nature of the city—a Union town with decidedly cool reactions to racial progress—would persist going forward. A century later, when Curt Flood rejected the trade to the Phillies, he did so with an explanation that echoed Civil War–era tensions. Flood did not intend to relocate to Philadelphia; Philadelphia was, Curt charged, the northernmost southern city in the United States.⁷

Historians, urban planners, and sociologists have pondered the precipitous fall of Philadelphia in the United States’ hierarchy of cities. Philadelphia can rightfully claim the mantle as the City of Firsts. The city, long ago, had the first public schools, the first hospital, the first library, and the first newspapers in America. The city was the birthplace of the Constitution and then the capital of the United States. Philadelphia, however, lost most of its political significance to Washington, DC. New York City emerged as the unrivaled home of American finance and commerce. With Wall Street one hundred miles north and the White House and US capitol roughly equidistant to the south, Philadelphia sits between the money and the power. Philadelphia’s iconic City Hall, begun in 1871 and once the world’s largest office space, itself offers a dichotomous message about the city. It’s both foreboding and crumbling.

So what is Philadelphia’s calling card today? The Liberty Bell? Cheesesteak? Rocky Balboa? Ben Franklin? The farmer’s market at Reading Terminal? The city houses world-class universities, Fortune 500 companies, and a booming tourist economy. The city has richly diverse neighborhoods. Despite these advantages and successes, and the city’s unmatchable historical cache, many Philadelphians hold onto an underdog ethos as a means of describing their city. Philadelphia has indeed suffered from an inferiority complex—unnecessarily and irrationally so, concluded one scholar tasked with writing a history of the city at its three hundredth anniversary.⁸ Boston, New York City, Washington, DC—these cities may have distinct, built-in advantages. Philadelphia, on the contrary, must constantly make its case. In February 2015, the Democratic National Committee announced that its 2016 convention would be held in Philadelphia. It was a major win for the city, an opportunity for Philadelphia to host a tenth major-party political convention. Even still there was a hint of the underdog mentality in Philadelphia’s celebration. As one Philadelphia leader expressed it, the DNC convention would be an opportunity to show off a new Philadelphia to the world.⁹

Providing a fictional depiction of this gritty, underdog ethic, Sylvester Stallone used the city of Philadelphia as the backdrop for his (still going . . .) Rocky series. Rocky revealed, onscreen and with a memorable soundtrack, the hard times that had befallen the city of Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s. Philadelphia suffered from failing schools and the flight of the middle classes to the city’s suburbs. As Buzz Bissinger chronicled in his A Prayer for the City, Philadelphia’s struggles were not entirely unique.¹⁰ As the decline of manufacturing occurred in the United States, cities (especially those located in America’s Rust Belt) struggled to adjust. Negotiations between unions and mayors became Darwinian struggles for survival. Desperate urban school districts watched as their budgets grew leaner each year. But cities, and their athletes, fought on. Rocky Balboa ran through the dirty streets of Philadelphia and then climbed into the ring with a boxing champion. He proved himself. The story line was implicitly Hollywood, but not entirely off the mark. Philadelphia the sports underdog—this was a narrative that worked. We are the city of underdogs, the Philadelphia Inquirer reiterated in 2014, in this case addressing the dismal fortunes of the Philadelphia 76ers.¹¹

In recent history, it’s worth noting that Michael Vick made his comeback from his dog-fighting scandal in Philadelphia. Philadelphians embraced Vick, at least to a point, when (or perhaps because) other cities didn’t want him. Two Philadelphia teams in the past thirty years in particular, however, have embodied the Philadelphia underdog ethic: the 1985 Villanova men’s basketball team and the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies. Against significant odds, these teams won. And Philadelphians reveled in their unexpected successes.

Rollie Massimo coached Villanova University, a Catholic university located in a northwest suburb of Philadelphia, to its March Madness victory against Washington, DC, rival Georgetown University in 1985. Villanova, an eight seed, remains the lowest seeded team to ever win the NCAA Division I basketball championship. The ride through the tournament was a nervous one for Philadelphia hoop fans. Villanova won its first three tournament games by a total of nine points. Dwayne McClain and Ed Pinckney led the way on the floor, and the Wildcats found themselves in the championship game, in Lexington, Kentucky, on the evening of April 1, 1985. April Fool’s Day. The Georgetown University Hoyas opposing Villanova were one of the strongest squads in modern history. Anchored by future number-one NBA draft pick, Patrick Ewing, the Hoyas had won the previous year’s title. A repeat win seemed in Georgetown coach John Thompson’s grasp.

But then, Villanova enjoyed an almost perfect championship night. The team shot 79 percent from the field, and controlled the tempo from the start. The game ground to a near halt in the second half. Villanova shot 9-10 after halftime. That was all it needed. The 66–64 victory remains among the biggest upsets in college basketball history. The Philadelphia giant killers returned to their home city as heroes. Nearly 100,000 Philadelphians assembled at City Hall to toast the champions.¹² The team had started the tournament not ranked in the press’s ubiquitous top 25, and ended it as the undisputed champion.

The 2008 Phillies were the club that finally broke Philadelphia’s long tenure of professional sports futility. Slugger Ryan Howard proclaimed an immediate shift in the city’s sports reputation after the club’s World Series win: We’re losers no more. We’re winners. Nobody can take that away from the city of Philadelphia and nobody can take that away from us.¹³ While the city had certainly enjoyed watching some strong teams during the 1980s and 1990s, not one of the city’s major sports franchises—the 76ers, the Flyers, the Phillies, or the Eagles—won their respective league championship after 1983. For twenty-five seasons Philadelphians ended every sports season disappointed. The Phillies 2008 success had notable symmetry. The club, during its 125th season, and in the 25th season since a Philadelphia club had won a title, defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the World Series.

The win brought relief to long suffering Phillies fans, but it also renewed discussions about Philadelphia’s vexed sports history. The reason for the long wait between championships, many said, had had more to do with building code regulations than the Philadelphia teams themselves. The Curse of Billy Penn had been plaguing the city since the construction of a building in March 1987—breaking long-standing tradition—that surpassed the height of the William Penn statue atop Philadelphia’s City Hall. The One Liberty Place building, with its insulting height, brought Philadelphia sports to its knees. But then a little more than a year before the Phillies 2008 World Series win, a new skyscraper was completed that surpassed One Liberty Place as the tallest in Philadelphia’s skyline. This time though, good sense prevailed. Workers placed a replica William Penn statue on top of their new Comcast Center, restoring Billy Penn back to his rightful overseer position in the city.¹⁴ Not coincidentally, the Phillies won the World Series shortly thereafter. The Philadelphia mayor immediately, officially, declared that the William Penn curse had been lifted following the 2008 World Series. Philadelphians can only hope that their mayor has such power.

The disappointments of Philadelphia athletes and teams make the city’s sport history evocative and fascinating. As is the case with any anthology, we have selected the stories and topics we believe will provide a well-rounded and insightful view of the subject at hand. We have attempted to provide both reasonable coverage and purposefully pointed case studies. We selected the authors carefully; we are grateful that each agreed to join the project. The resulting fifteen chapters unveil new research and interpretations. We believe they demonstrate Philadelphia’s varied sports experiences and reveal a slightly different portrait of this much-studied city.

Chronologically, the chapters span over a three-hundred-year period. Readers will find chapters on the expected professional teams: the Eagles, the Flyers, and the Phillies. Each of these chapters, though, offers a very specific interpretation and focus on these Philadelphia institutions. Explorations of the city’s sporting foundation include pieces on colonial sport, the rise of Cricket in the city, and the pivotal Pythian Base Ball Club. A concerted effort was made to access the histories of amateur sport in the city as well. Analyses of the Jewish Y’s, the rise of girls’ interscholastic sports, and Penn’s basketball program provide new views of athletic competition connected to important places of recreation and education. Finally, accounts of Philadelphia athletic heroes provide the necessary flexibility to consider new questions and approaches. Studies of Wilt Chamberlain and Joe Frazier, both Philadelphians who moved widely throughout the sports world, helped connect Philadelphia to a broader sports historiography. An account of the Rocky film franchise grapples with the city’s image and myth making. And lastly, two pieces on scholarly wandering—through cemeteries and Philadelphia itself—bring home the idea that sports are never solely about leagues, institutions, or even teams. Individual experiences drive sport.

There are, of course, topics that had to be left behind for another time. Among the Philadelphia mainstays not addressed in this collection is the Army-Navy football game. Philadelphia has hosted the game, which has been called Football’s Purest Rivalry, far more times than any other city.¹⁵ Individually, plenty of Philadelphia baseball players might have been used as an entry point by which to study the city, Jimmie Foxx, Connie Mack, and Mike Schmidt among them. Additionally, the rowing career of John Kelly might well have been studied here. The three-time Olympic gold medalist honed his stroke on the Schuylkill River and at one point won more than one hundred races in a row. To add further sizzle to his story, Kelly was also the father of actress Grace Kelly. More recently, the spectacular, but controversial (I mean listen, we’re sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we’re talking about practice) career of Allen Iverson has yet to be studied in a scholarly way. Iverson’s relationship with Philadelphia fans ebbed and flowed as he played his uniquely frenetic style and as the hip-hop generation of athletes moved to the forefront of society.

Even with the inevitable omissions and topics left for later, we hope Philadelphia still shines through in this volume. Best-selling author Lisa Scottoline offered a telling and touching summary of her hometown: I love everything about Philadelphia, and its food is like the city itself: real-deal, hearty, and without pretension. We’ve always had an underdog vibe as a city, but that just makes us try harder, and I love our scrappiness and scruffiness.¹⁶ We concur. It is our hope that these fifteen sports stories deliver a nuanced interpretation of this fascinating American city and its distinctive underdog vibe.

1

Wickedness and the Holy Experiment

Sports in Colonial Philadelphia

COURTNEY SMITH

The residents of colonial Philadelphia were suspicious of athletics and sport. Their apprehension stemmed largely from the influence of Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn, and his Quaker beliefs. Prior to the founding of Pennsylvania in 1681, the region attracted attention from European explorers who made very modest efforts at settlement. Starting in the early seventeenth century, both the Dutch and the English staked tenuous claims on the region by providing their own names for a river and a bay that flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. The Dutch named the river the Zuydt or South River, while the English named both the river and the bay after Virginia’s governor Lord De la Warr. Neither the Dutch nor the English, however, used their claims to establish a formal colony in the region before 1681. In 1638, Peter Minuit established the short-lived colony of New Sweden near present-day Wilmington, Delaware. Over time, New Sweden expanded to cover territory near the future site of Philadelphia. The Dutch, the Swedes, and other European settlers negotiated with the native Lenni-Lenape, or the Unami Delawares, for use of the land and the waterways. At the time William Penn secured his charter for Pennsylvania, European settlement in the region remained sparse and scattered. The region probably housed less than seven hundred settlers who lived in crude structures and relied upon the land for their survival.¹

William Penn conceived of Pennsylvania as a holy experiment of religious toleration for his fellow Quakers, as well as for people of other Christian faiths. Quakers believed that any person could discover an inner light, an internal spiritual existence that transformed people into vessels of God’s will. The Quaker belief in this inner light led them to have more egalitarian views in regards to women and native Americans, to shun forms of personal distinction, and to call for an end to slavery. It also led them to abhor activities that invited vice and immorality and prevented people from recognizing their inner light. In accordance with his Quaker beliefs, Penn aspired to create a godly society in his new colony. He regarded government as a part of religion and believed that bad government invited God’s wrath. Early laws in colonial Pennsylvania, therefore, forbade activities such as gambling and blood sports that contradicted Penn’s plans for his colony and for the people who populated it. Even though his holy experiment included religious liberty for Christians, Penn’s plans placed limits upon other forms of personal liberty. Those limitations prevented inhabitants from establishing a strong sporting culture in Philadelphia in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.²

Penn also conceived of Pennsylvania as a commercial venture, and he successfully recruited Quakers and non-Quakers to populate his bustling new colony. Philadelphia’s colonial population included English settlers, Germans, Quakers, and a fluctuating number of African slaves. Even though the city and surrounding areas housed ethnically diverse inhabitants, Quakers initially exerted the most influence over Philadelphia’s culture and society. As the eighteenth century progressed, Quaker influence regressed, and only at this point did a vibrant sporting culture finally evolve in colonial Philadelphia. By the end of the colonial period, Philadelphians had made sports a part of the city’s culture and had established a firm foundation for its continued growth. The sports that colonial Philadelphians played did not hint at the professionalization and organization that would characterize Philadelphia’s sports in the twentieth century. Instead, the sports colonial Philadelphians played made clear their enjoyment for recreation and desire to enjoy leisure time.³

Sports in the Seventeenth-Century British Empire

Seventeenth-century England had a vibrant sporting culture. Some of England’s sporting traditions evolved from military-related activities held in the Middle Ages. For example, marksmanship events and wrestling had their roots in medieval jousting tournaments. Other sporting traditions evolved from religious celebrations rooted in the Catholic and Anglican churches. English villagers celebrated feast days and other holidays such as Christmas and Easter by engaging in athletic contests. The games they played included stoolball, foot races, quoits, and ninepins. Villagers also played a version of football with rules varying from village to village. Competitors could kick, run with, or throw the ball. They could also kick their opponents, wrestle with them, or hit them with their fists. Certain sports, such as hunting and fishing, remained segregated by class. The blood sports of bearbaiting, bullbaiting, and cockfighting appealed to people of all classes, including Queen Elizabeth I. Her successor, James I, issued a Declaration on Lawful Sports, or Book of Sports in 1618 that sanctioned playing sports and enjoying other forms of recreation on Sundays.⁴

James I’s action added to the strife between the Anglican Church and the Puritans, a group that wanted to purify the Anglican Church from any remaining Catholic elements. After issuing his Book of Sports, James I ordered every church to read his declaration to their congregations. James I and Anglican officials rebuked the Puritans for their opposition to Sunday sports. James I reasoned that sports helped prepare men for warfare and diverted men from more vile pastimes. Puritans remained steadfast in their opposition to the Book of Sports, believing that sporting events held on Sundays encouraged people to defile the Sabbath. Their opposition to sports went beyond James I’s Book of Sports. Puritans opposed most sports, including blood and ball sports, and horse racing because they led to gambling and caused pain or injury. They supported sports, such as hunting and fishing, which served useful purposes and did not lead competitors to frivolously waste their time. The Puritans’ views on sports put them at odds with high-ranking governmental and Anglican authorities and with seventeenth-century English sporting culture. While some Puritans chose to stay in England, others joined John Winthrop and established a Puritan-based colony called Massachusetts Bay in 1629. The Puritans who established Massachusetts Bay carried their opposition to certain sports with them to the New World and made such opposition a feature of their new colonial society.⁵

In a similar vein, Penn and the Quakers barred certain sports and sports-related pastimes in Pennsylvania. They attempted to ban early versions of football and other games involving balls and bats on at least three separate occasions. Puritans permitted useful sports, such as hunting and fishing, and allowed children to swim in warm weather or skate in the winters. Unlike Quakers, Puritans did not embrace pacifism; all men between the ages of sixteen and sixty regularly met for military training exercises. Puritans, therefore, made exceptions for sports associated with military training exercises. Those sports included foot races, jumping, horse racing, marksmanship, and wrestling.⁶

Though they banned certain sports, the Puritans’ actions established the foundation for a sporting culture in seventeenth-century colonial New England. Similarly, the gentry established a foundation for a sporting culture in seventeenth-century colonial Virginia. The Virginia gentry, the colony’s upper-class residents, used horse racing and gambling as ways to mark their social status. While the gentry engaged in a variety of gambling activities, they did most of their wagering on the outcome of horse races. They particularly enjoyed quarter-horse racing, or races that featured sprints by two horses over a quarter-mile dirt track. The races attracted crowds filled with people from different social ranks, but the amount of money wagered on the races made participation in the sport an exclusive pastime. The gentry often rode their own horses and, through formal agreements, aspired to prevent riders from violently attacking each other during the races.⁷

In the midst of that sporting culture, Penn aspired to create a colony dedicated to virtuous living and disdainful of many of the sports found elsewhere in the British empire. Penn received key assistance from the Quakers who joined him in Pennsylvania and used their power to encourage settlers to adhere to virtuous lifestyles. Providentially for Penn, the European and native settlers who populated the region before he established his colony did not engage in organized competitive sports. Penn, therefore, could implant his anti-sporting laws without needing to eliminate sports that already existed in his land.

Quakers and Sports in Seventeenth-Century Pennsylvania

Penn’s charter gave him proprietary authority over lands that included a small number of European settlers and an undetermined number of Native Americans. These European settlers had not established a city on the scale of Boston or New York, nor had they yet created a society capable of supporting sports or other amusements. They lived in crude houses, allowed their livestock to roam freely, planted grains, and learned how to grow other items from their native neighbors. They also engaged in recreational activities like hunting and fishing for their survival, not necessarily for their enjoyment. Similarly, the Native Americans in the region, the Lenni-Lenapes, hunted and fished to supplement their crops. Unlike their European neighbors, the Lenni-Lenapes appeared to engage in sporting activities not specifically geared toward their survival. When Penn arrived in his new colony, he spent time with the Lenni-Lenapes and recorded his observations. He noted that the Lenni-Lenapes plunged young children into the nearby rivers ostensibly to prepare them for the rigors of everyday life. During their meetings with Penn, the Lenni-Lenapes provided some entertainment by hopping and jumping. They also participated in a footrace around a pond located near the future site of Christ Church.⁸

As Penn solicited potential settlers for his new colony, he crafted a Frame of Government that promoted virtue by setting strict guidelines for personal behavior. In the Frame of Government published in 1682, he called for the creation of a Committee of Justice and Safety to maintain peace and to punish those who subverted justice.⁹ He also called for the creation of a Committee of Manners, Education, and the Arts in order to prevent all [w]icked and [s]candalous living and to ensure that youth receive training in virtue, useful knowledge, and the arts.¹⁰ The 1683 Frame of Government included a provision barring inhabitants from conducting business on Sundays. Penn did grant his colony’s inhabitants the freedom to share such food and sustenance as God in his providence hath freely afforded.¹¹ Accordingly, Penn allowed inhabitants to hunt on lands they owned and on unenclosed lands. He also allowed inhabitants to fish in all of the colony’s waterways, including lands they did not own provided that the owner granted them permission to fish on his lands.¹²

In addition to organizing a government, Penn drafted laws for his new colony, and those laws also placed limitations upon inhabitants’ behavior. In the Laws Agreed Upon in England, Penn reiterated his belief that [l]ooseness of the [p]eople invited God’s wrath.¹³ The laws banned scandalous and malicious reporters, backbiters, defamers and spreaders of false news since such people threatened to undermine the colony’s peacefulness.¹⁴ Other provisions in the laws barred all offenses against God—including cursing, lying, profanity, swearing, and drunkenness. They also barred activities that excited the [p]eople to [r]udeness, [c]ruelty, [l]ooseness and [i]rreligion and that could foster a sporting culture.¹⁵ Those activities included plays, card games, various forms of gambling, bearbaiting, bullbaiting, cockfighting, and other blood sports. Inhabitants who violated the laws faced unspecified severe punishments.¹⁶

Both the Frame of Government and the Laws Agreed Upon in England reflected the Quakers’ desire for virtuous lifestyles and for instilling virtue in their children. In addition to their belief in the inner light, Quakers shared a belief in obeying God’s words, in pacifism, in adopting plain speech and clothing, and in using their spiritual vocabulary in the world outside of their meetinghouses. Quakers also believed in nurturing and protecting their children. George Fox, the Quakers’ founder, called for a redefinition and intensification of childrearing, and his followers heeded his words. Quakers focused on building their families and on fostering families designed to produce and perpetuate sacred lives. They objected to activities and forms of public display, such as blood sports and theatrical plays, which they regarded as possessing corruptive influences over private family life.¹⁷

Penn’s efforts to build a prosperous colony and a Quaker haven succeeded. Both Pennsylvania and its largest city, Philadelphia, grew rapidly, and inhabitants prospered. Philadelphia’s design and location—courtesy of Penn, his deputy William Markham, and surveyor Thomas Holme—encouraged economic growth. The city’s streets flowed in a grid-like pattern and helped to facilitate transportation from the two riverfronts. The Delaware River sat at one end of Philadelphia; it connected the city to the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. At the other end of the city sat the Schuylkill River; it connected Philadelphia to the new settlements in the surrounding areas. During Pennsylvania’s first twenty years, Philadelphia and the colony’s two other counties welcomed overwhelmingly Quaker populations. Quakers joined the Free Society of Traders, a joint-stock company Penn founded to attract investors and to promote the colony’s economic development. Philadelphia’s early economic leaders—William Frampton, Samuel Carpenter, James Claypoole, and John Wheeler—all belonged to the Society of Friends.¹⁸

Since they dominated Pennsylvania’s population, Quakers helped to implement laws governing inhabitants’ behaviors and shaped the colony’s society. Quaker meetinghouses dotted Pennsylvania’s landscape. In those meetinghouses, Quakers gathered for Monthly Meetings to conduct business, enforced discipline, arranged for apprenticeships for children, and completed other needed functions. Quakers in Pennsylvania and Burlington combined their Yearly Meetings on alternate years, the Quakers held their Yearly Meeting in Philadelphia. At their Yearly Meetings, Quakers called upon their youth to abstain from gambling, wrestling, and foot races. They expressed dismay at young Quakers who used profane language and who argued with their parents. The Yearly Meetings also impressed virtuous behavior upon adult Quakers. Adult Quakers had to wear plain clothes, abstain from tobacco, avoid profanity, and regularly attend meetings. Ultimately, the Quakers enforced strict discipline among fellow members. The Quakers’ strict discipline, combined with laws regulating inhabitants’ behavior, prevented the immediate appearance of competitive or individual sports.¹⁹

During Pennsylvania’s formative years, inhabitants focused on building permanent dwellings, establishing businesses, and improving Philadelphia’s streets. Many Pennsylvanians lived in caves, temporary structures built in the Delaware River banks, while they surveyed land in Philadelphia. Penn boasted about the rapid development of his colony’s largest city and the rapid improvement in real estate prices. By 1685, Philadelphia included nearly seven hundred buildings, and the advent of inexpensive brick construction spurred further growth. Within ten years of the colony’s founding, Philadelphia matched the size of New York City. In 1690, construction began on improvements to Mulberry Street (renamed Arch Street), which gave the city’s inhabitants and businesses better access to the Delaware River. As it grew, Philadelphia hosted an annual fair that attracted a great deal of business. Quakers and other merchants used the fair as an opportunity to conduct business transactions, to display merchandise, and to showcase livestock.²⁰

Despite the influence of Quakers, signs of questionable behavior appeared in the colony. Along the Delaware River, caves that served as temporary dwellings dispensed liquor, and this practice required the colonial authorities to pass strict laws against drunkenness. Such laws failed to prevent residents from consuming alcohol. White inhabitants, along with some Lenni-Lenape, appeared drunk in public and disturbed the peace in Philadelphia. Penn unwittingly contributed to the problem by authorizing the establishment of seven ordinaries, or taverns, to provide entertainment for strangers and