In The New York Times, there's a story about Mark Twain and his interest in baseball.
From the piece...
“When professional baseball was the new thing in town,” the baseball historian John Thorn said, “local and national celebrities, from authors to actresses, from mayors to magnates, lined up in public support, much as they do today, to see and to be seen. The celebrities lent tone and luster to the game.”
Being seen certainly suited Twain, but at the local ball grounds, he had another purpose, too. Under the heading “Red Stockings vs. Blue” he made notes during at least one of those Boston-Hartford contests, filling a sheet of his stationery that is now part of the Mark Twain Project at the University of California at Berkeley.
His notations include basics — behind the bat, left field, safe hit — that suggest a crash course in baseball lingo, much as Twain had absorbed steamboat pilots’ vernacular.
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