Louis F. Wadsworth
Louis Fenn Wadsworth was an American baseball pioneer, who was a player and organizer with the New York Knickerbockers in the 1840s. “Baseball's man of mystery,” he is now credited by John Thorn, Official Baseball Historian of Major League Baseball, with developing the number of innings and players on each team, as well as the field's diamond shape. Wadsworth also was baseball's first professional player.
Born in either Hartford, Connecticut, Litchfield, Connecticut or Amenia, New York, Wadsworth graduated from Washington College, and worked as a naval office attorney in the New York Custom House. "A tempestuous character," wrote John Thorn, "Wadsworth commenced his ball playing days with the Gothams, a venerable club that actually predated the Knickerbockers, with whom he quickly achieved prominence as the top first baseman of his time. Then, on April 1, 1854, he switched his allegiance to the Knickerbockers... perhaps for 'emoluments,' as recompense was euphemistically known then; his skilled play would increase the Knickerbockers’ chances of victory. It is these circumstances that incline me to believe that Wadsworth may thus be termed baseball's first professional player."
In 1856, a committee was formed with representatives of each of the baseball teams to formalize the rules of the game. After it was agreed that games would be seven innings and seven players, Wadsworth rejected the committee's conclusion of seven players and seven innings, and proposed nine. His proposal was approved by all the clubs.
An 1877 statement by Duncan Curry to reporter Will Rankin, about the origin of the baseball diamond, revealed that “a diagram, showing the ball field laid out substantially as it is today, was brought to the field one day by a Mr. Wadsworth.” Curry said that Wadsworth's "plan caused a great deal of talk, but, finally, we agreed to try it." Reporter Rankin advised the Mills Commission about Curry's 1877 statement, attributing the invention of baseball's diamond shape to Wadsworth, in 1905. Wadsworth was mentioned in the 1908 Spalding guide, in regards to the Mills Commission's findings of the origins of baseball, although nobody on the Mills commission could locate him
Unbeknownst to the members of the Mills commission, after Wadsworth's playing days, by the 1870s he resettled in Plainfield, New Jersey where he became a justice of the peace and then a judge. He died in a poorhouse 8 days after the Spalding Guide was released. He had purportedly taken to drink and squandered what was once a $300,000 fortune.