Heritage Auctions (ha.com)

Boys of summer.

In the late 1850s, before the outbreak of the Civil War, three members of the Bowdoin Base Ball Club—the first organized team of any stature in the city of Boston—had this photo taken of themselves in their uniforms. By then, the game had been played in America for decades and had recently surged in popularity, which continued during the war, when soldiers taught the game to their comrades. The man at center is thought to be John Lowell, who lobbied for teams in the Boston area to play in the “New York style,” embracing the rules popular in Manhattan that would form the basis of the modern game. In 1861, he founded the Boston Lowells, which would become New England’s dominant baseball club of the decade. In 1868, one sporting publication wrote of Lowell: “There is doubtless no person connected with our New England Base Ball Clubs more widely known, or held in higher esteem among the fraternity….”