1898 - Sports

Sports

Brooklyn brewer Charles Ebbets, 38, persuades local trolley line owners to help build a stadium in Washington Park near Fourth Avenue and Third Street in the Park Slope section for the "Trolley Dodgers" baseball team, which has been playing on a field opposite the new stadium. Ebbets began his career by selling scorecards for the Dodgers and 4 years ago bought a brownstone in First Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues (see 1899).

Nova Scotia-born U.S. yachtsman Joshua Slocum, 54, brings his homemade 37-foot sloop Spray into Newport, Rhode Island, June 27 after completing the first one-man circumnavigation of the world. He has used only a compass, sextant, and "dollar clock" as navigational instruments in his 3-year voyage out of Boston in the rebuilt, derelict fishing boat, having added an extra mast en route to improve her steering, dodged pirates, and survived fierce storms.

Reginald Doherty wins in men's singles at Wimbledon, Charlotte Cooper in women's singles; Malcolm D. Whitman, 21, wins in U.S. men's singles, Juliette Atkinson in women's singles.

The touchdown in U.S. college football receives a value of five points, up from the four established in 1884, and athletic directors give the goal after touchdown a value of one point, down from two in 1884 (see 1912).