The Pacific Base Ball Club

Baseball spread to the West Coast by the 1840s with the settlers pursuing land, opportunity and gold, and U.S. troops sent to take possession of the territories.

Transplanted New Yorkers encouraged San Francisco baseball, and with brothers William and James Shepard, who had played with the Knickerbockers at Elysian Fields, founded the Pacific Base Ball Club in 1862. In 1866, the city hosted the Pacific Baseball Convention.