The American National Game of Base Ball: Grand Match for the Championship at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, N. J. 1866 Currier & Ives This large Currier & Ives lithograph, issued shortly after the American Civil War, ranks among the most celebrated of nineteenth-century pictures of a baseball game in progress -- the 1865 championship game between the Mutual Club of Manhattan and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn. This game was played before a huge crowd (some reported almost 20,000 spectators) at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, the site of the first recorded, organized baseball game on June 19th, 1846. Since Manhattan lacked sizable grounds for baseball games, the Elysian Fields (located just across the Hudson River) became a preferred site for practices and organized matches during the formative years of the sport. In the late 1860s, when major baseball parks were established in Brooklyn, people tired of going to Hoboken. Attendance gradually dwindled at the games held at Elysian