in honor of Adams, which incorporates the rules of his era, as a part of the town's Lamson Farm Day. Various historians have given Adams recognition as an important figure from the early years of baseball. Thorn has written that he "may be counted as first among the Fathers of Baseball." O'Maxfield said of Adams: "Without [him], we wouldn't have the game we know and love as baseball today." The "father" label was rejected by Ryczek; he wrote that Adams did not conceive the sport, but called him a "collaborator" in its development. On July 31, 2014, the Society for American Baseball Research announced that it had chosen Adams as its 2014 "Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend". Eric Miklich has called him worthy of induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame for his role as a pioneer. He says of Adams, "Should he be in the Hall of Fame? Absolutely. You ask anyone who knows about 19th century baseball. They'll laugh at Cartwright; Abner Doubleday, they won't even talk about; but they all know Doc Adams. He was the glue that held things together in the early part of baseball." Adams did not appear on a Baseball Hall of Fame ballot until 2016, when he was up for consideration on the Hall's Pre-Integration Era Committee ballot. Ten of the 16 committee members supported him, two fewer than the number needed for induction. While Adams' contributions had received notice from historians, Associated Press writer Andrew Dalton called such reports "somewhat speculative" in nature before 2016. That year, the 1857 "Laws of Base Ball" authored by Adams were sold at an auction. The documents were included in a batch of historical papers that brought $12,000 in a 1999 sale. Adams' authorship of the papers was unknown at the time, but was confirmed after the owner brought the documents to the attention of an auction house in 2015. An anonymous buyer purchased the "Laws of Base Ball" in April 2016 for $3.26 million, the most a series of baseball documents had ever sold for. References Bibliography External links Doc Adams Base Ball 1814 births 1899 deaths 19th-century American physicians 19th-century American politicians 19th-century baseball players Baseball developers Baseball shortstops Harvard Medical School alumni Members of the Connecticut House of Representatives New York Knickerbockers players People from Mont Vernon, New Hampshire Yale University alumni