of $35 million. John Thorn, the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, explained that the encouragement of baseball at Elysian Fields had commercial implications for the Stevens family: [P]roprietor Edwin Augustus Stevens (in conjunction with his brothers) had already donated the use of his grounds to the New York Cricket Club and the New York Yacht Club, and had offered liberal lease terms to the Magnolia and New York baseball clubs. In this support of sport, Stevens was of course encouraging traffic to the Elysian Fields: he controlled the ferries as well as the resort, which included the Beacon Course, a horse-racing track opened in 1834. By encouraging play (and gambling) on his turf and along his waters, he created a long-standing model for "traction magnates" to own baseball clubs. The Stevens villa was destroyed in a fire in the early 1850s, and was replaced by a castle in 1854. Baseball and cricket While the city of Hoboken boasts that the Elysian grounds were the "birthplace" of baseball in 1846, this is a myth. There were countless baseball clubs and games played during the 1830s, if not earlier — in Hoboken, New York City, Brooklyn, and elsewhere — and the first rules were drawn up by the Gotham Club of New York in 1837. Nonetheless, while Hoboken cannot claim to be "the cradle of baseball", it has historic standing for its pivotal role in the early game as it evolved from a pleasant leisure time pursuit to a highly competitive — and commercial — spectator sport. The Knickerbocker Club of New York City, which was founded in September 1845, is often cited as the first club to play baseball anywhere, and that their first game took place in Hoboken in 1846. However, a number of clubs played amateur baseball at the Elysian Fields before the Knickerbockers. John Thorn writes that the Magnolia Ball Club and the New York Club (a.k.a. the Gothams) were known to have played at the Elysian Fields in the autumn of 1843. (Both clubs also played in New York City.) Baseball historian Bill Ryczek notes, "For many years, the origin of New York baseball was attributed to the Knickerbockers, who left an exhaustive trail of documentation, including scorebooks, minutes of their many meetings, and endless detail of their petty arguments and mundane tasks. In recent years many scholars, most prominently the indefatigable John Thorn, have proved