Image copyright Mark W. Slater
The Son of Liberty is a homage to the three sports that may be disputed in some circles but based off of my factually based research celebrates the three sports that were invented, or first documented in Massachusetts.
In Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1791 and ordinance was written and passed stipulating that no baseball would be played within at least 80 yards away from the newly erected Town Meeting House. This written evidence predates base-ball being played in Manhattan in 1823. As well as the first game of baseball being played in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1846
The Bowler hat and its green color which is the attire of the Boston Celtic’s mascot Lucky, represents Basketball. True the Celtics as a Basketball team actually started in New York but the sport itself was invented by James Naismith in 1891 in Springfield, MA.
“The Boston Game“, which is now called American Football was played for decades before the NFL or AFC ever formed. The Oneida Football Club Monument, sometimes called Football Tablet, is a monument made by Joseph Coletti; which was installed on November 1925 in the Boston Common, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was built as a remembrance to the Oneida Football Club, the first organized team to play any kind of football in the United States. The game played by the club, known as the “Boston game”, was an informal local variant that predated the codification of rules for association football, rugby football, or American football.
The monument reads as follows; “On this filed the Oneida Football Club of Boston the first organized football club in the United States played against all comers from 1862-1865. The Oneida goal was never crossed.“
