The following is excerpted from THE STORY OF BASEBALL IN 100 PHOTOGRAPHS, edited by Kostya Kennedy, written by Bill Syken. Copyright © 2018 Time Inc. Books, a division of Meredith Corporation. Published by Liberty Street, an imprint of Time Inc. Books.
The first celebrated photographs taken in the United States—among them portraits of former President John Quincy Adams and President James Polk—were shot in the 1840s, which was right about the time that the first organized baseball games, staged in front of audiences and guided by essentially the same rules that guide the game today, were being played.