Nearly all young people of both sexes, who can spare the time, have taken to skating as a diversion. The passion for it prevails now as extensively in the winter as the rage for base ball does in all other seasons.
-The Alton Telegraph, January 5, 1866
So taking this thought to its logical conclusion, baseball was all the rage in Alton and, one must assume, St. Louis in 1865. That certainly meshes with what Tobias wrote and what we generally know about the popularity of the game in the immediate postbellum era.
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