Expert: Tom Schott - 9/20/2011

Question
What year were base coaches first allowed to be used in baseball games?

Answer
Hello, Jack,

 The first guy to coach on the bases was a guy named Artie Latham . . . for Cincinnati in 1900. But the idea of a base coach really didn't catch on in the first decade of the 20th century. There were a couple of guys who base coached for the NY City teams in 1909, but apparently the idea of full-time coaches didn't really take hold till the second decade of the century. Wartime austerity and the Great Depression adversely affected full-time coaching. It would be fair to say that "the emergence of coaches whose primary responsibility is baserunning is mostly a recent development."

Source: Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: the Game on the Field (Chicago, 2006), 360-66.