July 11, 1886: The Cincinnati Beer Glass Riot

A riot was the last thing John Hauck needed.

Five months earlier, in February 1886, the Queen City’s wealthiest brewer had made a splash by buying the Cincinnati Reds of the American Association, then promising not to have them play home games on the Sabbath.1 Hauck’s Sunday stance was applauded by the local Law and Order League, an organization committed to the zealous enforcement of blue laws prohibiting “base-ball playing” and other forms of entertainment on Sundays that were “especially calculated to injure the character of [the city’s] youth.”2

Financial losses the first few months of the season drove Hauck to have his Reds play on Sunday, July 4, in hopes of drawing a big crowd, which they did. Stung by Hauck’s reversal, League members swore out arrest warrants for 11 of his ballplayers plus the team treasurer.3 All were released on bond, the players for $100 apiece with Hauck as surety.

With legal proceedings underway, Hauck surely felt police wouldn’t need to visit League Park again the following Sunday. A crowd of between 6,000 and 7,000 packed Cincinnati’s base-ball grounds on July 11, many of them working-class fans enjoying “a delightful summer day.”4 Winners of 10 of their last 12, the fifth-place Reds (or Pioneers as the Cincinnati Enquirer typically called them) were facing a third-place Brooklyn squad that was at the tail end of a two-week Western swing.

Reds manager and former journalist O.P. Caylor sent his ace, Tony Mullane, to the pitching box. Recently exonerated from game-fixing charges,5 Mullane had been “massacred” by the New York Metropolitans (aka Indians) three days earlier but was on the way to his fourth of five straight 30-win seasons after a yearlong suspension in 1885.6 

Opposing Mullane was 21-year-old two-way player Adonis Terry, who split his time between the outfield and shortstop when not pitching. Carrying an 8-7 record coming into the game, Terry had lost six straight decisions to the Reds, with his last victory over them coming two years and a day earlier.7 Terry had allowed six runs, 10 hits, and a season-high nine walks in his last outing against Cincinnati, a May 27 loss in Brooklyn.8

Brooklyn tallied a run in each of the first two innings without a hit.9 In the first, leadoff batter George Pinkney drew one of his league-leading 70 walks, advanced to third on a passed ball charged to catcher Jim Keenan, and scored when third baseman Frank Fennelly failed to corral a pickoff throw from the formerly blacklisted backstop.10 Jim McTamany (spelled MacTammany in the Cincinnati Enquirer game summary) led off the second by reaching on an error by Reds left-handed-throwing third baseman Hick Carpenter, stole second, and scored on a groundout by Germany Smith.

Cincinnati cut Brooklyn’s lead in half in the bottom of the second on a run-scoring single by Long John Reilly, whose 10th-inning hit the day before broke a scoreless tie in a triumph over the New York Metropolitans.11 Reilly’s hit here plated Fennelly, who’d walked, advanced to second on a muff by Brooklyn’s left-handed-throwing second baseman, Bill McClellan, and went to third on a passed ball.

Brooklyn responded with a pair of runs in the third, on a single by Pinkney, a double by McClellan, an error by Fennelly, and a single by Ernie Burch, of “Burch Case” fame.12

Trailing 4-1 in the top of the sixth, Mullane retired Brooklyn’s first two batters, then walked big (6-foot, 202-pound) Bill Phillips, the first Canadian to play in the major leagues. A double by Smith put two in scoring position. The next batter, Terry, hit a grounder into the shortstop hole that Fennelly fielded and fired to first. Umpire George “Foghorn” Bradley ruled Terry safe, allowing both runners to score.

In a surly mood from the outset, the crowd had “jeered, hissed and yelled” at every Brooklyn play and every decision by Bradley.13 When the call at first base went Brooklyn’s way, vitriol turned to violence.

A beer glass was tossed by a merchant named Moran, hitting Bradley in the leg. Emboldened, Moran’s unnamed brother hurled one too. Within seconds, a fight broke out between the miscreant siblings and a fan seated nearby, who happened to be the younger brother of Brooklyn catcher Bob Clark (misspelled as Clarke in most accounts). The backstop later claimed his brother was attacked after being recognized, but the Cincinnati Enquirer asserted that Clark’s brother had confronted the glass throwers.14

Former Brooklyn catcher Frank Bell, a Cincinnati native at the game as a spectator, jumped into the fray to help the junior Clark. He was followed soon after by the uniformed Clark, who came with a bat in hand.15

For the next 10 minutes, bedlam reigned as more combatants joined each side. Police arrived but were unable to penetrate the tightly packed crowd of onlookers who were enjoying the action.

As the fisticuffs unfolded in the pavilion, dozens of beer glasses rained down in Bradley’s direction from “the bleaching-boards” of the grandstand, home to the highest priced seats in the ballpark.16 Once the Moran-Clark battle ended, still-agitated pavilion patrons began hurling their beer glasses at Bradley, with one hitting him in the leg. The Morans leapt onto the playing field, as did 2,000 to 3,000 fans.17 Anticipating that trouble might come in their direction, the Brooklynites stood ready to defend themselves, armed, as Clark was, with their bats.

Reinforced, the police restored order roughly 20 minutes after the onset of chaos, and sent fans back into the stands. Lots of chairs in the grandstand were destroyed from spectators straining for a better view, as was the press stand, a victim of having been too good a vantage point.18 As for injuries, “a few black eyes and sore heads” was the worst anyone suffered.

Out from the directors’ box underneath the grandstand came Bradley, where he’d been locked away by the police for his own protection at the height of the riot. Broken glass was cleared from the diamond and then, seemingly as if nothing had happened, the game started up again – with no arrests and no ejections.

After escaping the top of the sixth, Cincinnati got back the two runs Brooklyn scored on Terry’s fateful at-bat. The first came gift-wrapped by Brooklyn backstop Jimmy Peoples; Carpenter reached first on a muffed third strike, moved to third on a passed ball, and scored when Peoples inexplicably rolled the still-live ball back to Terry.

Down 7-3 after Brooklyn tacked on another run in the seventh, Cincinnati drew even in the bottom of the inning. McClellan’s second error of the game plated Mullane, who opened the frame with a single, and Fred Lewis’s single brought two more across. How the other run scored was left out of the game’s only detailed account.19

Undeterred by the fighting spirit of either the Reds or their fans, Brooklyn “jumped on Mullane with both feet” in the eighth.20 With two out and Terry on first, Peoples reached on a Carpenter error, as did Pinkney on a grounder fumbled by Cincinnati’s normally surehanded second baseman Bid McPhee.21 McClellan cleared the bases with a triple and came home when Brooklyn captain Ed Swartwood followed with another three-bagger.

Cincinnati lost by a score of 11-7. Fearing that Bradley might be attacked on his way out of the ballpark, police slipped him out a side entrance and into a local saloon. He spent a few hours under guard there before being escorted to his hotel. This marked the second time in two days that Bradley needed a police escort. A game-ending call he made on Saturday in Pittsburgh to give Brooklyn a win was followed by angry fans “[breaking] over barriers” to get at him.22

The next morning, the “Cincinnati base-ballists” arrested for playing the previous Sunday appeared before a local judge. They pleaded not guilty, waived their rights to a jury trial, and accepted fines of $5 plus costs for the treasurer and $2 plus costs for each ballplayer. Sporting Life reported that the club accepted the fines in the hopes of avoiding harsher treatment from the court over the events of July 11.23

Press reactions to the beer glass riot were all over the map. The Cincinnati Enquirer laid the blame at the feet of Charles Byrne, claiming the Brooklyn president/manager had been “charged with buying up umpires,” was “in the [game-fixing] deal with Mullane,” and divined that “the crowd seemed to be onto both him and Bradley, the umpire.”24 The Brooklyn Times described the game as “something of a circus,” caused by West vs. East “sectional bitterness,” and closed on a wry note – “Truly the West is not a Paradise for the Eastern clubs to play in.”25 Sporting Life downplayed the whole affair, calling reports of “the row at Cincinnati” “greatly exaggerated.”26

Cincinnati newspapers made no mention of any legal action taken against rioters. But Reilly and the Red Stockings’ regular catcher, Kid Baldwin, who didn’t play in the game, were hauled into court on a charge of “participating in a base-ball game on Sunday.”27 Five weeks later, they were tried and acquitted by a police court jury.28 Cincinnati played a pair of Sunday home games between the arrests and trial, without any further run-ins with the law, and continued to do so for the balance of the season after the acquittals.

Reassigned to another series at the request of Caylor and Byrne, Bradley umpired roughly 40 more games before his release from the Association’s umpiring corps in early September.29 None of them were in Cincinnati.

After the season, Hauck relinquished his controlling interest in the team and turned his attention back to brewing the amber nectar that, for better or worse, brought fans into ballparks across the Association.30

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Bob LeMoine’s Foghorn Bradley biography in the SABR Biography Project as well as the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites.

Notes

1 David Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League, (New York: Lyons and Burford, 2004), 112; “The Cincinnati Club Sold,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 28, 1886: 10; “Notes and Comments,” Sporting Life, March 10, 1886: 3. Cincinnati’s previous owners routinely scheduled home games on Sundays, with a dozen of them held in 1885.

2 “Sunday Games and the Law and Order League,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 24, 1886: 2; “Law and Order,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1885: 8.

3 “Arrested,” Cincinnati Post, July 9, 1886: 4.

4 “A Base Ball Row,” Toledo Blade, July 12, 1886: 1; “Uncertain Prediction,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 12, 1886: 4.

5 On June 18, the Cincinnati Enquirer published affidavits from a pair of Indianapolis private detectives asserting that Mullane had written to them suggesting they bet on Cincinnati’s opponents in certain games. Mullane was acquitted of any wrongdoing following a June 30 factfinding meeting of the Reds board of directors. “Rascality,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 18, 1886: 1; The Beer and Whiskey League, 112; “Still in the Lead,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 3, 1886: 5.

6 “Massacred,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1886, 2. Mullane was suspended by the American Association for having signed with Cincinnati despite a prior commitment to the St. Louis Browns, who acquired his contract from the short-lived Toledo Blue Stockings. Ray Birch, “Tony Mullane,” SABR Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Tony-Mullane/, accessed November 30, 2024.

7 Based on game log for Terry compiled by the author. Terry earned a complete-game victory over the Reds on July 11, 1884, defeating Gus Shallix, the major leagues’ first German-born pitcher. “Two Balls,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 11, 1884: 5.

8 “Base Ball,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 28, 1886: 1.

9 “A Miserable Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 12, 1886: 2.

10 First appearing on a list of players suspended by the Interstate Association in December 1882, Keenan, along with four other members of the American Association’s 1882 Allegheny club, was listed as “ineligible to play in or against any Association or Alliance club” from the following March to when his contract with the Association’s Indianapolis club was approved in October 1883. Why he was barred from playing has been lost to the sands of time. “Unseasonable Topic,” Camden (New Jersey) Post, December 21, 1882: 1; “Ball and Bat,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 20, 1883: 6; “Base Ball Notes,” Philadelphia Times, October 11, 1883: 3.

11  “A Great Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 11, 1886: 10.

12 “The Burch Case,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 7, 1886: 9; Terry Bohn, “Ernie Burch,” SABR Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ernie-burch/, accessed November 30, 2024. Burch’s freewheeling negotiations with multiple clubs in the previous offseason led to what was commonly called ‘The Burch Case,” a contractual mess that took the Association’s executive committee to resolve. Presented with contracts that Burch had signed with both Brooklyn and the New York Metropolitans for the 1886 season, the committee ruled the Brooklyn contract valid.

13 Brooklyn’s quick start seems the most likely cause for the crowd’s immediate unrest, though a line in that morning’s issue of the Cincinnati Enquirer accusing Bradley of spectating might have contributed. “Notes,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 11, 1886: 10.

14 “Another Row,” Sporting Life, July 21, 1886: 1; “Base-Ball Riot,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 12, 1886: 8.

15 “Base-Ball Riot”; “Another Row,” Sporting Life, July 21, 1886: 1. In a written statement provided to Association President Wheeler Wyckoff, Clark claimed that when he entered the pavilion, he merely pulled away the men who were jumping on his brother. The Cincinnati Enquirer had him wielding his bat to and fro, but failing to connect.

16 “Base-Ball Riot”; Dean A. Sullivan, “Faces in the Crowd: A Statistical Portrait of Baseball Spectators in Cincinnati, 1886-1888,” Journal of Sport History, Winter 1990: 354. Seats in the grandstand went for 50 cents versus 40 cents in the pavilion seats and 25 cents in the terrace.

17 “The Umpire Fled,” Cincinnati Evening Post, July 12, 1886: 2; “Baseball Notes,” Brooklyn Times, July 12, 1886: 4.

18 “A Narrow Escape for the Umpire,” Springfield (Massachusetts) Republican, July 13, 1886: 8.

19 “A Miserable Game.”

20 “A Miserable Game.”

21 Arguably the best second baseman of the  nineteenth century, McPhee registered the highest fielding percentage of any American Association second baseman in six of the eight years he played in that league, including in 1886. He carried that standard of excellence into the National League, where he twice led that circuit’s keystone sackers in fielding percentage.

22 “Games Played Sunday, July 10,” Sporting Life, July 21, 1886: 2; “Bradley’s Second Game,” Pittsburgh Post, July 12, 1886: 8.

23 ”$2 for Sunday Games,” Cleveland Leader, July 13, 1886: 3.

24 “Base-Ball Riot.”

25 “Baseball Notes.”

26 “Notes and Comments,” Sporting Life, July 21, 1886: 3.

27 “Baldwin and Reilly,” Cincinnati Post, July 13, 1886: 4.

28 “Round About Town,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 18, 1886: 4. Preliminary proceedings on August 6 tied up the pair so long that the Red Stockings delayed the start of their game that day with Brooklyn. “Notes,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 7, 1886: 2.

29 “Notes and Comments,” Sporting Life, July 21, 1886: 3; “Notes and Comments,” Sporting Life, September 8, 1886: 5.

30 “Reorganized,” Sporting Life, November 3, 1886: 5.