The St. Louis Red Stockings: More Than A Footnote

Red Stocking Park in 1875. From Pictorial St. Louis, by Compton and Dry (Missouri Historical Society)

 

If SABR members have heard of the St. Louis Red Stockings (or Red Sox or just Reds) at all, they probably know only that the club played a couple of dozen National Association games in 1875. But the team had a continuous history lasting from 1873 thru 1876, and even had a couple of revivals in later years.

A top local amateur club in 1873 and 1874, the Red Stockings made a go at professional ball in 1875 and 1876. Financial losses killed the team for 1877, but founder Thomas McNeary organized semi-pro Reds teams in 1878 and again in 1880 and 1881, and the name was used by other operators in 1882 and 1884.

Amateur baseball flourished in St. Louis in the 1860s with the Empire, Union, and Turner clubs dominating the local scene. The emergence of professional baseball in the East led to a decline in local enthusiasm for these amateurs in the first few years of the 1870s. Still, local sportsman Thomas McNeary organized a new club in 1873. Naming the squad after Harry Wright’s famous Cincinnati and Boston teams, he caught onto a new wave of baseball fervor in the Mound City.

Like Chris Von der Ahe of the later-day Browns, Tom McNeary and his brother Frank had their own combination grocery and saloon in what was then the western part of the city. Friendly with many ballplayers, the McNearys recruited their players mostly from the Variety and St. Louis clubs. The initial Red Stocking lineup featured the Blong brothers, Andy and Joe. Andy was appointed captain, while Joe was part-time pitcher and all-around standout. Other stalwarts included catcher Packy Dillon, pitcher Bill Morgan, and infielder Johnny Peters. Billy Redmond, Zack Mulhall, Dean, and Mathae (first names unknown) rounded out the nine.

This was a formidable team by local standards, and the Red Stockings’ first match game was played against the state champion Empires on May 25, 1873. The Reds held a 15-12 lead after five innings but lost 26-16. Like other amateur clubs, the Red Stockings played only on Sundays, often just intrasquad games. Match games versus other clubs were played as part of best-of-five series for season honors. The Reds beat the Empires twice in 1873, the second win coming in a tense game on October 12th. The lead changed hands four times, and the champs threatened to win out in the bottom of the ninth until second baseman Peters snared a hot shot and started a pretty double play to preserve the upstarts’ 17-16 victory. One week later, however, the Empires won the rubber game of the series, 10-4 to retain state championship honors.

All of the big games had been played at Gus Solari’s park on Grand Avenue, the future site of Sportsman’s Park. But in 1874, McNeary leased his own grounds on Compton Avenue at the Missouri Pacific tracks. This Compton Avenue Park rivaled Solari’s park for decades to come.

The 1874 season opened with the professional Chicago White Stockings, a brand-new club that eventually evolved into today’s Cubs, coming to St. Louis for spring training games. The rolling contractor had not finished at Compton Avenue in time for the Reds-Whites games on April 23, so the contest took place at Grand Avenue. The Red Stockings lost, of course, but the final score was only 6-0, which was thought to be very good against a team of out-and-out professionals. Four days later the new park was ready, but rain stopped the game after two innings. The first game at Red Stocking Park was finally played to completion on April 30, Chicago winning by the lopsided count of 31-10. The White Stockings repeated the pasting two days later, 39-13. The Chicago club also trounced the Empires and Turners, but they were impressed early enough by the Reds to invite them to come to Chicago for more exhibitions.

So the Red Stockings embarked on their first road trip in May 1874. They were beaten by the Whites four times in the Windy City. And they lost their best player, as well, when Johnny Peters accepted an offer from the White Stockings and became the first St. Louisan to play professional baseball. The Reds had made a modest profit from the trip, but they almost lost that, too. On the train home, Andy Blong fell in with some three-card monte sharpers and lost the club’s stake. But when the other players found out, the surrounded the gambler and, “flourishing their baseball clubs, they promised to beat the monte men to death.” The money was returned without bloodshed. Thereafter, Tom McNeary accompanied the club on the road.

The Red Stockings beat the Empires in a welcome-home game, 14-9. Trick McSorley and John Dillon had become regulars by this time, but replacing Peters was a problem. a man named Gaffney was brought up from New Orleans but was sent back after striking out three times in his first game. Joe Miller, who had come to town with the Westerns of Keokuk, stayed over to help the Reds beat the Empires again, but the champs protested this blatant violation of the accepted roster rules, and the game was eventually awarded to the Empires by forfeit. Late in the year the Empires beat the Reds two more times to win the state title again, the two late games attracting over 10,000 spectators paying 25 cents each.

The Reds hosted two visiting NA clubs, the Atlantics and Mutuals in 1874, and these games were well-attended despite a steep 50-cent admission. The Empires also did well at the gate, and this local baseball boom led to the formulation of a stock company to launch a professional club for 1875. This team, the St. Louis Brown Stockings, entered the national Association. Since other NA clubs would be coming to St. Louis to play the Browns, McNeary decided to enter the Red Stockings into the association, as well. He attracted financial backers of his own, attended the NA meeting, and hired veteran professional Charlie Sweasy to captain the Red Sox (as they were now sometimes called). For their part, the Empires hired Denny Mack but did not enter the NA.

Aside from Sweasy, the 1875 Red Sox roster was made up entirely of St. Louis players. Joe Blong, Art Croft, McSorely, Morgan, Redmond, and the Dillon brothers had all played for the Reds in ’74. Charlie Houtz, Tom Oran, and Joe Ellick came from the Empires, while young catcher Frank “Silver” Flint had played with the Elephants.

This group was sadly overmatched by the bonafide pro teams of the National Association. The final score of the season opener at Compton Avenue versus the Browns was a respectable 15-9 loss, but eight of the Reds’ runs came when the Browns let up in the eighth inning. The Red Sox’ only official victories came versus the equally inexperienced “cooperative” nines from Keokuk and Washington. They did play the first 1-0 game in NA history, losing to Chicago on May 11 with a gale blowing into the batters’ faces. The feature of that game was Flint’s excellent catching. But Frank would hit only .082 in league games, and the club average as a whole was a woeful .201.

The Browns, using imported players, held their own against all comers and attracted good crowds, averaging close to 2,000 per game. “Crowds” at Red Stocking Park, on the other hand, averaged around 300. And given their weak play, they could not hope to attract crowds on the road, so the eastern clubs refused to schedule them. There was not much money to distribute to the players, and on June 28 Joe Blong jumped to the Covington Stars, a semi-pro club near Cincinnati.

After the Fourth of July, the Red Sox were frozen out of the NA. The eastern clubs and even the Browns refused to play them anymore. Undaunted, McNeary took his team on the road even though he only had games lined up against non-NA clubs in Kentucky and Ohio. “The idea of disbanding never entered the manager’s head,” the Globe-Democrat reported, “and the boys will do their utmost to endeavor to play their quota of games with every other club in the [NA] arena.”

But there were no more NA games. The rest of the summer was spent on short trips to Louisville, Cincinnati, St. Joseph, and Little Rock, and at home playing clubs like the Stocks and Rowenas. McSorely, Sweasy, and Packy Dillon all skipped out as the season wore on, and it seemed that the professional experiment was a dismal failure.

Still, McNeary was determined to press on. In November he raised an additional $10,000 capital to back the team for 1876. Plans for reentering the NA were scotched when the leading clubs seceded and formed the new National League, which restricted membership to eight clubs. So the Red Stockings played as an independent professional club. They traveled to eight states and one Canadian province, playing a total of 91 games, up by about 30 from the previous year. The only games versus NL opposition were six losses to the Browns, but the Reds held their own against other independent pros like the Alleghenies, the Buckeyes, Indianapolis, and the Phillies. Their overall record was a gaudy 67-23-1.

Unlike the previous year, the Reds gained good players instead of losing them. The Gleason brothers, Jack and Billy, were added over the summer. And the key acquisition was the signing of 20-year-old Jimmy Galvin from the local Stock club, which had gone bankrupt early in the season. He homered in his first at bat for the Red Stockings, “a terrific drive” in Indianapolis on June 22nd. Displaying the form that would win him over 300 National League games in later years, Galvin pitched a no-hitter against Philadelphia on the Fourth of July and a perfect game versus the Cass club of Detroit in a tournament in Ionia, Michigan, on August 17.

Rebelling against the high-handed tactics of the National League. Red Stocking secretary L.C. Waite sent out a circular to the other independents in October proposing a rival organization. This led to the formation of the International Association in 1877, sometimes cited as the first minor league. But the St. Louis Red Stockings were not a member. McNcary and his backers had lost too much money, and the club closed down.

When the Browns folded following the 1877 season, however, McNeary revived the Red Stockings in 1878 as a stay-at-home semi-pro outfit. His squad featured the Gleason boys as the only holdovers from the `76 Reds. The Spink brothers had organized several out-of-work pros into a new semi-pro Browns squad, and the two rivals gave the local fans what little good baseball was to be seen in St. Louis that summer.

The Reds did not take the field in 1879, many of the players moving on to the Springfield (Ill.) Reds. But in 1880 McNeary rounded up another team, captained this time by veteran Ned Cuthbert. In 1881 Cuthbert and the Gleasons went across town to the Browns, and Henry Overbeck took over the helm of the Reds. The squad also included the likes of Harry McCaffrey, Eddie Hogan, Charlie Houtz, Bill Morgan, and Art Croft.

The Reds of 1882 featured returning Johnny Peters, but they were outshone by the new professional Browns of the American Association. And Tom McNeary had retired from the game, giving control of the Compton Avenue park over to Mike Kelly. The new man had no real connection to the old name, and an 1884 revival was short-lived. But the old yard on Compton continued to serve local clubs into the next decade before it gave way in 1898 to expanded railroad tracks. Today the grounds are still partially occupied by tracks, with the Bi-State bus shops taking up the rest.

The St. Louis Red Stockings are long gone now. But they lasted a good deal longer than the baseball encyclopedias would lead you to believe.