Fred Dunlap

Nicknamed “Sure Shot” for his lightning quick and accurate throws to first base, Fred Dunlap was a 19th-century second baseman whose name has mostly been lost to time. Despite his lack of recognition today, Dunlap could have a fair claim to being one of the best at the keystone position in his era. A hard-hitting, slick infielder, Dunlap’s reputation rests as much on style as on statistics. His greatest season came in 1884 with the St. Louis Maroons of the Union Association, a short-lived circuit whose level of competition has long been questioned. That season has followed his name ever since. Was Dunlap one of the greatest second basemen of his century, or was his success magnified by an inferior league at exactly the right moment? The answer is that he was both an exceptional player and a beneficiary of unusual circumstances.

Frederick C. Dunlap was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 21, 1859. Available public records make no mention of his parents’ names or any siblings. It also remains unclear what his middle initial “C.” stood for. 

Young Fred’s early life fell on the harsh side of 19th-century urban America. Both of his parents died when he was still a boy, around age 10, and he received little formal education. Without the protections of home, baseball became less a pastime than a route toward survival. The sport valued toughness and, in Dunlap’s case, ruggedness over polish. He learned the game in and around Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, where local and semipro clubs gave ambitious young players a path to organized ball.

Grown to a compact 5-foot-8, 165 pounds, Dunlap set out on his baseball journey with amateur clubs in Gloucester (where he played catcher and shortstop), Camden, and Philadelphia, and later in Wilmington (where he started out as a pitcher thanks to his strong arm). By the late 1870s, he moved into stronger professional company with Auburn, Hornellsville, and Albany, and settled in as a second baseman.1 The player who emerged from those competitions had a distinct defensive reputation. Dunlap threw hard and accurately from second base. In an age of rough fields, inconsistent hops, and barehanded play, a second baseman who could gather the ball cleanly and deliver it firmly was a valuable commodity. The limited stats available from his early pro years show that he accumulated 61 hits and 53 runs in 51 games with Albany in 1879.

Dunlap reached the major leagues with the Cleveland Blues in 1880 and made an immediate impression. As a rookie, he led the National League in doubles with 27 and led second basemen in assists. He also batted .276 with nine triples. Those numbers captured the two sides of his value. At the plate he was an extra-base threat in a low-scoring era, and in the field, he was always reliable. Cleveland had found a young regular who might turn into one of the most talented middle infielders in the league. Dunlap even occupied a strange and very 19th-century place in baseball history: before his major-league debut as a player, he had already umpired a major-league game.2 While that quirky story says most about the baseball world he entered, it also shows how quickly he had become known inside it.

Over the next several seasons, Dunlap developed from promising youngster into established star. He hit .325 in 1881 and .326 in 1883 for Cleveland. In the latter season, he also set his career mark for doubles to that date with 34, along with a strong .361 on-base percentage. His fielding remained first-rate, and he consistently ranked among league leaders in the categories most often used to judge second basemen of the time, such as fielding percentage, which never dipped below .900.

Contemporary observers remembered him as not merely dependable but elite. The Chicago Daily Inter Ocean described Dunlap’s fielding as “brilliant” in a pivotal series against Chicago in 1881, commenting that he “accepted all but two of the 25 chances offered him at second base.” The paper goes on to also comment about Dunlap’s “remarkably heavy” batting, thanks to 11 hits in the series, including a home run that was said to be “the longest ever made in Chicago.”3 By the end of 1883 he was one of Cleveland’s principal attractions and one of the National League’s best all-around players.

His success in the National League made Dunlap a target when the Union Association launched for the 1884 season. The St. Louis Maroons lured him away from Cleveland with what was widely described as an astonishing contract, at the time reportedly worth $3,500 for the first year and $4,000 in the second year.4 The Sporting News founder Alfred Spink reported later that the number was $5,000 per year.5 As the story goes, Union Association president Henry Lucas met with Dunlap first amongst all players and Dunlap told him there was not enough money in the world to induce him to take such a step. “How much a year can you make playing baseball?” Lucas asked. Dunlap responded, “Seventeen hundred and fifty.” Lucas unfurled a huge wad of bills and said, “Here’s your $1,750 and as much more as you want.”6 Upon his signing, Lucas said about Dunlap and coveted outfielder George Shafer, who batted .292 for the Buffalo Bisons the season before, “Now that they are here, I can safely boast that I have the best second baseman and best right fielder in the country.”7

For a player who had come from orphanhood and limited schooling, the salary represented a huge advance in social standing. As for expectations of him, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch called Dunlap “by long odds the best known.” It went on to say, “never speak of those filling the position occupied by Dunlap without referring to him as the king-pin of second basemen.”8 Dunlap had become valuable enough to help legitimize a new league. His jump to the Maroons also reflected the turbulence of baseball in the 1880s, when leagues rose and fell, owners raided one another’s rosters, and star players learned they could improve their leverage by threatening to move.

What followed was by far the best season of Dunlap’s career and, ultimately, one of the more dubious in 19th-century baseball history. In 1884, playing for a dominant Maroons club, Dunlap batted .412 with a .448 OBP, and slugged .621 thanks to 39 doubles, 13 homers, and eight triples. He led the Union Association in hits, runs, total bases, home runs, slugging percentage, and several other categories. His 160 runs scored (averaging 1.6 runs per games played) rank among the largest single-season totals in major-league history. On raw numbers alone, it was a monster season – one of the greatest ever produced by a second baseman. At the time, Dunlap’s .412 average stood as the highest single-season mark ever recorded in a major league.

As the season wound down, Dunlap was vocal about wanting to compete with other associations, even accepting Charles Comiskey’s offer to pay $100 per player to compete with Comiskey’s American Association St. Louis Browns, and offering to pay the fee for other players who couldn’t cut it on their own.9 Ultimately, the deal didn’t go through.

The Union Association lasted only one season, and its quality has been disputed. Some clubs were undermanned, unstable, or plainly outclassed. In the SABR Baseball Research Journal in 2024, Richard Hershberger wrote, “[The league] is classified as a major league…with a low level of play, absurdly poor competitive balance within that low level, and an odd selection of cities, several of them changing over the course of the season.” The Maroons themselves were overwhelmingly superior and finished 94-19. Dunlap’s 1884 numbers exist in a kind of historical gray area. Yet it would be unfair to reduce his career to a single suspect peak. Dunlap had already established himself as a star in the National League before joining St. Louis, and he remained an excellent player after the Union Association disappeared.

The best evidence for that came when the Maroons entered the National League in 1885. Dunlap’s batting average dropped sharply, to .270. Even so, he continued to distinguish himself in the field. In 1886 he provided another memorable offensive highlight by hitting for the cycle on May 24. Even in a more difficult environment, Dunlap was still capable of the complete, forceful performances that had made his name.

Dunlap’s next chapter began when the Detroit Wolverines, determined to build a pennant winner, purchased his contract from St. Louis in 1886 for $4,700. Detroit became one of the National League’s most ambitious clubs, and their talent-building drive shows how prominently Dunlap figured in that effort. About the move, Dunlap was apparently “jubilant” and stated he “never did like St. Louis” and was “only too glad to get out of it.”10 He joined a team that included future Hall of Famers Dan Brouthers, Deacon White, Sam Thompson, and Ned Hanlon, and he gave Detroit added authority in the middle infield. Although his offensive peak was behind him, he remained a significant presence. He helped stabilize a star-heavy club and contributed to Detroit’s rise into the elite rank of the league. In 51 games, Dunlap batted .286.

In 1887, the Wolverines won the National League pennant with a 79-45-3 record, and Dunlap became part of the most celebrated season in franchise history (1881-1888). Detroit’s championship reputation rested on its depth and star power, and Dunlap’s role fit that identity perfectly. He was no longer the singular phenomenon of 1884, but he was an accomplished veteran second baseman on a powerhouse club. Over 65 games, he scrapped out a .265 average while kicking in five home runs, 15 steals, and a career-high 10 triples. Dunlap’s 1887 season ended abruptly in September when he injured his leg. The spell proved to be the beginning of the end, as the years after Detroit were less triumphant.

Dunlap went on to play for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys for two and a half seasons, batting .240 but having his best seasons on the basepaths, with 69 steals over 220 games. He was picked up by the New York Giants of the nascent Players League in 1890, but got into only one game, in which he recorded two hits.

Dunlap’s final season came with the Washington Statesmen of the American Association the following year. He hit .200 over 31 plate appearances before breaking his leg on April 20 while sliding into a base.11 The injury was devastating on its own, but the dispute that followed was equally revealing. According to later accounts, Washington stopped paying his salary after the injury, and Dunlap argued that a player hurt while serving his club deserved at least partial pay.12 The episode exposed one of the cruelties of early professional baseball. Players had little protection once their bodies failed. Dunlap, who had once commanded one of the game’s richest salaries, was now expendable. He never played professional baseball again.

All told, over 12 major-league seasons Dunlap hit .292 with a .340 on-base percentage and at least 85 stolen bases.13 Per Baseball-Reference, Dunlap has a top 10 WAR per 162 games played with 6.2. This number puts him in the company of players like Joe Morgan and Charlie Gehringer. In 1897, Ned Hanlon said, “Fred Dunlap was at one time…the best second baseman in the country.”14

At the close of his playing career, Dunlap was said to have been financially secure, perhaps even wealthy. Some reports later claimed he had accumulated as much as $100,000, an enormous sum for a 19th-century ballplayer.15 He entered the building business in Philadelphia and owned property. For a time, he may have seemed to embody the possibility that a great player could convert baseball earnings into permanent prosperity. But his post-baseball life did not follow that script. Accounts from later years said he lost heavily through horse racing and other speculative ventures. Whether through bad judgment or bad luck, the money disappeared.

By the summer of 1902, one Philadelphia newspaper reportedly described Dunlap as “clean broke.”16 The phrase captured the brutal contrast between his former fame and his final condition. Here was a man once regarded as perhaps the finest second baseman in baseball, now living on the edge of destitution in the same city where his life had begun. His fall was not unique among 19th-century athletes, but it was severe enough to strike contemporaries as tragic. The early professional game made stars, but it did not guarantee security, and it offered little structure for players once their skills or health deserted them. Dunlap’s decline laid bare that instability.

Dunlap, who had been in ill health, died of unknown causes in Philadelphia on December 1, 1902. He was just 43 years old. The stories attached to his final years were bleak. He spent his last years in poverty and mental gloom in a boarding house.17 Historical records do not indicate if he was ever married or had any children. There were claims that his death and funeral revealed how thoroughly he had been abandoned: that old baseball acquaintances had to be summoned, and that there were not enough friends present to serve as pallbearers.18 He was buried at Odd Fellows Cemetery in Philadelphia, another sign that he was indigent.19 Even if some of those stories were sharpened by the sensationalized style of sporting journalism, the broader truth is unmistakable. Dunlap did not die as a comfortably established former star.

Dunlap’s baseball reputation, however, proved more durable than his circumstances. Admirers from his own era praised him extravagantly. In 1910, Spink wrote, “Dunlap was far and away the greatest second baseman that ever lived.”20 Others, like Hall of Fame pitcher and infielder –and union organizer – John Mongomery Ward, considered Dunlap to be in the class of best second baseman of his era. “Fred Dunlap was the king,” Ward said. “Dunlap had the record average of .953 [fielding percentage] in 64 games with the Detroit club in 1887 and was the personification of ease and grace. He was something of a grandstand player, because of his tendency to make one-handed catches and stops but he got there just the same and was a big favorite wherever he showed.”21

Modern opinion has been more divided, largely because the Union Association complicates any simple reading of his statistics. A 2013 Hardball Times article listed the best 19th-century ballplayers at every position. They picked Cupid Childs at second base, with Bid McPhee getting an honorable mention. Dunlap didn’t appear anywhere in the writeup.22 In John Thorn’s personal list of pantheon players pre-1900, Dunlap is nowhere to be found.23 In 2018, Bleacher Report speculated about 19th-century players who deserve Hall of Fame consideration; again Dunlap didn’t get a single mention.24

However, Fred Dunlap’s story is larger than a dispute over one league’s legitimacy. It is the story of a gifted 19th-century ballplayer who rose from childhood hardship to baseball wealth and celebrity, mastered one of the game’s most tricky positions in its trickiest era, starred on pennant contenders, and then lost nearly everything before his early death. Dunlap was not merely a statistical curiosity from 1884. He was one of the outstanding second basemen of his generation and one of the clearest examples of how precarious a baseball life could be in the sport’s first professional age.

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Gregory H, Wolf and Rory Costello and checked for accuracy by members of SABR’s fact-checking team.

Photo credit: Fred Dunlap, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.

Notes

1 “Michigan’s Pride: Winners of the League Pennant,” Grand Rapids (Michigan) Herald, October 8, 1887: 1.

2 Fred Dunlap Umpire Stats, Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/umpire.php?p=dunlafr01#:~:text=Dunlap%20was%2020%20years%20old%20when%20he,served%20as%20a%20Major%20League%20Baseball%20umpire (last accessed April 30, 2026).

3 “Championship,” The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), August 6, 1881: 3

4“Dunlap’s Case,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 27, 1884: 5.

5 Al Spink, “Made 100,000; Died Poor,” The Sioux City Journal, February 26, 1918: 9.

6 Spink, “Made 100,000; Died Poor.”

7 “Dunlap and Shaffer Arrive in St. Louis,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 1, 1884: 8.

8 “St. Louis Unions vs. Chicago Unions,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 19, 1884: 10.

9“Diamond Dust,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 20, 1884: 3.

10 “The Collapse Coming, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 7, 1884: 7.

11 Robert L. Tiemann, Nineteenth Century Stars. Society for American Baseball Research, 2012: 82–83.

12 “Fred Dunlap Released by Washington: Dunny Has a Grievance,” The Sporting News, June 20, 1891: 1.

13 From 1880-1885, Dunlap’s stolen base totals are unrecorded.

14 “Hanlon Compares the Old Detroits and the New Orioles,” The Sporting Life, September 11, 1897: 21.

15 John M. Ward, “Were Star Infielders: Players of Older Generation Have Not Been Excelled,” The Washington Post, March 6, 1910.

16 Francis Richter, “Quaker Quips,” Sporting Life, July 12, 1902: 6.

17 “Dunlap Dead: The Once Famous Star Second Baseman Ends His Days After Years of Gloom and Poverty in a Hospital,” Sporting Life, December 13, 1902: 2.

18 Spink, “Made 100,000; Died Poor.”

19 “Sports of All Sorts,” The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), December 4, 1902: 9.

20 Alfred Henry Spink, The National Game, The National Game Publishing Co. (St. Louis, Missouri), 1910: 196, 198.

21 Ward, “Were Star Infielders: Players of Older Generation Have Not Been Excelled.”

22 Richard Barbieri, “Best of the Decade: 19th Century,” The Hardball Times, January 10, 2013, https://tht.fangraphs.com/best-of-the-decade-the-19th-century/ (last accessed April 30, 2026).

23 John Thorn, “My 19th Century Pantheon,” Our Game, June 23, 2011, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/my-19th-century-pantheon-78384dece899 (last accessed April 30, 2026).

24 Brian Gramman, “10 19th-Century Major League Baseball Players Who Should Be Hall of Famers, Bleacher Report, June 7, 2018, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1079924-major-league-baseball-10-19th-century-players-who-should-be-hall-of-famers (last accessed April 30, 2026).