Charlie Guth

On September 30, 1880, in his only appearance in a professional base ball game, a 24-year-old Chicagoan whose previous athletic accomplishments occurred in performances in local amateur base ball contests took the mound for the professional Chicago White Stockings in a game that had little relevance to anyone or anything beyond delivering a favor to a local sporting-goods company owner.

Offering a work history as an engraver’s apprentice and shirt cutter, he tossed a complete-game victory, ensuring that the locals finished the 1880 season of the National League with a 15-game margin.

His name was Charlie Guth.

Framing the background of a nineteenth-century individual isn’t an easy task, but there exists limited news coverage of the time that illustrates Guth’s talents. In 1879 a recap of an amateur game in Chicago noted that the “Dreadnaughts and Athletes played as fine a game of base ball yesterday as has been seen between amateur clubs this season. The game was remarkable for the heavy battling of the Athletes.”1

In that game, the Athletes featured a pitcher named Guth, who posted an 18-5 win, striking out seven. Offensively, he had three hits and scored four runs, batting in the cleanup spot. It was one of his earliest documented appearances among local teams of the time.

A man in his early 20s, Charlie Guth was employed by the A.G. Spalding & Brothers Company, a Chicago sporting-goods company that would develop the first major-league baseball which became the official baseball for the National League (1876-1976) and American League (1889-1973).2

The Spalding company was founded by Albert Goodwill Spalding, a native of Byron, Illinois, who was a dominant pitcher for the Boston Red Stockings, leading the National Association in victories in every full season he participated for Boston (1871-1875). As a pitcher and manager, Spalding also led the National League in victories during its inaugural season in 1876, winning 47 games for the first-place Chicago White Stockings (52-14).

In 1877 Spalding relinquished the primary pitching duties, appearing in just four games as a hurler and winning his only start. Instead, he played first base in 45 games, second base in 13 games, and third base in 4. Offensively, he produced a less than stellar .256 batting average. Spalding played in only one game in 1878, his final major-league appearance, and had a 2-for-4 performance on August 31. He was off to bigger things, including a future Hall of Fame induction as a baseball executive. In addition to managing his sporting-goods business, Spalding became secretary of the White Stockings, which eventually led to the club president’s role in 1882.

As an amateur and an employee of Spalding’s company as a uniform manager, Guth did not achieve his livelihood through his baseball talents. For the 1880 season, he joined the semipro Chicago Lake Views; Guth was the only personnel change from the prior season and was listed as the team’s primary hurler. The Lake Views were one of the prominent amateur teams in the Chicago area, evidenced by an August 1, 1880, entry in the Chicago Tribune that noted a matchup with the Franklins “for the amateur championship at White-Stocking Park[,]” where “neither club has thus far lost a game this season.”3 The Lake Views won the game 9-8, but it did not bring a title to Guth’s nine. A meeting of the Board of Directors of the Amateur Base-Ball Assocation of Chicago determined that the local Dreadnaughts would be awarded the city championship with 17 victories. Guth’s Lake Views club, after several unsuccessful protests about games awarded and umpire decisions, finished in second place with 16 wins. The Franklins finished third.4

In 1880 the White Stockings had distanced themselves from all other teams in the National League. Entering the final day of the season with a 14½-game lead over the second-place Providence Grays, they would contest a meaningless Thursday afternoon home game against the floundering seventh-place Buffalo Bisons without the availability of Larry Corcoran or Fred Goldsmith, their primary pitchers of record during the season.

Enter Al Spalding. As the game had no real significance, Spalding, an officer and owner of the White Stockings, persuaded manager Cap Anson to allow Guth to pitch the game. Guth didn’t disappoint.

After giving up a run in the first inning on a two-out hit by Buffalo’s Jack Rowe and subsequent errors by Tom Burns, George Gore, and King Kelly, Guth held the Bisons scoreless for the next six innings. The game account of the early innings described him as having “all the elements of a first-class pitcher, unless it be experience, coolness, and nerve, which only comes with time. His variations of curve and speed are extremely puzzling.”5

Chicago posted three runs in each of the first, fifth, and seventh innings, and a single counter in the eighth that gave the White Stockings a commanding 10-1 lead. It was then that Buffalo mounted a challenge.

One game summary said: “If [Guth] had maintained his pace throughout the game he would have proved a phenomenal success, but he weakened visibly in the eighth inning and became unsteady.”6 Guth relinquished three earned runs on five hits and three wild pitches in the inning.

The ninth saw more struggles, as Guth allowed five hits and gave up four runs. An error by Joe Quest made the final three tallies unearned. Corcoran “made a high jump for Davy] Force’s bounder and threw him out at first”7 to secure the victory. In his first and only major-league appearance, Charlie collected a win, striking out seven with one walk and four wild pitches. The Chicago Tribune game account estimated 400 in attendance.

Guth remained with the White Stockings for two additional exhibition games at season’s end with Buffalo. The games were scheduled to test a new style of ball made of cork wound by string, rubber, and yarn, and the use of a square bat developed by George Wright, a future Hall of Famer who opened Wright & Ditson Sporting Goods in partnership with Boston businessman Henry Ditson. The game recap indicated that neither innovation improved the game, and beyond the 12-10 score in favor of Chicago, there was no mention of individual accolades. Guth’s major-league career was over, hough his name continued to appear in occasional game coverage as he continued his amateur career.

On January 1, 1881, a base ball game of local professional and amateur players was organized and played on ice skates. Al Spalding was one of the captains and organizers, and Charlie Guth was the pitcher for the Spalding nine. However, the side managed by White Stockings slugger Ed Williamson was victorious, 22-21.8

In late March of 1881, the Lake View Base-Ball Club announced the elected officers and players who would constitute that season’s team. Guth remained prominent on the player roster, again listed as the pitcher. The announcement in the Chicago Tribune hints at the team’s competitive desires, stating that the “Lake Views have decided not to enter the Amateur League, preferring to forfeit their membership than be compelled to play on Sunday. They intend visiting larger cities the coming season, and with that end in view have organized an unusually strong nine.”9

Future coverage saw the Lake Views competing against teams from Dubuque, Iowa, and Goshen, Indiana, among others.

An exhibition in April 1882 was contested between the White Stockings and a local amateur team called the Spaldings. By this time, Al Spalding had retired as a player to become president of the White Stockings, succeeding William Hulbert, who died that same month. Charlie Guth was one of two pitchers used by the Spaldings, who endured a 21-0 shellacking at the hands of the professional club. (The White Stockings sported the “new regulation league uniform: each member wore a badge of crape on the arm out of respect to the memory of the late President Hurlbert.”)10

A later mention in 1882 showed Guth pitching for Tuscola, Illinois, a presumed “ringer” in a rematch against Urbana, which had previously downed Tuscola 12-2 on August 10. A game recap, referencing that first loss, noted that “the favorable termination of this game brought forward plenty of backers for our boys, and as the Tuscola sport’s confidence was materially increased by the addition of Guth, pitcher of the Spalding’s, of Chicago, the best amateur club in the city, plenty of money was put up on the game, about $400.”11

A colorful recap in the Champaign County Herald describes the contest, emphasizing “a line catch” in the ninth inning which prevented what could have been the winning run.

“As the score shows the game resulted in a tie at the end of the ninth inning,” the newspaper said. “After a consultation between the captains and umpire, it was decided to call the game a draw, and to be played off in this city at some future date. All bets were declared off.”12

It was the final playing reference the author could verify.

Beyond baseball, an accounting of Guth’s life exists in bits in pieces.

Charlie was the fifth child of foreign-born parents. His father, John B. Guth, a barber, was born in Alsace, France, in or around 1829. Guth’s mother, Anna R. (Murphy) Guth, was born in about 1833 in Ireland, and listed dressmaking and “keeping house” as her primary occupations in various US Federal Census reporting.

Guth was an employee of A.G. Spalding & Brothers during most of his playing days in Chicago, and for several years served as a uniform manager. (Earlier job references include shirt cutter.) At some point in late 1882 or early 1883, Guth joined the Wright & Ditson Company.

Charlie married Mary Lizzie Rowlands, who was born in Chicago, on March 7, 1883. The couple relocated to Boston, where Wright & Ditson’s primary operations were centered. Four months later, he was dead.

The cause of death was listed as asthenia, which was described as a general weakness or loss of strength. The date was July 5, 1883, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was 27.

Despite his being a newcomer to the area, the Boston Globe gave fitting notice of Charlie’s demise:

“Charles J. Guth, for several years in charge of the uniform department of Al Spalding & Brothers, Chicago, and afterwards with Wright & Ditson of this city in the same capacity, recently died in Boston. He was well known in the leading amateur base ball circles of Chicago as a fine pitcher. He was of a very sunny and genial disposition, and his death will be regretted by his many friends in the West.”13

Just as his fleeting notoriety in life centered on a single game in the major leagues, Guth’s death resulted in similar future anonymity. He is buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, near the graves of several of his wife’s relatives.14

His grave is unmarked.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Ancestry.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and SABR.org.

Notes

1 “Dreadnaughts vs Athletes,” Chicago Inter Ocean, September 23, 1879.

2  https://www.spalding.com/about-spalding.html, December 17, 2021.

3 “Ball Gossip,” Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1880: 8.

4 “Winter Notes About the Game,” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1880: 7.

5 “The Chicagos Finish the League Season with a Victory over Buffalo,” Chicago Tribune, October 1, 1880: 8.

6 “The Chicagos Finish the League Season with a Victory over Buffalo.”

7 “The Chicagos Finish the League Season with a Victory over Buffalo.”

8 “Sporting Matters. Ball on Ice,” Chicago Inter Ocean, January 3, 1881: 2.

9 “Not Good Weather for the Game,” Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1881: 12.

10 “A Practice Game,” Chicago Inter Ocean, April 17, 1882: 5.

11 “Match Game Between the Tuscola and Urbana Club,” Champaign County Herald, August 30, 1882: 1.

12 “Match Game Between the Tuscola and Urbana Club.”

13 “Spheric Sitings,” Boston Globe, July 15, 1883: 6.

14 “Grave Story: Charlie Guth (1856-1883),” https://ripbaseball.com/2019/06/25/grave-story-charlie-guth/.