A July 2, 1870 Harpers Weekly illustration of the game.

“Friend Chadwick,” Harry Wright addressed the esteemed baseball authority and sports journalist Henry Chadwick in a pre-season letter updating the condition of Wright’s Red Stockings team. The success of the undefeated Red Stockings in 1869 had sparked national interest in the club’s fortunes. Wright, the captain of the team, was confident his nine, which returned every starter from 1869, would continue to dominate the other top clubs:

“I have the players here now in far better form than they were this time a year ago. They are all members of the gymnasium here, and exercise daily…. I think, when we go East this season we will be able to play a game or games of ball that will keep our reputation.”

The Red Stockings ended the 1869 season undefeated in 57 games. They began 1870 with an extended Southern tour into New Orleans. After defeating several area nines back home in Cincinnati, the winning streak reached 71 games. But the stiffest competition was still in the East and it was there the Red Stockings would run the gauntlet.

As in 1869, the Cincinnati club organized a long road trip, beginning in Cleveland on May 31, and ending with a match in Washington, D.C. on June 28. After defeating the Cleveland boys, they moved through upstate New York and into Massachusetts. The traveling correspondent from the Cincinnati Commercial noted that the famous Red Stockings attracted “great attention in the streets,” and created “much excitement along the route and in the cities.” The Red Stockings arrived in New York on June 12, their winning streak at 80 games.

Not everyone treated them so warmly there. The New York Herald criticized the club for dictating such harsh financial terms that New York clubs were forced to raise ticket prices to a minimum of 50 cents. But the Red Stockings directors believed the New Yorkers would pay. They were right. More than 7,000 turned out the next day to watch Cincinnati easily defeat the elite New York club, the Mutuals, 16–3. After the victory, the papers predicted another unbeaten Eastern tour for the invaders from the West. The next day, the Red Stockings played the Atlantics of Brooklyn, a team they had defeated soundly in 1869, 32–10.

The New York World described the pre-game scene at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn that Tuesday afternoon:

“Little urchins shouted, ‘score cards, names and positions of both nines,’ all the way from Fulton Ferry to Bedford, and all Brooklyn seemed awake to the event of the day. Stores were deserted, boys who could not obtain permission to leave school played hooky, and hundreds who could or would not produce the necessary fifty-cent stamp for admission looked on through cracks in the fence, or even climbed boldly to the top, while others were perched in the topmost limbs of the trees, or on the roofs of surrounding houses.”

By game time between 12,000 and 15,000 spectators were on the grounds, many thousands standing in a semi-circle that stretched deep into the outfield. The Atlantics appeared in their traditional uniform of long dark blue pants and white shirts with an “A” on the front, and the Red Stockings, in their white uniforms and long red hose, tipped their caps as they came onto the field to acknowledge the polite applause of the spectators.

Seven members of the Atlantics were holdovers from the 1869 team; the main addition was George Zettlein, a powerful pitcher the Red Stockings had never faced. The Red Stockings edged out to a 3–0 lead, but sloppy fielding by third baseman Fred Waterman, first baseman Charles Gould and second baseman Charlie Sweasy let the Atlantics take the lead, 4–3, after six innings. In the top of the seventh, George Wright quieted the big crowd with a single that drove in two runs, and the Red Stockings reclaimed the lead, 5–4. The Atlantics tied the score in the eighth, 5–5, and that is where it stood after nine full innings.

The rules of the era did not dictate extra innings unless one captain wished the game to continue. Harry Wright could well have taken the tie, and kept the unbeaten string alive, and that is what the umpire and the Atlantics captain Bob Ferguson assumed would happen. The umpire left the field, and Ferguson’s Atlantics headed to their clubhouse. But Harry engaged Ferguson in discussion about continuing. Ferguson seemed content to accept the tie, but Harry persisted. Finally, the umpire was recalled, the players returned, and the game resumed.

The Red Stockings were out in order in the top of the 10th; the Atlantics mounted a rally in the bottom of the inning. With two on and one out, George Wright moved to catch a short fly ball. But instead he let it bounce, and with no infield fly rule yet written, he easily started a double play. In the 11th, the Red Stockings appeared to have won the game with a two-run rally. But the Red Stockings’ ace pitcher, Asa Brainard, now seemed to tire. With one on and no outs, Joe Start, the Atlantic first baseman, lined a ball far over Cal McVey’s head in right field. The ball rolled into the crowd, where, by most accounts, an exuberant spectator jumped on McVey’s back. McVey shook him off and returned the ball to the infield. One run scored and the batter reached third. The Red Stockings finally got an out, but then Ferguson singled home the tying run, and Zettlein followed with another hit, putting runners on first and second. And then came the play that ended the streak.

George Hall, the Atlantics’ center fielder, bounced a ball to George Wright, a sure double play, but George’s throw sailed by Sweasy, and Ferguson, running hard from second, scored the winning run.

“The yells of the crowd could be heard for blocks around and a majority of the people acted like escaped lunatics,” wrote the New York Sun correspondent. The Red Stockings quickly boarded their omnibus and left the grounds, upset at the loss, but gracious in defeat. No one made an issue of McVey’s tussle with the spectator; the boys understood that the Atlantics had beaten them squarely. If the streak had to end—and surely it did—this was the way it should have happened: hard fought, stirring rallies, lead changes and extra innings. Club President Aaron Champion summed it up in a telegram back to Cincinnati: “The finest game ever played. Our boys did nobly, but fortune was against us. Eleven innings played. Though beaten, not disgraced.”

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. Download the SABR e-book by clicking here.

• Related link: Listen to a special SABR ‘broadcast’ of the June 14, 1870, game between the Red Stockings and Atlantics

1870 New York Mutuals. Back row: Candy Nelson, Phonney Martin, Marty Swandell, Dave Eggler. Front row: Everett Mills, John Hatfield, Charlie Mills, Rynie Wolters, Tom Patterson.

Given the powerhouse teams that represented the Windy City in the 1870s and ’80s, one might assume that the quaint jargon signifying that a team had been “Chicagoed” stems from some unfortunate nine suffering a walloping at the hands of one of those mighty clubs.

The truth is quite to the contrary. The term actually stems from a game played on July 23, 1870, when Chicago’s National Association entry became the first team ever held scoreless in a National Association championship contest.

During the previous autumn, moneyed interests in Chicago pooled assets to assemble a team that would rival the Red Stockings of Cincinnati. Essentially a “picked nine” of all-stars lured away from prominent teams including the Eckfords, Athletics, and Haymakers, the White Stockings won their first 31 games. On an early summer tour of the East, they suffered their first losses, one of them a 13–4 embarrassment at the hands of the Mutuals in New York on July 6.

The Chicagoans surely looked forward to revenge when the Mutuals came west to play them later in the month, and most fans assumed they would get it, as indicated by the betting line. That line made the White Stockings two-to-one favorites. Torrid heat kept attendance to around 6,000 as the two teams faced off at Chicago’s Dexter Park on July 23, a Saturday.1

The Mutuals scored an unearned run in the first off pitcher Mark Burns, whom Chicago had plucked from Fordham’s Rose Hill club just after the 13–4 defeat.2 New York’s Rynie Wolters, who had beaten Chicago a fortnight earlier, faced only nine White Stocking batters through the third inning.

Chicago got a man as far as second base in the fourth, but mounted a genuine threat only in the fifth. Right fielder Clipper Flynn led off with a base on balls. After Fred Treacey flied out to Dave Eggler  in center field, Levi Meyerle garnered Chicago’s first safe hit, Flynn advancing to second. But when catcher Bill Craver flied out to Patterson in left, the Mutuals outfielder found Flynn straying and fired to second for a double play to end the inning.

The New Yorkers turned up the heat in the top of the sixth. Wolters tripled past Ned Cuthbert in left, then hits by Marty Swandell and Eggler and heads-up running on a couple of miscues by Craver behind the plate brought three runs across.

Opening Chicago’s half of the inning, Treacey lofted a long one to left, but was put out on a great one-handed catch by Patterson. The Tribune said the outfielder caught the ball “in one hand while running backward, making a catch as rare as angels’ visits.” Meyerle scorched a grounder past Hatfield and reached for the second time. Next up was Craver, who grounded to Candy Nelson at third to start what looked like a double play. Hatfield forced Meyerle, but his relay to first missed the target and Craver wound up at third. But Chicago’s best scoring chance yet went for naught as Burns popped out.

After a scoreless seventh inning, the Mutuals put up another three runs in the top of the eighth, thanks to four hits and an error by shortstop Charlie Hodes. In the bottom of the inning, Cuthbert and Flynn reached base, but the former was caught stealing and the latter was stranded by Treacey and Meyerle.

In the ninth, the White Stockings gift-wrapped a pair of runs for the Mutuals via three errors, two passed balls, and a wild pitch. Only a Hodes-to- Wood-to-McAtee double play prevented the damage being greater. Facing a 9–0 deficit, the Tribune said the White Stockings “seemed to have given up”3 as they took their last chance in the bottom of the ninth. Craver, Burns, and McAtee were all retired on infield flies.

Rather than credit Wolters, whom, it noted “other clubs have batted … severely,” the Tribune blamed impatience by Chicago batters for “the terrible defeat,” adding, “What sane individual … would have incurred the risk of an examination before a commission of lunacy, by admitting the rare possibility, much less by uttering the prediction?”4 The Spirit of the Times declared the outcome more surprising than any that had come before it. “When the Red Stockings beat the Unions of Morrisania without letting them get a run, it was regarded as a wonderful performance, but that exhibition has been completely eclipsed by the White Stockings receiving similar treatment at the hands of the Mutual nine,” it said.5

Newspapers in many other cities also reacted with shock and mockery, some judging that Chicago’s vaunted “$18,000 Nine” had been proven a horrible investment. The New York Herald appears to have been the first newspaper to use the term “Chicagoed” to indicate being held scoreless, doing so on July 27.6 Two days later, the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune predicted that “‘Chicagoed’ will hereafter be used to indicate a blank score, instead of the less elegant term whitewashed.”7 After Cleveland beat the mighty Mutuals on July 29, the Cleveland Plain Dealer quipped: “The Mutuals were ‘Chicagoed’ six times, the Forest Citys, five.”8 Before long, newspapers in several other cities, including Chicago’s own Tribune, had adopted it.

When Albert Spalding began publishing his annual guides a few years later, he always included a tabulation of “Chicago games.” That and its adoption by the era’s pre-eminent sportswriter, Henry Chadwick in the New York Clipper, gave it life into the 20th century.

Yet notwithstanding the facts of the term’s origins, confusion occasionally surfaced. In the late 19th century, The American Slang Dictionary, compiled by James Maitland, perpetrated the most common misimpression: that the term honored a Chicago achievement rather than a failure. “Some years ago Chicago had a base-ball club which met with phenomenal success,” Maitland wrote, explaining that “other competing clubs which ended the game without scoring were said to have been ‘Chicagoed.’”9 This reverse explanation occasionally lingers to today.

Notes

1  “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1870, p. 4.

2  Burns has gone without a first name in almost every source of information about baseball games circa 1870; his first name was provided by the New York Times on June 12, 1871 (“St. John’s College Nine as Tourists”), quoting an announcement by St. John’s College of Fordham that he had returned as their Rose Hill club’s top pitcher. Burns was one of two Rose Hill players pressed into service for one game in May of 1870 by the Unions of Morrisania against the Athletics, and that figured into his first game with Chicago being played under protest by the amateur Star club of Brooklyn. Burns was released by Chicago after one month.

3  “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1870, p. 4.

4 “The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, July 24, 1870, p. 4.

5  Spirit of the Times, July 30, 1870, p. 372 (referring to the Reds’ 14 – 0 win on June 15).

6  “The National Game,” New York Herald, July 27, 1870, p. 5.

7  Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, July 29, 1870, p. 8.

8  Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 30, 1870, p. 3

9  Maitland, James. The American Slang Dictionary (Chicago: R. J. Kittredge & Co., 1891), p. 64.

The Forest Citys had defeated the Atlantics, 17-16, on May 31 in Brooklyn.2 By the rules of the day, a challenger would win the pennant if it defeated the champion twice in three games.3 The Atlantics, who had reigned as champions since defeating Eckford on November 8, 1869,4 had avoided giving the Cincinnati Red Stockings an opportunity to claim the pennant throughout Cincinnati’s 81-game winning streak, diminishing Brooklyn’s legitimacy as the champion. That had changed on June 14, when the Atlantics defeated Cincinnati 8-7 in 11 innings.

Back on May 31, Rockford had rallied for five runs in the top of the ninth, taking the lead, 17-14. The Atlantics answered with two runs of their own and had runners on first and third with one out. Joe Start, in his eighth season as the Atlantics’ first baseman,5 made contact with a pitch from Al Spalding. Umpire William McMahon initially called it a foul ball, but Start’s hit carried far enough to reach shortstop Ross Barnes.

Both Atlantics baserunners, having not heard McMahon’s call, ran upon seeing the ball bound to Barnes. In 1870 the rule was that a foul ball was live again the moment it was returned to the pitcher, regardless of where the runners were.6 Barnes quickly returned the ball to Spalding, who tossed to third base for the first out. Then the ball was returned to Spalding, who tossed it again to first, doubling off the befuddled runners standing at second and home who had unwittingly tried to advance on a dead ball.7 Per the Chicago Tribune, “The spectators, to whom the passing of the ball round the field … seemed a perfect mystery, were perfectly astonished when they heard that the game was over, and the Atlantics had lost.”8

The controversy, coupled with the championship being on the line, made the Rockford crowd rowdy from the jump on August 29. The 19-year-old Spalding took the pitcher’s box for Rockford. His confounding mechanics were still upsetting the game’s best hitters four years into his career. Spalding would freeze at the top of his windup, sometimes for up to 20 seconds.9 His deceptive timing proved effective against Brooklyn. George “Charmer” Zettlein hurled for the Atlantics. In contrast to Spalding, Zettlein relied on what the New York Clipper called the velocity “of a ball shot from a cannon.”10

The umpire was James Haynie, “one of the most honest and prompt umpires that ever umpired a game.”11 An umpire of renown would be especially important to the day’s game, given the controversy surrounding the game-ending play on May 31.

The Forest Citys started nervously and gave up six unearned runs in the first four innings. The seventh began with the Green Stockings trailing 11-8.12

After Rockford scored a run, Forest Citys slugger Gat Stires came to bat with one out. Twenty years old but only one season away from retirement,13 Stires hit a single to keep the rally going. A passed ball by Atlantics catcher Bob Ferguson allowed Stires to move from first to third. Ferguson struggled behind the plate all day, owing to a broken finger.14

Joe Doyle stepped up next and stroked a sinking line drive to left field. Brooklyn’s George Hall, in his first season with the club, made a spectacular catch “six inches from the ground.”15 Stires managed to score on a passed ball while the next batter was up, and the seventh inning ended 11-10.

The Atlantics added two runs in the top of the eighth. The Forest Citys had scored two runs of their own in the bottom half when team captain Scott Hastings batted with nobody on and two outs. Hastings hit a groundball single, then made it to second on an error and stole third. Stires came up clutch again with a single to short right field, tying the game, 13-13.

Stires’s base hit sent the Rockford cranks into hysterics. “Enthusiasm was so great that play was stopped for a few moments, in order that the men might enjoy the bliss in shouting themselves hoarse, and the ladies shake their cambric kerchiefs and kiss each other in a manner tantalizing to the umpire and other strangers,” reported the New York Clipper.16 Once play resumed, Doyle hit into a force out to end the inning.

Lip Pike quieted the crowd with a leadoff double to start the ninth. After Jack McDonald flied out, Dickey Pearce hit a line-shot single into center field. But Pike pushed his luck by trying to score from third and was caught in a rundown by Spalding and Tom Foley.17 Rockford had preserved the deadlock.

The home half of the ninth went quickly. There was a bit of drama when Doyle hit a lazy pop foul along third base. Charlie Smith would have made an easy play, except that the Fair Grounds sported fully grown trees on the foul side of the bag. The branches swallowed the ball, giving Doyle a second chance.18 Unperturbed, Zettlein instead finished Doyle on strikes.

Dual whitewashes in the 10th brought the proceedings to an 11th inning. This was when James Haynie suffered his one controversy. The New York Clipper explained that Hastings dropped George Hall’s third strike “which struck (Haynie) and rolled about ten feet away.” Hall assumed that the ball was dead and moved toward first with little urgency. “But Hastings picked up the ball, sent it accurately to Doyle before Hall could reach the coveted bag, and the umpire decided the runner out. He claims that as umpire he should not be considered an outsider; hence, it is not a dead ball.”19 Remarkably, Brooklyn did not protest the call.20

Rockford came to bat in the 11th with another chance to walk off the champions. The first two batters were retired before Foley stroked a base hit to left “amid tremendous applause.”21 Stires came up clutch again with another single, putting Foley at second. With the winning run in scoring position, Doyle hit a comebacker to Zettlein. As Zettlein tossed to first, it was clear that he had soared the throw two feet above Joe Start’s head.  For a moment, it appeared that Rockford was going to plate the winning run.

But Start leapt into the air and, miraculously, came down with the errant throw before landing on the bag for the out. “Let it be recorded,” the Tribune paused its game story to note, “that Joe Start’s first base play won this game for the Atlantics.”22

Spalding, who had been steady all day from the pitcher’s box, started the 12th inning with some help from his center fielder, Joe Simmons. McDonald crushed a pitch “nearly out of sight, but Simmons took it in splendid style.”23 After that excitement, Spalding grew briefly erratic; Pearce managed to work a walk “on three called balls.”24 Charlie Smith’s single moved Pearce into position for the hero from the 11th, Joe Start. The great Atlantic first baseman met the moment once again, driving home Pearce with a single to right.

“Death to Flying Things” Jack Chapman came up next and barreled a deep fly ball to left, where Rockford’s Fred Cone gave chase. As the Chicago Tribune reported, “The hit was good for two more runs, everybody thought, but Cone leaped into the air and caught the ball with his left hand, and received the grateful plaudits of the crowd for his beautiful and extraordinary catch.”25 It was a play worthy of Chapman’s famous nomenclature.

Both Cone’s one-hand catch and Hall’s eighth-inning shoestring grab were described by the Clipper as “fly catches that had never been excelled on a ball field.”26

Cone’s catch kept Rockford within one, but the home magic was depleted. The Atlantics calmly dispatched the Rockford bats for their fourth consecutive shutout inning, winning the contest 14-13. The headline in the next day’s Chicago Tribune proclaimed it “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”27

The Rockford club tried to set up a decisive third meeting before the Atlantics left town, but there was not a ball field available on such short notice. “It is expected,” the Register stated, “these noted nines will measure willows again at an early day.”28 Sadly, that decisive third game never came to pass. While Rockford joined the National Association in 1871, the Atlantics abstained and reclaimed amateur status.29 The Forest Citys of Rockford folded at the end of 1871 due largely to poor attendance.30

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Jim Sweetman and copy-edited by Len Levin. 

Photo credit: Joe Start, SABR-Rucker Archive.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information. 

Notes 

1 “The National Game,” Rockford Register, September 3, 1870: 8.

2 “Sporting Matters,” Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1870: 5.

3 Brooklyn Daily Times, March 10, 1868: 2.

4 “The Championship,” New York Clipper, November 13, 1869: 3.

5 Marshall D. Wright, The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press, 2000), 58, 70, 77, 85, 98, 115, 149, 191, 246, 298.

6 William J. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press, 1998), 38-39.

7 Ryczek, 38-39.

8 “Sporting Matters.”

9 “Sporting News,” Brooklyn Daily Times, May 31, 1870: 3.

10 “Atlantic vs. Forest City,” New York Clipper, September 10, 1870: 4.

11 “The National Game.”

12 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game On Record,” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1870: 4.

13 Peter Morris, “Gat Stires,” SABR BioProject. Accessed January 6, 2025, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/gat-stires.

14 “Atlantic vs. Forest City.”

15 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

16 “Atlantic vs. Forest City.”

17 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

18 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

19 “Atlantic vs. Forest City.”

20 Perhaps the passive indignation can be credited to Haynie’s reputation. After all, there was no reason to doubt Haynie’s integrity in 1870. The game occurred a year before the Great Chicago Fire, and another 20 years still before Haynie would be implicated by a co-conspirator as having helped create the myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Ben Railton, “Considering History: Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow Didn’t Start the Great Chicago Fire. Why Does It Matter?” Saturday Evening Post, October 8, 2021, http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/10/considering-history-mrs-olearys-cow-didnt-start-the-great-chicago-fire-why-does-it-matter.

21 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

22 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

23 “The National Game.”

24 “The National Game.”

25 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

26  “Atlantic vs. Forest City.” The New York Clipper recap misidentifies the Cone catch as happening in the ninth inning. Both the Tribune and the Register report that the Cone play happened in the 12th inning.

27 “The Most Remarkable Base Ball Game on Record.”

28 “The National Game.”

29 Wright, The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 328.

30 Mark Rucker and John Freyer, 19th Century Baseball in Chicago (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 42.

A new contender, the Chicago White Stockings, had entered the professional arena in 1870, with a high-salaried squad dubbed “The $18,000 Nine.” After a somewhat disappointing start, the club began to win regularly. They won their first meeting with the mighty Red Stockings on September 7, having already defeated the current champion Atlantics, and headed east with a chance to claim the championship pennant. Cynics in Chicago declared that “while Chicago may play better baseball, New York can play other games better,”[fn]Orem, Preston D. Baseball (1845-1882) From the Newspaper Accounts (Altadena, 1961), p. 118.[/fn] and predicted that the Mutuals would be allowed to win the Atlantics’ title before the Chicago club arrived. Sure enough, the Mutes beat the Atlantics on September 15, and although Chicago swept its four games versus the Eckford, Mutual, Atlantic, and Athletic clubs, the team returned home frustrated. But in order to strengthen their dubious championship claim, the newly crowned Mutuals scheduled a trip to Chicago and Cincinnati, giving the White Stockings another chance.

The Chicago game was played on an unseasonably warm November 1. The Mutuals picked Tom Foley as umpire from among the locals available. Although all the runs were aided by walks and errors, the game was relatively well-played and went into the eventful ninth inning with Chicago leading 7–5.

Just three putouts from victory, the jittery White Stocking infield flubbed three straight chances, allowing the Mutes to load the bases. A passed ball and a run-scoring groundout tied the game, much to the chagrin of the vast crowd of seven or eight thousand. After a second out raised the home rooters’ hopes, the Mutuals sent them plunging with six straight safe hits, making it an eight-run inning. With a 13–7 lead “the Mutuals were jubilant and danced about the field with ill-concealed delight. Victory could not be wrested from them at so late a junction, they seemed to think.”[fn]Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1870.[/fn]

But they had not counted upon a determined foe backed by a partisan umpire. Up to this point the White Stockings had been given seven bases on balls, as opposed to none for the Mutuals. Now the Chicago batsmen simply refused to swing at pitches, relying on umpire Foley to give them their bases. Clipper Flynn led off, waited patiently, and was awarded his base on balls, much to pitcher Rynie Wolters’ irritation. The next two batters were also awarded first base “on very questionable called balls.”[fn]New York Clipper, November 12, 1870.[/fn] With the bases now loaded, Ed Pinkham surprised Wolters by swinging and lining a hit to left-center, sending two men home. Ed Duffy came through with a fair foul over third base that plated another. Pinkham and Duffy tried a double steal, and a wild throw allowed one man to score and the other to reach third. Duffy soon crossed the plate after a passed ball. The score was now 13–12, with the crowd roaring for more. Bub McAtee stood at the plate like a statue and refused to offer at any pitches. Having already appealed to the umpire, Wolters stopped and asked McAtee where he wanted the ball, all to no avail. After more than a dozen pitches, Wolters threw down the ball and refused to allow the farce to continue any further. Mutual captain Charles Mills called his men in and, despite all appeals, would not continue. The sun was setting, the excited crowd broke onto the field, and umpire Foley called the game, not as a 9–0 forfeit but as a 7–5 Chicago victory through the last completed inning.

The Windy City celebrated its team as champions, but it was a hollow triumph. The correspondent to the New York Clipper summed it up thusly:

“No one would be more delighted than I to see the Chicagos the champions, but were I asked my unbiased opinion as to how the Mutuals came to lose the game they had so handsomely in hand, I should reply, “‘Out umpired.’”[fn]Ibid.[/fn]

In the same issue of the Clipper, sports editor Henry Chadwick headlined the question, “Who Are the Champions for 1870?” He added, “If we have been asked the question once this week we have been asked fifty times, and from the position of things we find it a rather tough question to solve.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn]

The muddled question of baseball’s championship was among the first issues addressed when the professional teams gathered in New York to form their own organization in March 1871. There the plan was adopted to award the championship at the end of the season to the team having won the most games among the contenders. This would entitle the winning club to fly the championship pennant for the entire following season. This, of course, made the 1871 National Association season the first “pennant race.”

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. Download the SABR e-book by clicking here.

“Well, back in 1871, my great-great-grandmother had a boardinghouse in Boston,” recounted a sparkling, white-haired lady speaking with appraiser Leila Dunbar on a PBS episode of Antiques Roadshow. “And she housed the Boston baseball team. Most of them had come from the Cincinnati Red Stockings and were among the first to be paid to play baseball.” Her unique collection, appraised at $1,000,000, contains baseball cards and personal correspondences of the 1871-1872 Boston Red Stockings, Boston’s first professional baseball team. They are also the ancestors of the Atlanta Braves and the first Boston team to wear red socks.

They had sparkled in those red and white uniforms when they came to Boston in the summer of 1870, and Boston businessman Ivers Whitney Adams took notice, particularly of baseball’s Wright brothers, George and Harry, who were touring the East Coast with the legendary Cincinnati Red Stockings, the nation’s first professional baseball team. Adams had begun dreaming of a professional baseball club in Boston since January of that year,1 and was convinced that if professional baseball could be a reality in Boston, he needed these talented brothers. Adams began a correspondence and even made a trip to Cincinnati to talk further with George and Harry.2 George Wright then arrived in Boston in November,3 and met Adams at Boston’s Parker House, shortly after the Cincinnati team disbanded. On December 3, the Boston Journal verified rumors of a new professional team in the works and said that “Boston shall possess a nine, composed of gentlemanly players, whose unquestionable skill and ability will make it second to none in the country.”4

The Wrights began constructing the Boston team. They brought along first baseman Charlie Gould and catcher Cal McVey from their old Cincinnati club, then signed pitcher Albert Spalding, second baseman Ross Barnes, and outfielder Fred Cone of the Rockford, Illinois, club. They also brought along their socks. “Back in Cincinnati,” historian David Voigt wrote, “not even (Harry Wright’s) best friends forgave him for taking the name ‘Red Stockings’ to Beantown.”5

The Boston club was officially organized at the Parker House on January 20, 1871. “Boston can now boast of possessing a first-class professional Base Ball Club,” wrote the Journal.6 The Boston Base Ball Association was now formed with $15,000 in stock divided into 150 shares.7 The next step was to pay the $10 membership fee and join the new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, organized on a rainy night in Collier’s Rooms upstairs saloon at 13th Street and Broadway in New York City on March 17, 1871. The first professional baseball league was under way.8

The new Boston team practiced for three weeks, then on April 6 the players were ready for their first exhibition game. “With a month of steady practice,” wrote the Journal, “they will be in a condition to contest for the supremacy with the best clubs in the country.”9

The game was between “the new Boston professional nine and a strong nine selected from the best amateurs in this vicinity,” wrote the Journal. The “picked nine,” according to the Boston Herald, consisted of players from the “Harvard, Lowell, and Tri-Mountain clubs.”10 The game was played on the leased Union Grounds, then being referred to as the “Boston Grounds” by the newspapers, and was later named the South End Grounds. “The grounds were not in the best condition owing to the rains of the past ten days,” wrote the Journal.11

This inaugural 1871 game stirred up huge interest in Boston. The crowd was electric, “for there assembled on the grounds of the club yesterday afternoon, full five thousand persons to witness the opening game of the Boston Nine,” wrote the Journal, “thus being a larger number than ever assembled before on these grounds.”12 The Herald estimated a crowd of 6,000, and noted that the crowd was “larger than ever seen here before, and excepting the Peace Jubilee, probably the largest crowd which ever came together on one occasion in this city.”13 Fans were standing on the fence and on nearby rooftops to watch this inaugural event.

The crowd applauded as the new Boston team took the field, looking very much like the old Cincinnati club, with a white flannel shirt, knee breeches, cap, red belt, red necktie, white shoes, and the name of the club in block letters across the shirt. And we mustn’t forget the red stockings, which also made their debut that day, making this “the neatest uniform yet originated,” according to the Journal.14

While no play-by-play account of the game exists, it’s safe to say the 41-10 Boston win was historic but not a classic. After a scoreless first inning, Boston broke out with 10 runs in the second, through some “fine heavy hits, assisted by field errors of their opponents.”15 “This was a long inning,” the Journal elaborated.16 Three more runs came across in the third inning, with runs from Sam Jackson, George Wright, and Barnes, and the score was now 13-0 Boston. They added 11 more runs in the fourth inning, and then the Picked Nine answered with a run of their own to cut Boston’s lead to 24-1. Both teams scored six times in the sixth inning, the Picked Nine’s runs mostly coming courtesy of Boston errors. The lead through seven innings was Boston 32-9, and the final score of 41-10 ended the first game of a Boston professional baseball team. Boston’s George Wright had four total bases in the game and scored four runs, while Harry Wright also scored four times. Jackson scored seven runs, McVey six, and Gould five. Spalding pitched the entire game for Boston.

For the Picked Nine, third baseman Frank Barrows scored twice, as did right fielder Dave Birdsall, a Boston player who played for the Picked Nine that day. First baseman Maxson Mortimer “Mort” Rogers led the Picked Nine with three hits. Left fielder William Ellery Channing Eustis, second baseman Horatio Stevens White, center fielder John Cheever Goodwin, and shortstop Archibald McClure Bush were Harvard players. Catcher William M. “Met” Bradbury, pitcher James D’Wolf Lovett, and Rogers were players from the Lowell team. Barrows was from the Tri-Mountain club, and would later that season play 18 games for Boston, the only player of the Picked Nine to play professional baseball. “It is quite apparent,” the Journal remarked, “that a nine picked from two or three clubs, be they ever so good players, do not do so well as in their own club.”17

“Of course the Picked Nine were defeated,” espoused the Harvard Advocate, “but not ‘of course’ as badly as the result shows. Never was the fact made equally manifest that working together constitutes a club’s strongest point. The men played each for himself, and the effect was a brilliant series of abortive efforts at even medium play.”18

Boston fans had now seen the stars of the old legendary Cincinnati Red Stockings who were now their Boston Red Stockings. “George Wright fully maintained his reputation as the model base ball player of the country,” wrote the Journal. “Some of his stops, fly catches and throws Thursday equaling anything seen on a ball field. … Harry Wright also played well up to his usual standard of excellence. … McVey bids fair to succeed to the laurels of catcher par excellence of the country. … Spalding will rank among the best professional pitchers of the country. He has good command over the ball, which he sends into the bat at a speed somewhat less than a cannon ball.”19

Today, Boston’s MBTA subway rumbles into Ruggles Station, and busy Northeastern University students and other hurried Bostonians pass by the spot where the South End Grounds once stood. Only an overlooked, lonely plaque remains to tell us of the origins of professional baseball in Boston and of the beginnings of the Atlanta Braves franchise.

Except for a few extraordinary baseball cards.

This article was originally published in “Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Sources

Besides the sources cited in the text, the author benefited from the following sources:

Batesel, Paul. Players and Teams of the National Association, 1871-1875 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012).

Devine, Christopher. Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003).

Harvard Book: A Series of Historical, Biographical, and Descriptive Sketches. Harvard University Archives. Retrieved May 16, 2015, https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.arch:15010.

Harvard College Class of 1873 Ninth Report of the Secretary. Boston: Rockwell & Church Press, 1913. Retrieved May 16, 2015. https://books.google.com/books?id=tdglAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA20&ots=3R35K_uW_d&dq=John%20Cheever%20Goodwin%20Harvard%20class%20of%201873&pg=PA19#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Report of the Secretary of the Class of 1871 of Harvard College, Issue 11. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Class, 1921. Retrieved May 16, 2015, https://books.google.com/books?id=vCZOAAAAMAAJ&dq=inauthor%3A%22Harvard%20university.%2C%20Class%20of%201871%22&pg=PP5#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Articles

Bevis, Charlie. “Ivers Adams,” The Baseball Biography Project, SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/813abb83, accessed May 1, 2015.

Brooks, Jimmy. “Columbus Lot Slabbed Where Boston’s Historic South End Grounds Once Stood,” Huntington News, January 9, 2014. Accessed May 16, 2015, https://huntnewsnu.com/2014/01/columbus-lot-slabbed-where-bostons-historic-south-end-grounds-once-stood/.

Thorn, John. “Baseball’s First League Game: May 4, 1871,” https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2012/02/07/baseballs-first-league-game-may-4-1871/ accessed May 12, 2015.

Voigt, David Quentin. “The Boston Red Stockings: The Birth of Major League Baseball,” New England Quarterly vol. 43 no.4 (1970), 531-549.

 Websites

“1871-1872 Boston Red Stockings Archive.” Antiques Roadshow. Public Broadcasting System, 2014. https://pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/19/new-york-ny/appraisals/1871-1872-boston-red-stockings-archive–201407A12, accessed May 15, 2015.

Notes

1 Based on Adams’s recollection at the founding of the team a year later. “The Boston Base Ball Club: Meeting of the Stockholders — A History of the Enterprise — Organization of the Association and Election of Officers,” Boston Traveler, January 21, 1871.

2 George V. Tuohey, A History of the Boston Base Ball Club … A Concise and Accurate History of Base Ball From Its Inception (Boston: M.F. Quinn & Co., 1897), 61 [Google Books version]. A special petition was submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature to grant a charter for a new baseball club with no less than $10,000 capital stock at $100 per share. Acquiring the services of George and Harry Wright was now the top priority. “A Boston Professional Base Ball Nine,” Boston Journal, November 15, 1870: 2.

3 “Base Ball Matters,” Boston Journal, November 25, 1870: 4.

4 “Boston and Vicinity: The Boston Professional Nine,” Boston Journal, December 3, 1870: 3.

5 David Quentin Voigt, American Baseball: From the Gentleman’s Sport to the Commissioner System (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 34.

6 “The Boston Base Ball Club: A Permanent Organization Effected All the Players Engaged,” Boston Journal, January 21, 1871: 1.

7 Adams was elected president of the club, along with vice president John A. Conkey, treasurer Harrison Gardiner, secretary Harry Wright, and “fifth director” G.H. Burditt. “The Boston Nine. Organization of the Boston Base Ball Association — History of the Movement — Adoption of By-Laws and Election of Officers,” Boston Herald, January 21, 1871.

8 The Boston club was one of eight teams pay the $10 fee to join. The others were the Philadelphia Athletics, New York Mutuals, Washington (D.C.) Olympics, Troy (New York) Haymakers, Chicago White Stockings, and two teams sharing the same name: the Cleveland Forest City club and the Rockford (Illinois) Forest City club. Before the season began, a ninth club joined: the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Kekiongas.

9 “Base Ball: Opening Match of the Boston Club — The Picked Nine Defeated, 41 to 10 — Other Matches,” Boston Journal, April 7, 1871: 2.

10 “Affairs About Home: Baseball,” Boston Herald, April 8, 1871: 4.

11 “Base Ball: Opening Match of the Boston Club.” The Union Grounds opened on June 19, 1869, on the east side of the Providence Railroad track, near Milford Place on Tremont Street. The game was between the Brooklyn Atlantics and a picked nine from the Lowell, Massachusetts, and Tri-Mountain clubs. The Boston Herald reported that despite the large crowd the game was long and tedious as foul balls over the fence had to be chased down. See “Affairs About Home.”

12 “Base Ball: Opening Match of the Boston Club.”

13 “Affairs About Home: Baseball,” Boston Herald, April 8, 1871: 4. The “Peace Jubilee” was a massive music festival in Boston organized by band leader Patrick S. Gilmore to celebrate the end of the Civil War. The celebration was held for a week in June 1869, and included thousands of instrumentalists and singers in a specially built coliseum to hold the enormous crowd. Among the celebratory masses were President Ulysses S. Grant and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes. This was the first so-called “monster” festival in 19th century America. See Roger L. Hall. “Peace Jubilees,” Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed May 5, 2015, https://oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2252160.

14 Ibid.

15 “Base Ball: Opening Match of the Boston Club”

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 “The Games on Thursday,” Harvard Advocate, Vol. XI. No. V, April 14, 1871, 69. Retrieved May 9, 2015. books.google.com/books?id=PN3OAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PA69&ots=E3t8MgYPD&dq=%22picked%20nine%22%20%22eustis%22&pg=PA69#v=onepage&q&f=false.

19 “Base Ball: Opening Match of the Boston Club.”

Ivers Whitney Adams’s assembled dream team of Boston Red Stockings was designed to have an exciting and superior baseball season in 1871. But after winning their very first two games on the road, their initial home appearance at the South End Grounds, between Columbus Avenue and the South End railroad yards, proved disastrous. The 29-14 Opening Day thrashing there by the Troy Haymakers on May 16 shocked local fans. But who could have known that Troy’s 15-run margin would be the largest Adams’s stars ever suffered in their 292 NA games? Later success unknowable at the time, it was not the way to begin their inaugural “homestand” before highly expectant fans.

A few days later Boston made amends by beating pitcher-manager John Dickson McBride and his strong Athletics of Philadelphia, 11-8, behind Harry Wright’s and Charlie Gould’s hitting and a seven-run inning. All seemed well again. Making its debut that day at the Grounds was the ever-enterprising Max Mort Rogers’ “elegant new scorecard with Harry’s picture on the cover,” noted the Boston Herald.1 The mediocre Washington Olympics were the next visitors, featuring pitcher Asa Brainard, the iconic hurler of the Cincinnati Red Stockings with whom four of the now Boston Red Stockings played in 1869 and ’70. The other half of Cincinnati’s legendary barnstorming team also had signed with Washington: catcher Doug Allison, third baseman Fred Waterman, outfielder Andy Leonard, and infield sub Charlie Sweasy. Joining them was the little fireball, Davy Force, at second.

Businessman Adams had signed Cincinnati brother-stars Harry and George Wright back in January, along with catcher Cal McVey and first sacker Gould. By late April Charlie Gould and George Wright were already in the sporting-goods business on Boylston Street. Star batsman and shortstop George Wright missed the Troy trouncing and nearly half the season because of an injury, but the other Red Stockings certainly appeared to have enough combined talent to win without him. Of note also on Boston’s roster was Albert Spalding of the old Rockford Forest Citys amateurs, who was in the pitcher’s box with his Rockford second baseman, Ross Barnes, behind him, while Philly native Harry Schafer played third and tough David Birdsall of the New York Morrisania club patrolled the outfield with manager Harry Wright.

Spalding was terrific for seven innings against Washington (allowed three hits) and held a 4-1 lead as Boston scored its four in the third inning. In the ninth a defensive collapse became crucial as with two outs and nobody on a few Boston errors (six total by Schafer) let Washington tie the score 4-4 just before umpire (and scorecard seller) Mort Rogers of the Lowell Club called the game because of darkness, a decision not agreed with by many of the spectators who enjoyed the exciting, small-score battle. Not only was it the Reds’ only tie in 1871, it was the only NA tie game ever in Boston. Both the Olympics and Red Stockings then boarded a late train and met to play each other at Brooklyn’s Union Grounds three days later in an unusual neutral site game on May 27. It is listed as a home game for Boston. The Reds jumped out to a comfy 5-1 lead before squandering it all in the final two innings and losing 6-5 to a rally sparked by ex-mates Allison, Waterman, and the pesky Force. Two sure wins were instead a very disappointing loss and tie. The Westernmost NA Rockford Forest Citys pro team then arrived in Boston. They had been thrown together in the final weeks before the National Association started and just did not have the all-around talent of the other clubs. Boston swept two, 25-11 and 11-10, winning in the ninth on Decoration Day, May 30, as Birdsall walked, made third on McVey’s hit, and scored on Gould’s single.

June brought Chicago’s White Stockings to the Hub with ace thrower George “The Charmer” Zettlein. George would be as much a thorn in the Red Stockings’ side as anyone for all five NAPBBP seasons. He was no stranger to four of them as Zett was the Brooklyn Atlantics hurler who beat the undefeated Cincy club in June 1870, 8-7 in 11 innings, garnering national headlines. However, on June 2, 1871, he was pounded for 10 runs in two innings and dejectedly walked to right field — replaced by third baseman Ed Pinkham. Pinkham didn’t have much on the ball but the Reds suddenly had less. Though wild at first, relief man Ed held the Reds to four more runs while Spalding lost his touch completely. Manager Harry Wright did so poorly in relief trying to quell the rally that Spalding came back in a second time to allow even more runs. The Chicagomen scattered 11 unanswered runs for a 16-14 victory, thanks to Brooklynites Pinkham (three runs) and shortstop Ed Duffy (three doubles, four runs). Tied in the ninth, Chicago got two hits, a Boston error, and two groundouts that scored the winning tallies. Relief winner Pinkham, (really an infielder) pitched twice more during the year, notching one save. He did not play in the NA beyond 1871. In this giveaway Boston made 12 errors, four by Schafer at third.

Twelve days went by before Albert George Pratt came to town with the Cleveland Forest Citys, which had lost the very first NA game, 2-0 to the Fort Wayne Kekiongas. Cleveland behind the hitting of catcher James Doc White (three hits/two RBIs), first baseman Jim Carleton (three hits/two RBIs), and third sacker Ezra Sutton (four hits/one run) maintained a slight lead for “Uncle Al.” In the ninth Boston needed three to win but plated just one, losing 8-7. Pratt tried for the next four years but never beat Boston again. Meanwhile the South End horror show continued as the solid New York Mutuals visited the Red Stockings. Pitcher Reinder “Rynie” Wolters gave the Reds fits, winning easily 9-3, getting two hits with one RBI himself, and getting help from Dickey Pearce (two hits/two runs) and Joe Start (three runs). Reds sub second sacker Sam Jackson had five errors of the 12 Boston committed. Only one other time in those five years would the Reds lose three consecutive South End games. (In late September of 1874 they lost three straight and five of six, but were far ahead in the standings by then.)  

Fort Wayne’s struggling Kekiongas paid the price for the Reds’ awful showing as they played the final homestand game before Boston left town. Spalding allowed the light-hitting Indiana club only a two-out, first-inning single by Jim Foran. The contest turned out to be Spalding’s best pitched NA game in terms of hits allowed, and the Red Stockings ripped the usually reliable Bobby Mathews (tosser of the league’s Opening Day 2-0 shutout of Rockford), 21-0. It was Spalding’s only shutout of the year and Bobby’s worst defeat in his NA career. The Reds stood at 6-5.

Still minus George Wright’s bat and defensive prowess, the Reds boarded a southbound train for Philly and were beaten by McBride, 20-8, at the new Jefferson Street Grounds at 25th. They rallied and whipped Brainard in Washington, but out West in Chicago Zettlein took his revenge, 7-1, easily the fewest runs scored in one game by the Bostons that year. That sequence left Adams’s Wrightmen at 7-7, their worst 14-game starting record during the five NA seasons. After George Wright rejoined the squad, the Reds were terrific and won their last seven home games, but enough damage had been done. In a close finish but behind the champ Athletics, the Reds could have/should have salvaged at least three of those home losses and tie that they suffered by blowing leads. Those victories would have given them a better final record than Philadelphia and therefore a clean sweep of all five National Association championships. Apparently the Red Stockings did learn a valuable lesson, and won 87 percent of their home games (113-17 the next 4½ years) after that hapless homestand from hell.

This article was originally published in “Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings” (SABR, 2016), edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin. To read more articles from this book at the SABR Games Project, click here.

Notes

1 “Affairs About Home,” Boston Herald, May 22, 1871: 4. The Boston Daily Advertiser offered more information about the scorecard: “Mort Rogers issued for the first time at the Boston-Athletic match, Saturday (May 20), his photograph score-card. Each of these cards contains the names of the players in order of striking, with their positions, and on its back a photograph of some prominent player. The card at the match, Saturday, had a capital picture of Harry Wright, by Black, and other members of the Boston club will figure on the cards for succeeding games here. It will be seen readily that a person can secure by the close of the season a record of all important games here, and a collection of photographs of the Boston club and all the leading base-ball players in the country. The idea is an excellent one, and Mr. Rogers will doubtless reap the remuneration he deserves. These cards will be sold inside the grounds.” Boston Daily Advertiser, May 22, 1871: 1.

Of the 10 clubs present that evening, eight would plunk down the mandatory $10 to join: the already established Athletics (Philadelphia), Mutuals (New York), Olympics (Washington), Haymakers (Troy), White Stockings (Chicago), two Forest City clubs (Rockford and Cleveland), plus Harry Wright’s newly founded Red Stockings of Boston. The Eckfords of Brooklyn and Nationals of Washington sent delegates to the meeting, but held tight to their wallets and did not join the new National Association for play in 1871. The Atlantics of Brooklyn, who might have been expected to join, did not send a delegate, deciding to retain so-called amateur status.

In the days that followed, a surprising ninth club came across with the dues: the Kekionga of Fort Wayne, Indiana, named for the Miami Indian settlement around which Fort Wayne grew. In the Miami language, Kekionga meant “blackberry patch.” Woefully uncompetitive against the big clubs in its previous seasons, they had lost two games to the unbeaten Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869 by scores of 86–8, and 41–7, then took a 70–1 pasting in the following year. Yet now the Fort Wayne hayseeds declared themselves a fully professional nine, based on their having picked up, in August 1870, several stranded players from the Maryland Club of Baltimore, which had run out of funds while playing in Chicago. The star of the Marylands had been diminutive pitcher Bobby Mathews, who would now pitch for the Kekiongas. Eleven days after the meeting at Collier’s Rooms, the Kekionga directors dispatched George J. E. Mayer—the club’s secretary, catcher, and captain in 1870—to New York to acquire additional professional players, which he did.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players launched its inaugural season with a single game on May 4, 1871. The Forest City of Cleveland, a strong club led by Jim “Deacon” White, came to Fort Wayne to play the revamped Kekionga, none of whose players had yet cut much of a figure in the baseball world except Mathews, who was only 19. Mayer had given up his position in the nine to Billy Lennon, a stronger catcher he recruited from the Marylands of Baltimore via the Mohawks of New York.

In what the Fort Wayne correspondent to the Chicago Tribune called “the finest game on record in this country,” Mathews shut out the visiting Forest Citys by 2–0 in a game in which there were no errors by Cleveland and only three by Fort Wayne, a marvel in those days of bare hands and rutted fields. Moreover, the low score was unprecedented among top-level clubs, the previous “model game” being the victory of the Cincinnati Red Stockings over the Mutuals by a score of 4–2 on June 15, 1869.

The outcome was also a great upset. The Cleveland Herald had written of their darlings beforehand: “The Forest Citys left yesterday for a brief Western tour. The first club that they are expected to slaughter is the Kekiongas, of Fort Wayne, which little job is to be performed this afternoon. If the Kekiongas play half as bad as their name sounds, they will be awful tired tonight. Kekionga! Ugh! Big Injun!”

The day after the game, the same newspaper felt compelled to report:

There were ten very badly surprised young men at Fort Wayne last evening, not to speak of some others who remained in Cleveland. The ten went out to Indiana to begin the slaughtering for 1871, but what little slaughtering there was happened to be on the other side.

Because of threatening weather, only 200 spectators witnessed this historic game at Fort Wayne’s Grand Dutchess ballpark. According to a report in the Cincinnati Gazette, play was finally stopped by rain after the top of the ninth inning had been concluded, depriving the Kekiongas of their completed final at bat. However, a Fort Wayne Daily Gazette box score supplied a complete play-by-play indicating that each side had recorded 27 outs.

After a scoreless first inning, the Kekionga broke through for a run in the bottom of the second. Lennon led off with a double. Tom Carey lifted a fly to center, where Cleveland’s Art Allison made a running one-hand grab, “The finest fly catch ever made, he falling and rolling over two or three times.” Ed Mincher also was retired, but Joe McDermott singled to bring Lennon home. The Kekionga added a run in the fifth, needless as it turned out. Each club registered only four hits.

“The Cleveland boys were well satisfied with the result,” reported the Cincinnati Gazette, “and that they are recorded as playing the finest game in the country.” For the citizens of Fort Wayne, however, this glorious victory turned out to be very nearly the club’s high water mark. After winning three of its next four contests, the Kekionga went 1-11; despite winning two games at home in late August, it chose to disband on that relative high note.”

This essay was originally published in “Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century” (2013), edited by Bill Felber. Download the SABR e-book by clicking here.

In what would be a “prime time” matchup today, the first scheduled game of the new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was to be a match of the now-disbanded Cincinnati Red Stockings, or what the Boston Advertiser called a matchup liken to “When Greek meets Greek.”2 Five of the old Red Stockings (Charlie Sweasy, Asa Brainard, Doug Allison, Andy Leonard, and Fred Waterman) signed with the Washington Olympics, while four signed with Boston (Harry and George Wright, Cal McVey, and Charlie Gould), which also took the Red Stockings name. A rainout on May 4 spoiled that storybook beginning of the association, yet the matchup still, according to the New York Clipper, was “the principal topic of interest in base ball circles east and west.”3 The matchup of Boston and Washington, which countered with the nickname of Blue Stockings, was a battle of two teams “torn from their Western admirers,” grumbled the Cincinnati Enquirer.4

“Long before the appointed time for calling play (4 P.M.), crowds could have been seen moving towards the grounds from all directions – hacks, ambulances and street-cars coming out heavily loaded … an eager and expectant multitude, numbering at least five thousand, were in waiting,” the National Republican wrote.5 The Olympic Grounds were located about 13 blocks north of the White House.6 Members of President Grant’s Cabinet, congressmen, and two British high commissioners, were in attendance.7 “The National Game of Base Ball has many admirers here at the Metropolis,” wrote Benjamin Perley Poore of the Boston Journal, “especially among those young men who are clerks in the Departments, and who need outdoor exercise.”8 This was the first official game in Boston’s professional baseball history.

Fans traveled from Cincinnati “anxious to witness the playing of those who gave the name of that pork packing metropolis such an honorable place in 1868, ’69 and ’70,” wrote Poore.9 There was a new team wearing red stockings with “the name ‘Boston’ emblazoned in scarlet letters upon the white flannel which covered their ample chests.”10

Umpire Hicks Hayhurst failed to appear, so Hervie Alden Dobson of the Flower City club of Rochester, New York, was chosen. Dobson was the baseball editor of the New York Clipper and had lost a leg in the Civil War but “moves about nimbly on crutches.”11 He was also a known friend of the Washington club and “it was generally remarked on the grand stand that the Bostons were playing against the Olympics and the umpire.”12 Dobson had also written a letter in the March 11, 1871, Clipper, suggesting batting averages should be determined by at-bats, not games played.13

Pitching for Washington was Brainard, “who rivals Lord Dundreary in his faultless attire and his whiskers,” Poore commented.14 Albert Spalding pitched for Boston.

At 3:30 P.M., the flags of both clubs were hoisted up the flagpole. Harry Wright won the coin toss and elected for Washington to bat first. Washington starters Sweasy and John Glenn were unable to play due to illness.

With runners at first and second in the first inning, Washington’s Doug Allison doubled on a fair-foul hit15 past third that scored Davy Force and put Everett Mills on third. George Wright’s throw of a George Hall grounder was wild, and Mills scored. Allison scored on a passed ball to make the score 3-0. Andy Leonard and the pitcher Brainard walked to load the bases, and then Harry Wright misplayed a fly ball by Henry Burroughs to center, and Hall scored. A groundball and another passed ball gave Washington a 6-0 lead over the error-prone Boston team.

Boston countered with one run in its half of the first, as George Wright walked and scored on a single by Cal McVey.

In the Washington second, Force led with a single, and Mills was hit by a pitch. Allison’s fair-foul loaded the bases with no outs. A single by Hall scored Force and Mills. George Wright and Henry Schafer collided on a pop fly hit by Leonard, and Allison scored. A single by Burroughs scored Leonard, and Washington led 10-1 after two innings.

In the Boston third, Spalding and George Wright scored on a throwing error by Allison. McVey reached on Harry Berthrong’s error, and Ross Barnes scored. Gould’s grounder scored Birdsall, and Schafer’s single scored McVey. Fred Cone walked to load the bases, and a groundout by Spalding scored Gould, making the score 10-7 Washington. George Wright hit back to the pitcher, but Schafer beat the throw to the plate. Seven runs scored on only two hits, making the score Washington 10-8.

In the fourth, singles by Hall and Brainard plus another error on George Wright loaded the bases for the Olympics. Berthrong walked, scoring Hall. Washington scored another run in the fifth to take a 12-8 lead, then added another three runs in the sixth inning, as another error by George Wright scored Burroughs and Berthrong. Barnes dropped a pop fly and Waterman scored. Washington led 15-8 after six innings.

In the Boston seventh, George Wright walked for the fourth time, advanced to second on a passed ball, and stole third. Barnes walked, and both runners scored on Allison’s throwing error. Allison also “had his thumb split by a ball,”16 and had to leave the game later. Birdsall scored on a single by Harry Wright, who scored on a double by Gould. Washington led 15-12.

In the Washington eighth, a groundball through George Wright’s legs scored Mills and Hall. A single by Burroughs scored Leonard. Washington pushed its lead to 18-12. In the Boston eighth, Schafer reached on an error by Norton, who was now playing third. He scored on a double by Cone, who then scored on a throwing error by Waterman, now catching. Wright scored on a double steal to cut the Washington lead to 18-15. Also in the eighth, “The umpire received an ugly blow on his only leg in the eighth inning, which keeled him over on the grass, but he soon recovered,” reported Poore.17

Boston held Washington scoreless in the ninth.

Harry Wright led off the Boston ninth with a walk and Gould singled. Both scored on Schafer’s triple to center, cutting the lead to 18-17. Spalding singled in Schafer to tie the game. George Wright singled, and Barnes doubled in Spalding with what would today be the walk-off run, but back then the entire inning had to be played out. Dave Birdsall tripled to right, scoring Barnes with Boston’s 20th run for the eventual 20-18 win. Boston tallied six of its 13 hits in the ninth inning, “when Brainard had dropped his pace to accommodate Waterman, who was catching,” wrote the Clipper.18 In those days with smaller rosters, the lack of a qualified backup catcher proved a game-changer that day for Washington.

“The victors were loudly applauded and warmly congratulated,” wrote Poore, “while the Olympics received many compliments for their plucky playing under the difficulties incident on the loss of three of their trained nine.”19

However, umpire Dobson was lambasted in the papers. “In several instances,” blasted the Boston Herald, “he called balls when they should have been strikes, and vice versa.”20 The Cincinnati Gazette declared that he “kept the bases full continually by calling every ball either as a strike or as a count, and the consequence was that the poorest batter got his base equally with the best.”21 A walk was definitely not as good as a hit in those days.

The Clipper, however, blamed the rule changes, not the umpire, for the chaos. “He umpired the game strictly in accordance with the letter of the new rules, never letting a ball pass after the first one, without it was either called ‘strike’ or a ‘ball.’ It is the first game so umpired here.” The rule change made an immediate impact on game strategy, the Clipper believed. In what sounds familiarly close to modern baseball strategy of taking pitches and making the pitcher work, “the Bostonians … won the game by waiting. Harry Wright’s orders were to wait for three balls, as they must necessarily come before three strikes in nine cases out of ten. … (F)orty-six strikes were called on the Boston to twelve on the Olympic, showing that the game was won by simply waiting. Truly not very scientific play.”22 Boston walked 18 times, Washington, 10.

The Cincinnati Gazette, not surprisingly, wasn’t impressed with the new Red Stockings. “The Reds made several wretched muffs, such as dropping flies, overthrows and general bad playing. They will have to vastly improve before they will be up to the old Red Stocking discipline.”23

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to John Thorn for research assistance in writing this article.

Photo caption

An advertisement in the May 4, 1871 edition of the Daily National Republican in Washington, D.C. This was the first regular-season game in Boston professional baseball history. It was rained out and played on May 5.

Notes

1 Benjamin Perley Poore, “Base Ball at Washington. The First Match for the National Championship. The Boston Club Victorious,” Boston Journal, May 6, 1871: 1. Note: The article is signed at the bottom with “Perley.” Benjamin Perley Poore (1820-1887) was a Washington correspondent for the Boston Journal (1854-1883) and other newspapers, covering mostly Congress and politics. He used his trademark “Perley” on his articles. Joseph P. McKerns. “Poore, Benjamin Perley,” in American National Biography Online, February 2000. https://anb.org/articles/16/16-01311.html; accessed July 24, 2015.

2 “The Red Stockings vs. Blue Stockings Base-Ball Match,” Boston Advertiser, May 8, 1871: 4.

3 “Grand Match at Washington,” New York Clipper, April 29, 1871: 26.

4 “Base-Ball. The Great Game at Washington. Boston Club Victorious,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 6, 1871: 1.

5  “Base Ball. The Great Game. Boston 20 – Washington 18,” Daily National Republican, May 6, 1871: 4.

6 The Olympic Grounds were bounded by 17th Street NW on the west, 16th Street NW on the east, and S Street NW to the south. Paul Batesel, Players and Teams of the National Association, 1871-1875 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2012), 196 [Google Ebook edition]. According to the National Republican, (January 27, 1870), work began on the new Olympic Grounds in early 1870. A block of ground bounded by 16th and 17th and R and S Streets were fenced in with an eight-foot fence. They also erected “a beautiful cottage-style club-house, painted in lavender and white, set back from the street, inclosed by a neat picket fence, to be decorated by a flower garden in front, when the season shall justify.” Two tiers of seats of 125 feet long, with five rows of seats in each tier, were assembled and could hold 1,000 spectators.  Between the tiers was a space of 40 feet, above which the scorers and writers would stand. The total size of the grounds were said to be 426 feet by 450 feet, with an excellent drainage system.  The grounds were formally opened on April 27, 1870, for the then-amateur Washington Olympic Base Ball Club, according to the April 30 edition of the Republican. The fences were “colored with a wash of bluish tint,” and seating accommodated over 1,000 spectators.  A year later, with the Olympics becoming a professional club and acquiring an influx of new talent, the grounds were improved. The Republican (January 20, 1871) noted that double train tracks were to be put in place by the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company along 14th Street to accommodate visitors. The Republican (April 7, 1871) noted that by the opening of the baseball season that there was a line of covered seats constructed to accommodate 2,500 spectators. The west side of the grounds contained a section seating 600, and along the north side was a section seating 1,200 along the entire width of the grounds. The grandstand was called “The Grand Duchesse.” The grandstand was 60 feet long and 12 feet in width, and could accommodate 200, with front seats reserved for the press. The east side had a row of uncovered seats accommodating 500. The northwest end of the section with covered seats was a “refreshment stand provided with eatables and drinkables in abundance for the benefit of the inner man. Many persons visiting the grounds to witness a game are compelled to go without their dinners, and this eating saloon, no doubt, will receive its full share of patronage.”

7 The two British high commissioners were among several in Washington from February 27 to May 8 to draw up the Treaty of Washington. After the Civil War, tensions were high between the United States and United Kingdom over the latter’s role in assisting the Confederacy during the war. The treaty settled various disputes between the countries. Theodore A. Wilson, “Treaty of Washington.” Salem Press Encyclopedia (January 2014): Research Starters, EBSCOhost (accessed June 14, 2015).

8 “Base Ball. The Great Game. Boston 20 – Washington 18.”

9 Poore.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 John Thorn, “Chadwick’s Choice: The Origin of the Batting Average.” Our Game.  Published September 18, 2013. https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2013/09/18/chadwicks-choice-the-origin-of-the-batting-average/.

14 Poore.

15 A fair-foul hit was one that landed started fair and rolled foul, even in the infield. In baseball’s early days, this was scored a hit, as opposed to the modern game’s foul ball. Some batters excelled at hitting fair-fouls.

16 Poore.

17 Ibid.

18 “The Professional Championship. Boston vs. Olympic,” New York Clipper, May 13, 1871: 42.

19 Poore.

20 “Base Ball. Boston vs. Olympic,” Boston Herald, May 8, 1871: 2.

21 “Base Ball. The Red Stockings of Boston vs the Olympics of Washington. All in the Family,” Cincinnati Gazette, May 6, 1871.

22 “The Professional Championship.” The rules of umpires calling balls and strikes had changed, based on the action of the convention in November 1870, and both of the split amateur and professional leagues approved these in March of 1871. “The Base-Ball Guide for 1871,” published after these conventions, stated in Rule II, Section II, “Should the pitcher repeatedly fail to deliver to the striker fair balls, from any cause, the umpire must call one ball; and if the pitcher per­sists in such action, two and three balls. When three balls shall have been called, the striker shall take the first base without being put out.” Rule III, Section II stated, “The striker shall be privileged to call for either a high or low ball, in which case, the pitcher must deliver the ball to the bat as required. The ball shall be considered a high ball if pitched between the height of the waist and the shoulder of the striker; and it shall be considered a low ball if pitched between the height of the knee and the waist.” (This text is taken from https://retrosheet.org/1871Rules.doc.) The first pitch was not called anything unless the batter swung. Strictly calling balls and strikes as the rules dictated, based on the striker’s (batter’s) request of “high” or “low,” resulted in more bases on balls. This outraged fans as it “took the bat out of player’s hands,” and made for a less interesting game. Still, there was disagreement over the actual rules themselves, something not uncommon in the NAPBBP. See David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Baseball (New York: David Fine Books, 1997), 7-8; William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871-1875 (Wallingford, Connecticut: Colebrook Press, 1992), 17; Peter Morris, Game of Inches: The Stories Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball: The Game on the Field (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 17-20.

23 “Base Ball. The Red Stockings of Boston vs the Olympics of Washington.”

The night before, the visiting Troy Haymakers quartered at the United States Hotel and were “accompanied by quite a large delegation of their friends,” wrote the Boston Journal.2

Both “nines made their appearance on the field, and were greeted with hearty cheers by the large crowd of spectators in attendance, numbering some 2,500,” the Journal wrote.3 Mortimer M. Rogers, of the Star Club of Brooklyn, was chosen as the umpire, and the game began at 3:30 PM.4 Boston’s Harry Wright lost the toss, so Boston batted first.

Al Spalding was pitching the first home opener for Boston. Spalding was off to a 2-0 start with a 4.00 ERA. Troy sent a 22-year-old John McMullin to the mound. McMullin was seeking redemption for the loss he received in his first start against Boston a week prior, although he only gave up 3 earned runs in a complete-game loss. Boston’s George Wright was unable to play after injuring himself in a game at Troy the previous week. Left fielder Fred Cone didn’t hear Wright calling for a fly ball because of a passing train, leading to a collision.5 Wright injured his leg and would play in only 16 games in 1871.

It was an explosive first inning for both teams. Boston’s Ross Barnes led off, grounding to Steve Bellan, who threw wildly to first and Barnes was safe at second. Barnes scored on a single to center by Dave Birdsall. Cal McVey doubled to left, scoring Birdsall, then moved to third on a groundout. Charlie Gould grounded to Edward Beavens at second, scoring McVey. With two outs, Harry Schafer second on another error. Fred Cone grounded to Beavens, who threw wildly to first and Schafer scored. “Spalding made two bases on a corker to left field,”6 the Journal described, scoring Cone. Sam Jackson singled home Spalding, giving Boston fans the delight of seeing their club tally a 6-0 lead in their inaugural inning.

Boston was sloppy in the field, however. Mike McGeary of the Haymakers reached on a throwing error, then stole second. Gould’s muff landed Tom York at first and McGeary went to third. McGeary scored when Barnes threw wild in an attempted double-play and the pitcher McMullin, batting cleanup, reached first. Steve King doubled, scoring McMullin. A Beavens’ grounder would have been an easy out, “but H. Wright was pushed aside by King, just as he was fielding the ball,” and King scored. Troy had cut Boston’s lead in half, 6-3.

In the Boston second, Barnes scored on a passed ball to make the score Boston 7-3. The inning ended when a “splendid throw”7 by Clipper Flynn cut down Birdsall who tagged up.

In the Troy third inning, Beavens singled home King on a fair-foul, then Bellan scored on Lipman Pike’s triple to cut Boston’s lead to 7-5. The inning also saw Craver ground out to Schafer, whose throw resulted in Gould “taking the ball high in one hand.”8

In the Haymaker fourth inning, McGeary walked and stole second. York reached on a dropped popup by Barnes. McMullin singled home McGeary, then King reached on a single, scoring York. Beavens singled, scoring McMullen and King. Beavens scored on a passed ball. Bill Craver singled to left, scoring Bellan. Six runs scored, and Troy now led 11-7.

Boston struck for two runs in the fifth inning. Harry Wright walked. A sharp liner by Gould was caught by Bellan, who tried to double-up Wright at first, but his throw went through Pike’s hands “and injured him so as to cause a temporary suspension of the game.”9 Schafer got a broken-bat single, and both scored on wild throws by Craver and Pike to cut the Troy lead to 11-9.

In the Troy sixth, Beavens reached on a wild Harry Wright throw, stole second, and reached third “on a muff between Harry and Barnes,”10 then scored on a sacrifice fly. Craver and Flynn reached on errors by Schafer and Barnes, then both scored on McGeary’s single. McGeary scored on a Birdsall muff of a York fly ball, and after the comedy of errors, Troy had added four more runs for a 15-9 lead.

Boston countered with two runs in the seventh to cut the lead to 15-11. Gould sent a fly ball to Flynn who “took it very close to the ground.” McVey ran to third base on the play. The Haymakers wanted an appeal on the catch by Flynn. Rogers ruled the batter out on the fly. Play was about to resume when Craver then asked for an appeal on McVey, “it being claimed that he failed to touch the second base before running on the play.”11 Rogers ruled McVey out for failing to touch second base, ending the inning. This must have been a replay challenge, circa 1871.

In the seventh, the Haymakers scored 11 runs in the inning, “but two or three being earned,” wrote the Journal.12 Beavens, Bellan and Pike all scored on a hit to short center field by Craver, who then scored on a hit by Flynn. An error by Schafer put McGeary on base, followed by a York double. McMullen, “got to his first, while Harry Wright, Barnes, and Jackson stood in a triangle watching, any which either might have taken” wrote the Herald.13 McMullen and York scored on a double by King, who then was out trying to steal third. Beavens and Bellan singled, and Cone muffed a Pike fly ball to load the bases. Craver “cleared the bases and took the second by a hot grounder to left field” wrote the Herald.14 Troy now had a 26-11 lead.

Boston scored two runs in the eighth, but Troy wasn’t done yet. A walk and another error on Schafer led to York and McMullin scoring on King’s double. Three runs came across to make the score Troy 29-13. Boston added a lonely run in the ninth, and the final score was 29-14.

“There is no mincing the matter at all,” wrote the Journal, “our ‘Red Stockings were beaten by the ‘Haymakers’ in the match game yesterday. It was not only a beat, but a bad beat.” Fans witnessed “the rather slovenly exhibition made by the Bostons.”15 The loss of George Wright was a big factor, “but this is hardly an excuse,” the Journal whined, “for errors in others nearly as proficient in their own positions as he most certainly is in his.”16 The first opening day was known for “muffs and errors being frequent in all parts of the field” slammed the Herald, as Boston committed 15 errors and Spalding’s pitching “void of its usual effects.”17 The highly-anticipated home opener  did not live up to expectations, “for the credit of Boston,” wrote the Boston Post, “we could have wished it were played elsewhere.”18

The Journal seemed to give a hint of fans sensing heartbreak in losing on opening day (something that would often be repeated in Boston baseball history). “To think that our boys, on whom we depend so much, who, we began to believe, were invincible, should be so thoroughly defeated on their ground, is rather tough…[ George Wright’s] “absence from the field seemed to demoralize to a certain extent the whole club.”19 The 29 runs allowed by the Red Stockings were the most runs allowed in a game in the 1871-1875 period. Only on two other occasions did they allow 20 or more runs in a game (20 runs on June 22, 1871, and 22 runs on June 5, 1873). 

“We congratulate the Haymakers,” wrote the Journal, “and beg to advise them that when our nine are all right again they propose to retake the wreath which they lost yesterday, and hold it to the end of the season. Meanwhile, the Haymakers had as well wear it as any other club, and we wish them joy in having so finely demonstrated their worthiness to do so.”20

The Haymakers stayed in town another day, playing on the same field against Harvard, and losing 15-8 to the “flyers of the magenta.” That evening, the Haymakers left on the 9 o’clock train on the Boston and Albany Railroad.21

Photo Caption

Advertisement for the first Opening Day in Boston’s professional baseball history, Boston Herald, May 16, 1871. 

Sources

Thanks to Dixie Tourangeau for research assistance in writing this article.

Notes

1 “Local Matters. About Town,” Boston Advertiser, May 16, 1871: 1.

2 “Base Ball. First Defeat of the Boston Club,” Boston Journal, May 17, 1871: 1.

3 Ibid. Actual attendance accounts ranged from 2,500-8,000 spectators depending on the newspaper.

4 Maxson Mortimer “Mort” Rogers had an interesting baseball career prior to this game. A Brooklyn native, Rogers was the son of a fish dealer. In the 1860’s, Rogers and his two brothers played for the Brooklyn Resolutes amateur club. He later moved to Massachusetts and played center field for the Lowell Club and was called an outfielder “ahead of his time,” wrote James D’Wolf Lovett in his Old Boston Boys and the Games They Played (Boston: Riverside Press, 1907), 165. “There is no player who can run in to a swiftly batted liner and pick it up within six inches of the ground better than he could,” D’Wolf said. Rogers and E.E. Rice became involved with the New England Base Ballist, a weekly sports newspaper which ran from August-December of 1868. The first edition announced “After a long and arduous experience in reporting and playing Base Ball, we have at last the pleasure of addressing the Fraternity, and friends, through the medium of the Editorial columns of a paper devoted to the interests of our National Game, other Field and outdoor Sports, Music and the Drama.” The paper evolved into the National Chronicle, edited by Rogers, Rice, and C. Ruthven Bryan, and ran 1869-1870. In the 1870s, Rogers wrote for the Sunday Mercury newspaper and produced scorecards of Boston’s games, the first to include photographs of the players. See Peter Morris “Clipper Base Ball Club of Lowell,” in Baseball Founders: The Clubs, Players, and Cities of the Northeast that Established the Game (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013), and the New York Clipper, May 21, 1881: 138.

5 Harold Kaese. The Boston Braves 1871-1953 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1954), 9.

6 Ibid.

7 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball. The Professional Championship –– Haymakers vs. Red Stockings –– The Latter Badly Whipped –– Score 29 to 14,” Boston Herald, May 17, 1871: 1.

8 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball,”

9 “Base Ball. The National Championship–– Red Stockings vs. Haymakers,” Boston Advertiser, May 17, 1871: 1.

10 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball,”

11 “Base Ball. The National Championship,”

12 “Base Ball. First Defeat of the Boston Club,”

13 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball,”

14 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball,”

15 “R Beaten!” Boston Journal, May 17, 1871: 4. (Note: The author isn’t exactly sure if the article headline is “R” or “B,” based on the poor quality of the digitally scanned version of the Journal. However, he is convinced it is “R” based on other examples on the page, and “R” would stand for “Red Stockings,” although no experts were consulted in its analyses.

16 “Base Ball. First Defeat of the Boston Club,”

17 “Affairs About Home. Base Ball,”

18 “Base Ball. Match Between the Boston Nine and the Haymakers, of Troy–– the Boston Club Badly Beaten,” Boston Post, May 17, 1871: 3.

19 “R Beaten!”

20  Ibid.

21 “Base Ball. Credible Victory for the Harvards,” Boston Journal, May 18, 1871: 1.

The amateur Lowell Base Ball Club of Boston hosted the Kekiongas on Tuesday, June 20; the Fort Wayne nine lost by a score of either 12-2 or 10-2.2 At 3:35 the following afternoon, the Kekiongas faced the Boston Red Stockings before a crowd of about 700 at Boston’s South End Grounds. On the mound for the Red Stockings was 21-year-old right-hander Albert Goodwill Spalding, making his 12th start of the season. The Kekiongas countered with 20-year-old right-hander Bobby T. Mathews, making his 12th start of the season. Harry Wright managed and played center field for the Reds while catcher Bill Lennon managed the Fort Wayne nine. Harry Wright’s brother, George, did not play in this game. M.M. Rogers of the Star Brooklyn Club assumed umpiring responsibilities. 

The Reds batted first and shortstop Ross Barnes reached first on a fly to “short field.”3 He advanced to third on a passed ball and right fielder Dave Birdsall reached first on an error by third baseman Williams.4 Birdsall stole second and scored along with Barnes on a double by catcher Cal McVey. In making a play on a popup by second baseman Sam Jackson, Kekiongas catcher Bill Lennon collided with pitcher Mathews. Mathews needed time to collect himself, but returned to the mound and completed the game. An out made by first baseman Charlie Gould ended the top of the first.

The Kekiongas sent four men to bat in the bottom of the first, and scored no runs. The top of the second began shakily for the Kekiongas as passed balls, dropped flies, and errant throws allowed the Reds to score six runs. The inning started with an error by Pete Donnelly in right field that allowed Harry Schafer to reach first. Schafer advanced to third on a passed ball. Left fielder Fred Cone walked and stole second; Lennon’s poor throw allowed Cone to advance to third and Schafer to score. After Spalding popped up to Williams for the first out, Barnes singled to left, advanced to third on Foran’s inaccurate throw to home plate, and saw Cone score. Donnelly muffed Birdsall’s popup and Barnes scored. McVey hit to third, where Williams made a clean play and good throw to first, but first baseman Charles Bierman dropped the ball. Jackson flied out to Jim Foran for the second out, but Birdsall and McVey scored on another passed ball. Harry Wright then singled to right, advanced to third on a passed ball, and scored on Charlie Gould’s hit to left. Gould stole second but was left there as Schafer flied out to Kelly. Six runs had scored. Despite errors by the Bostons in the bottom of the second, the Fort Wayne team again was unable to score. They did make changes on the field, however, with Williams moving from third base to catcher, Lennon from catcher to shortstop, and Wally Goldsmith from shortstop to third.

Each team exhibited solid fielding in innings three through six; only two runs were scored, both by the Reds. In the top of the seventh, the Red Stockings demonstrated good batting and fine baserunning. At one point, with the bases loaded and McVey at bat, Harry Schafer, who was running for Birdsall, was caught in a rundown. He managed to evade a tag until two more runs had scored. Although the Kekiongas had a baserunner reach third in their half of the seventh, they could not score and the Reds now led the contest 14-0.  

The Bostons sent four men to bat in the top of the eighth, and did not score. The Kekiongas did have baserunners in the bottom of the eighth, but none were able to reach home. This inning did see a close play at first, however. Williams had reached first on an error by Barnes; he advanced to second after Mathews earned a walk. However, on the next at bat, left fielder Foran flied out to Schafer, whose quick throw to first caught Mathews, who had started to run. The umpire’s call was “a doubtful decision,” the Advertiser wrote.5

The Red Stockings held a commanding lead by the top of the ninth inning, but their scoring for the day was not over. After left fielder Fred Cone flied out to Bill Kelly in center field, Spalding reached on first baseman Bierman’s error. He scored on Barnes’s single; Birdsall hit safely and drove in Barnes. McVey singled and drove in Birdsall. Wright and Gould reached base, and after a “heavy hit”6 by Schafer, scored. Before Cone ended the inning with an “easy”7 hit to Mathews, Schafer scored the seventh run of the inning on a passed ball. The score was now 21-0.

The Kekiongas closed out the game, which ended two hours after it had begun, with a quick 1-2-3 inning, and, as with each inning prior, scored no runs. Al Spalding had his sixth win and his only shutout of the 1871 season, a one-hitter.

The Boston Daily Advertiser summarized the game thus: “The score shows this to be one of the most remarkable games of record. The deportment of the Kekiongas on the field was excellent, and notwithstanding their severe defeat they maintained a perfect composure. The impression made by them here is favorable and our base-ball men heartily wish them better luck next time.”

The Boston Journal noted of the Kekiongas: “They are to be commended … for the plucky manner in which they played the concluding portion of the game against such odds.”

Rosters

Boston Red Stockings

• Ross Barnes, ss
• Dave Birdsall, rf
• Cal McVey, c
• Sam Jackson, 2b
• Harry Wright, cf (manager)
• Charlie Gould, lf
       Fred Cone, lf
• Harry Schafer, 3b
• Al Spalding, p

Fort Wayne Kekiongas

• Williams, 3b
• Bobby Mathews, p
• Jim Foran, lf
• Wally Goldsmith, ss
• Bill Lennon, c (manager)
• Tom Carey, 2b
• Charles Bierman, 1b
• Pete Donnelly, rf
• Bill Kelly, cf

Sources

In addition to the sources indicated in the notes, the author also consulted:

Wilbert, Warren N. Opening Pitch: Professional Baseball’s Inaugural Season, 1871 (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2008).

Notes

1 Before its settlement by French fur traders in the 17th century, the area that encompasses Fort Wayne had the Native American name Kekionga. It was the capital of the Miami nation. “History of Fort Wayne, Indiana.” u-s-history.com/pages/h2273.html.

2 The Boston Daily Advertiser of June 22, 1871, said the score was 12-2; the Boston Journal said it was 10-2.

3 “Base Ball, Visit of the Kekiongas – Their Defeat by the Boston Nine,” Boston Daily Advertiser, June 22, 1871.

4 Frank Sellman also played under the name Frank C. Williams. Sellman played third base, as did Williams in this game.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.