In early September of 1861, the New York Dispatch announced plans for such an event on the grounds of the St. George Cricket Club in Hoboken, New Jersey: a benefit for their veteran cricketer Sam Wright and his son, Harry.6

Sam Wright was arguably the best cricketer in all of England when he moved to the United States in 1837 to play for the St. George Cricket Club of New York. He starred for St. George over the next two decades, joined on the pitch in the late 1840s by the not-yet-teenage Harry. Sam was a jack-of-all-trades, playing where needed and serving as the club’s groundskeeper.7 By 1861, the 26-year-old Harry was drawing compensation as a professional for St. George, as his father long had, and praise as “the most promising cricketer among us.”8 He was also playing base ball for the Knickerbockers of New York.

The Wrights’ cricket benefit was a match between 11 English-born players from the St. George Club and 22 cricket-playing Americans “selected from the crack fielders of the leading [Brooklyn and New York City] Base Ball Clubs.”9 With the Americans having double the usual number of fielders and batters, the New York Clipper viewed them as doubling their chances of emerging victorious.10

An advance notice for the Wrights’ benefit, published by the New York Atlas on September 15, noted that after the cricket match, nine of the 22 Americans “will play a game of Base Ball against any nine that can be brought on the ground, or any eighteen Old Countrymen.”11 By the eve of the cricket match, the ensuing base ball game was being billed as a contest “between nine base ball players and eighteen cricketers for the benefit for Harry Wright, catcher of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club.”12 No reason was given in newspapers that covered the base ball game for why Wright was its beneficiary. That omission suggests he was being compensated for his performance on the base ball diamond, rather than for some personal loss, which surely would have been shared in order to drum up attendance, had redress been the benefit’s purpose.

Advertised base ball matches before this one had been played for “the honor of victory,”13 for a trophy (often the game ball), for a meal, occasionally for prize money or sometimes to benefit community members who’d fallen on hard times, but not for the purpose of channeling funds to an active base ball player.14 Prominent base ball players had been getting compensated under the table for years,15 a practice considered merely unseemly at first, then made illegal after professionalism was banned by the National Association of Base Ball Players (to which the Knickerbockers belonged) in 1859.16 Unlike play-for-pay, benefits were considered honorable and so provided a means, however thinly veiled, to skirt the NABBP prohibition.

The Wrights’ benefit cricket match got underway on Saturday morning, September 20, with Harry leading the English eleven. His teammates included two of his three younger brothers, George, only 14 years old, and Dan, born the year after Harry was.17 The American side included prominent base ballers from various clubs based on the New York side of the Hudson River: Jim Creighton and Asa Brainard of the Excelsiors (base ball champions in 1860 who were idled by the Civil War in 1861),18 Atlantics captain Dickey Pearce, Knickerbockers president Thomas Dakin, Andrew J. Bixby of the Eagle club and a Whiting, presumably John, also of the Excelsiors.19 In an upset, the Americans prevailed over Harry’s English eleven in just under six hours.20

The plan for Sunday had been for nine of the best base ball players in the area to oppose 18 cricketers, but there weren’t enough of the latter available. Instead, a team of Eighteen was formed with nine cricketers from the St. George club; Harry Wright; his brother George; and seven other base ball players from the New York’s Mutuals, Harlems, and Gothams, plus one unnamed club.21 Recognizing that many of the cricketers lacked experience playing baseball, their side was allowed six outs per at-bat while the baseballers were limited to three. The extra outs, together with posting all their players on the field at one time, gave the Eighteen a fourfold advantage in the eyes of the Clipper.22

Twice as many spectators were on hand compared with the previous day’s cricket match by the time the base ball game got underway on a warm first day of autumn.23 Admission was 25 cents (equivalent to nearly $9 in 2023), with ladies admitted free of charge.24 Those who parted with another three pennies for a copy of the New York Times before the game would have found a front page entirely devoted to news of the war.

The Eighteen were first to bat, with the 20-year-old Creighton pitching from behind an iron plate set 45 feet from home plate, and Pearce his batterymate. The balance of the Nine were filled from the ranks of the Brooklyn-based Excelsiors (Andrew T. Pearsall, George Flanley, Whiting, and Brainard), Stars (Hope Waddell), Eagle of New York (Bixby), and Eureka of Newark, New Jersey (Edward R. Pennington).25 Former cricket journalist turned base ball gadfly Henry Chadwick served as the game scorer, with R. Oliver of the Excelsiors umpiring.26

Two runs were tallied by the Eighteen in the first frame, highlighted by “a magnificent hit to centre field” by H.B. Taylor of the Mutuals.

As the Nine first came to bat, the Eighteen took the field to create what the New York Clipper understatedly called “a novel sight.” Two players occupied each position other than pitcher, where Simon Burns of the Mutuals stood alone, and catcher, where Harry Wright was shadowed by a pair of cricketers.27 The other seven positions were manned by a base ball player, with a cricketer hovering nearby; the latter listed in box scores as either a second player or “cover” for that spot. At shortstop, by at least one account, was young George Wright.28

Leading off for the Nine was Pearsall, a medical student at New York’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. Born in Alabama, he would be wielding a surgeon’s knife for the Confederate army a year later.29 Pearsall singled and came around to score the Nine’s only run in their first turn at bat. The last two Nine batters in that inning were retired at first base on “poor hits to right field.”30

For the Eighteen’s second turn at bat, Brainard replaced Creighton, who moved to second base. Not a single batter reached base, as Brainard set down the side, all six of them, in order. Three hits and a home run to center field by Pearce put the Nine up 4-2 with one out in the second inning, but more damage was yet to come. After Harry Wright retired Pearsall on a foul fly, the next six batters reached base before Creighton was retired “on the bound” to Hunt of the Mutuals in short right field, “who first missed it on the fly.”31

Down 10-2, the Eighteen came storming back in the third. Each batter crossed the plate to make the score 11-10 in their favor.

The lead changed hands again when the Nine came to bat in the third, with Pearce and Pearsall scoring before center fielder George Vanderlip, future secretary of the St. George Club, retired Whiting on an outfield bound.

The Eighteen tied the score at 12-12 in the fourth inning with a single run against Creighton, who was back pitching. Creighton’s play to retire Vanderlip at home plate drew particular notice in the New York Clipper account of the game.32

Regarding Creighton’s fellow defenders, the Clipper judged center fielder Waddell’s play to be poor and claimed Flanley (spelled “Flanly” in its account) never fielded better, for which he drew loud applause. A “beautiful fly catch” by Pennington was also noted.33

The Nine tallied 10 runs in their half of the fourth, with each batter scoring once and Creighton twice. The three outs were recorded on Pearce, Pearsall, and Flanley, with each “striking twice” at Burns’s offerings.34

Once again the Eighteen responded with a single run. The Nine tacked on another seven runs in their next turn at bat to take a 29-13 lead.

The game continued in this fashion for another three innings, with the Nine growing their lead each inning. Home runs were struck in the final few innings by Pearce, Flanley, and Creighton, with Pearce’s blow (his second of the day) so splendid that he reached home “almost before the ball was handled.”35

Darkness brought an end to the game after eight innings, with the Nine ahead, 45-16. The Brooklyn Eagle box score noted that 12 of the 16 runs compiled by the Eighteen “were made by the base ball players.”36

How much Harry Wright collected from his September 21 benefit was never published, but the fact that he was the game’s beneficiary had broader import than any money he might have received. Likely the first game in which he was openly compensated,37 it might also have been the first in which any base ball player was.38

Box score from the New York Clipper, September 28, 1861:

Acknowledgments

The author thanks SABR author Tom Gilbert for providing details on the playing career of Excelsior ballplayer A.T. Pearsall. This article was fact-checked by Stew Thornley and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Peter Morris, ed., Base Ball Founders: The Clubs, Players and Cities of the Northeast That Established the Game (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company), 2013, Christopher Devine’s SABR biography of Harry Wright, John Thorn’s SABR biography of James Creighton and his Baseball in the Garden of Eden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011). The author also reviewed accounts of cricket matches, baseball games, and benefits of many kinds published between 1853 and 1861 in the New York Clipper, New York Times, Brooklyn Eagle, and New York Herald. He also examined the Baseball-Reference.com website for pertinent material on those players whose careers extended to the advent of the National Association in 1871.

Notes

1 The Clipper in this period also highlighted charitable benefits held for those who had suffered or might suffer great personal loss, such as a New York concert on May 25, 1861, to benefit a Volunteer Fund that assisted Union soldiers, and multiple events in Philadelphia to raise funds for the families of seven ballet dancers killed in a theater fire in that city. “City Summary,” New York Clipper, May 25, 1861: 46; “General Summary,” New York Clipper, September 28, 1861: 190.

2 “Benefit performance,” Britannica website, https://www.britannica.com/art/benefit-performance, accessed June 28, 2023.

3 See, for example, “Mike Henry’s Benefit,” New York Clipper, December 8, 1860: 266, “Johnny Monaghan’s Benefit,” New York Clipper, February 23, 1861: 356, or “Give Him a Good One,” New York Clipper, December 22, 1860: 282.

4 “Racket Tournament,” New York Clipper, October 6, 1860: 200.

5 For example, in 1860, a collection of cricketers from various New York clubs played a benefit in East New York for a professional cricketer, Sams, said to be “in very poor circumstances,” and a match was held at St. George Cricket Club Grounds in New York to benefit all U.S. cricket professionals. “Great Match at East New York,” New York Clipper, October 20, 1860: 213; “Matches to Come,” New York Clipper, June 23, 1860: 77.

6 Two weeks later, the Clipper described the benefit for Sam and Harry as an annual event. The author was unable to find evidence of a similar benefit for the Wrights in earlier years. “Cricket – Americans, versus Englishmen,” New York Dispatch, September 7, 1861: 9; “Benefit of the Veteran Cricketers,” New York Clipper, September 21, 1861: 178.

7 Paul Preston, Esq, “Reminiscences of a Man About Town,” New York Clipper, October 17, 1868: 220.

8 Just one week before Harry was so recognized, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, ignited the Civil War. “The Cricket Season in New York,” New York Clipper, April 20, 1861: 4.

9 An earlier announcement in the Brooklyn Eagle invited ballplayers interested in competing to provide their names to Harry Wright at the St. George Cricket grounds in Hoboken by the 18th. One stipulation spelled out by the Brooklyn Eagle was that no professional cricketers would play for the team of 11. “Out-Door Sports,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 19, 1861: 2; “Cricket,” New York Times, September 20, 1961: 5; “Cricket,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 13, 1861: 3.

10 It was common practice at that time to allow weaker teams to play with 18 as a handicap. The even more generous use of 22 players in this match followed a practice reportedly first adopted three years earlier by a Canadian cricket club. “Eleven First Class vs. Eighteen Second Class Players of the Toronto Club,” New York Clipper, September 4, 1858: 157.

11 “Grand Cricket Match,” New York Atlas, September 15, 1861: 8.

12 “Out-Door Sports.”

13 “Base Ball – To Players,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 13, 1860: 2.

14 The author has not identified any previous reports of a base ball game played for the benefit of an individual player, based upon his review of New York Clipper archives dating back to May 1853, the Craig B. Waff games tabulation and database of nineteenth-century baseball clippings at protoball.org, and nationwide newspaper archives housed at newspapers.com and genealogybank.com.

15 For example, in his Baseball in the Garden of Eden, MLB historian John Thorn shares reports of Creighton and possibly other Excelsiors receiving payments in 1860 and posits that “emoluments,” financial benefits for top players, may have induced Louis Wadsworth, the man he credits with baseball’s nine innings, nine players framework, to join the Knickerbockers in 1854. John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 51.

16 Baseball in the Garden of Eden, 120 and 123; “Base Ball,” Spirit of the Times, March 19, 1859: 66.

17 “Eleven English vs Twenty-Two Americans,” New York Clipper, September 28, 1861: 186.

18 With most able-bodied men gone to fight, it was rare for a New York area baseball club to muster enough players for a match between April and July in 1861. In a July 11 newspaper account that began, “War is down upon everything,” the Star Club was said to have only two of its first nine at home. Once the 13th Regiment of the New York State Militia, which included many ballplayers in its ranks, returned home from Maryland in late July, match play picked up considerably; but not for the Excelsiors, who remained dormant. “Base Ball,” Brooklyn Evening Star, July 11, 1861: 2; “Base Ball,” Brooklyn Evening Star, August 1, 1861: 2; “Return of the 13th Regiment,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 30, 1861: 2.

19 John’s brothers Frank and Charles had also played for the Excelsiors, but it was John who was an ardent cricket player. One year earlier, John, along with Creighton and Brainard, first took up cricket and, together with Henry Chadwick, Harry Wright, and other ballplayers of note, formed the American Cricket Club, a club for US citizens with a goal of “Americanizing” (speeding up) the pace of cricket matches. “An American Cricket Club,” New York Clipper, September 15, 1860: 170; “Cricket,” Brooklyn Evening Star, September 13, 1860: 2.

20 “Cricket in 1861,” New York Clipper, November 30, 1861: 259.

21 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers,” New York Clipper, September 28, 1861: 186. In addition to those clubs listed here, the New York Times game summary identified the Jefferson, Atlantic, and Knickerbocker clubs as providing players to the Eighteen. The author elected to adopt the list published by the New York Clipper, as that article listed the club affiliation for all but one of the Eighteen by name. The Brooklyn Eagle account of the game claimed that the team of Eighteen consisted of 10 cricketers and 8 base ball players, implying that they counted Harry Wright as a cricketer. “Cricket and Base Ball,” New York Times, September 22, 1861: 8; “Nine Ball Players vs. Eighteen Cricketers,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 23, 1861: 3.

22 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

23 “Cricket and Base Ball,” New York Times, September 22, 1861: 8.

24 “Nine Base Ball Players vs. Eighteen Cricketers,” Brooklyn Evening Star, September 20, 1861: 3.

25 There was another local ballplayer named Waddell in 1861, listed in some box scores as Weddell, a pitcher for the Brooklyn Enterprise club. That Waddell appeared in a box score for a game played in Brooklyn on the 21st, ruling him out as being the Waddell who played in the Harry Wright benefit game. “Enterprise vs. Brooklyn,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 23, 1861: 3. The New York Times game account agrees with the author’s list of teams represented in the Nine’s lineup with the exception of the Stars, which the Times omitted. The Brooklyn Eagle claimed only players from the Excelsiors and Atlantics populated the Nine, which clearly was not the case. “Cricket and Base Ball,” New York Times, September 22, 1861: 8. “Nine Ball Players vs. Eighteen Cricketers,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 23, 1861: 3; “The Star Club,” New York Clipper, December 14, 1861: 275; “The Star Grounds,” New York Clipper, December 14, 1861: 274.

26 “Nine Base Ball Players vs Eighteen Cricketers,” Brooklyn Eagle. Two members of the Eighteen, Harry Wright and an amateur, Waller, had faced Creighton in the reputed first shutout in baseball history, a game on November 8, 1860, in Hoboken between the champion Excelsiors and cricketers from the St. George Cricket Club. “Base Ball,” Brooklyn Eagle, November 10, 1860: 2; “Last Cricket Match of the Hoboken Season – Amateur Eleven vs. Professional Eleven,” New York Times, October 1, 1860: 8.

27 The New York Clipper cites Harry as catching, as did Henry Chadwick, in one of his scrapbooks, according to Christopher Devine’s Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Baseball. The New York Times, on the other hand, lists Harry playing second base, while the Brooklyn Eagle showed him as simply a fielder. The detailed play-by-play account in the Clipper, in contrast to summary reviews in the Times and Eagle, suggests that the Clipper more accurately portrayed where Harry, and for that matter all the players, were positioned on the field. Christopher Devine, Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2003), 23.

28 The box score published in the New York Clipper shows the youngster at shortstop, while the Brooklyn Eagle lists him at second base. The New York Times says he played in the field, but showed others manning each infield position. Christopher Devine, in Harry Wright, identifies George as having been “a second catcher” backing up Harry, based on an entry in one of Henry Chadwick’s scrapbooks. The author has adopted the positioning as defined in the Clipper for reasons detailed in an earlier note.

29 Pearsall is identified as a member of the Class of 1861 in the College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni catalogue, but he was one of 10 Class of 1861 members identified in the catalogue who did not appear in a New York Times list of new graduates who took the Hippocratic oath during commencement in March of 1861. Presumably Pearsall earned his degree in the fall of 1861. College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York, Medical Department of Columbia College: Catalogue of the Alumni, Officers and Fellows, 1807-1891 (New York: Bradstreet Press, 1891), 85, https://archive.org/details/catalogueofalumn02colu/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater, accessed August 15, 2023; “College of Physicians and Surgeons,” New York Times, March 15, 1861: 8; Dr. Miraculous, “The Ex-Excelsior, Founding Father of Montgomery Baseball,” Dr. Miraculous blog site, September 17, 2014, http://drmiraculous.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-ex-excelsior-founding-father-of.html.

30 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

31 Hunt may have been Dick Hunt, who played for the Mutuals in 1866, though he would have been only 13 or 14 years old in September of 1861. “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

32 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

33 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

34 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

35 “Base Ball Players vs. Cricketers.”

36 “Nine Ball Players vs. Eighteen Cricketers,” Brooklyn Eagle.

37 This may have been the first benefit for Wright, but it wasn’t the first benefit in which he was involved. In the July 20, 1858, opener of the best-of-three New York vs. Brooklyn picked nine series at the Fashion Race Course in Queens County, New York, the little-known Wright played middle field (second base) and batted last for the New York side. The net proceeds from that game’s admission fees ($71.09) were donated to the “Widows and Orphans funds of the Fire Departments of the two cities.” “The Great Base Ball Match,” Brooklyn Times, July 21, 1858: 3; “Grand Base Ball Demonstration,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 10, 1858: 3; “The Sporting Season,” New York Atlas, August 1, 1858: 1.

38 In his Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Baseball, author Christopher Devine identifies an 1863 benefit held by the Knickerbocker club for Harry, his father, and two others (in which Harry netted $29.65), as being the first instance of Wright openly playing base ball for money, but he does acknowledge that this Nine vs. Eighteen game was also a benefit held for Wright. The benefit game to which Devine refers may in fact have been held three years later. Author David Quentin Voigt in American Baseball describes Harry Wright as earning a cash cut of $29.65 at an 1866 benefit. MLB historian John Thorn pointed out that rain limited the sporting contests held at that benefit, originally planned to include both cricket and baseball, to cricket alone. “The First Baseball Card, Arguably?” Protoball website, https://protoball.org/1844.20, accessed July 24, 2023.

Growing up in the crucible of baseball that was Brooklyn in the 1850s and ’60s, Cummings first fixated upon the mechanics of objects curving in flight at the age of 14: “In the summer of 1863 a number of boys and myself were amusing ourselves by throwing clam shells and watching them sail along … turning now to the right, and now to the left. … All of a sudden it came to me that it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way.”1

Four years of secretive experimentation and practice, with tantalizingly inconsistent results, ensued. Meanwhile, Candy climbed through the ranks of Brooklyn baseball, joining the powerful Excelsior club in 1866. The following spring he replaced Asa Brainard as the team’s main pitcher. It was near the close of 1867 when his long woodshedding came to fruition.

Consecutive losses to the Keystones of Philadelphia and Lowells of Boston on October 2 and 4 may have hinted to the Brooklyn ace that it was time to pull the rabbit out of his hat. But the decisive impetus came in the form of a hard-hitting catcher named Archie Bush.

Long before facing Candy Cummings, Archibald McClure Bush had been tested on a real battlefield, having entered service in the Civil War in October 1863, just shy of his 17th birthday.2 After the war ended in 1865, Bush played with the Knickerbocker club of his hometown, Albany, New York. Still but a teenager, he entered prestigious Phillips Academy, a prep school in Andover, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1865,3 and is credited with organizing their first official baseball team.4

A sparkling career at Phillips Andover came to a sudden, ignominious end in May 1867 when Archie and a fellow senior cut classes to attend a ballgame in Boston and were summarily expelled.5 Undeterred, Bush crammed over the summer for Harvard’s exams and won admittance for the fall term.6 He debuted with the Harvard first nine on September 21, homering and picking off a runner who had carelessly strayed from second base.7

Jarvis Field was Harvard’s new athletic grounds, in use for only about four months when the Excelsior club met the collegians there on October 7, 1867. A small clubhouse sat a hundred feet behind home plate, the spectators’ seats forming a semicircle extending from either end of the clubhouse. The seating capacity was at least 5,000.8

Harvard scored a run in the first inning; Bush, batting fifth, likely made his initial plate appearance then. Cummings faced him with some trepidation, as he would confess to The Sporting News in 1892: “I was afraid of his prowess with the bat.”9 So it was that the 120-pound hurler decided to unleash his secret weapon. Here is his own clinical description:

“Snapping the ball with a wrist movement and getting it to spin through the air caused an air cushion to gradually form around the ball, gradually throwing the sphere out of a true course and turning it in the direction of the least resistance.”10

The result?

“When he struck at the ball it seemed to go about a foot beyond the end of his stick. I tried again with the same result, and then I realized that I had succeeded at last.”11

Here was affirmation for the long years of preparation.

“A surge of joy flooded over me that I shall never forget.… I said not a word, and saw many a batter at that game throw down his stick in disgust. Every time I was successful I could scarcely keep from dancing with pure joy.”12

A unique victory, with longstanding implications, had been won. But this day’s battle was not to go the Excelsiors’ way, for the pitch was still not fully harnessed:

“There was trouble. … I could not make it curve when I wanted to. … With a wind against me I could get all kinds of a curve, but … the ball was apt not to break until it was past the batter.”13

The Excelsiors trailed 3–1 by the end of the fourth. They “batted fairly” but their opponent’s infield formed “an impenetrable wall, against which ground balls were struck in vain.”14 The college boys found enough pitches to their liking and heaped on 15 runs in the last four innings. The final score was 18-6 in Harvard’s favor.

Nonetheless, one may glean some trace of Cummings’ triumph. In two games before and two games after the Excelsior match, Bush tallied 23 runs, seven homers, and only nine outs; against Cummings: four outs and one run.

Cummings persevered and in due time mastered the magical pitch. He averaged 31 wins in his four (1872–75) National Association seasons and placed in the top 10 in strikeouts in all six of his NA and National League campaigns. These impressive statistics and, of course, his curve discovery, secured him a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

And what of the man who induced the first competitive curveball to be propelled plateward — the slugger who so spooked Candy Cummings that the spindly hurler finally unveiled his mystery pitch?

Archie Bush should have been a star in the major leagues as he had been in prep school and college, but in fact, he did not enjoy even the brief professional career of his adversary. Graduating from Harvard in the spring of 1871, he umpired two early season National Association games in Boston. Before year’s end he was employed with the Troy Car Works, a railroad car manufacturer. He married Margaret Boyd of Albany in October 1877 and the couple embarked on a honeymoon cruise to Europe. In December, with his wife already pregnant with a son, Archie Bush died of typhoid pneumonia in Liverpool, four weeks after turning 31.15

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.

Notes

1 Cummings, William Arthur. “How I Pitched the First Curve,” Baseball Magazine, August 1908, p. 21.

2 Eighth Report of the Secretary of the Class of 1871 of Harvard College (Boston: Press of Rockwell and Churchill, September 1896), p. 27.

3 Harrison, Fred. “Athletics For All,” at http://www.pa59ers.com/library/Harrison/Athletics02.html.

4 “Nine Inductees Selected for Athletics Hall of Honor,” May 7, 2010, at http://www.andover.edu/About/Newsroom/Pages/NineInducteesSelectedforAthleticsHallofHonor.aspx

5 Fuess. Claude M. An Old New England School, Chapter XIV, at http://www.ourstory.info/library/5-AFSIS/Fuess/school5.html. The ballgame in question was most likely that of Wednesday, May 15, between Harvard and Lowell of Boston. See also “Abby Locke’s Splendid Days: A Teenager’s Diary in 1860s Andover” at http://andoverhistorical.org/blog/.

6 Fuess, p. 271-274.

7 The Harvard Advocate, Cambridge, Massachusetts, October 8, 1867, Vol. IV, No. 1, p. 10.

8 King, Moses. Harvard and Its Surroundings (Boston: Franklin Press: Rand, Avery, and Company, Boston, 1878), p.45.

9 “Curved Balls,” The Sporting News, February 20, 1892.

10 Murnane, Tim. “First Master of the Curve Ball,” Boston Daily Globe, January 14, 1906, p. SM3.

11 The Sporting News, February 20, 1892.

12 Cummings, p. 21-22.

13 Cummings, p. 22.

14 The Harvard Advocate, p. 25.

15 Eighth Report of the Secretary of the Class of 1871 of Harvard College.

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.

“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.”

Still, the masks reached major-league competition by the summer of 1877. When one of the National League’s top catchers, 22-year-old Charley Snyder of the Louisville Grays, later known as “Pop,” wore a mask in the Grays’ 6-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds on July 3, he became the first major leaguer documented to have worn a catcher’s mask in a league game.

In the preceding week, Snyder had suffered a split finger from a foul tip in one game after having been knocked down in an earlier match by a foul tip to the face, off the bat of George Wright.4 Those close calls may have pushed Snyder to give his mask a try. It’s entirely plausible that Wright sold Snyder on wearing a Wright Brothers mask after sending him sprawling.

The only direct evidence of Snyder wearing a mask against the Grays was in the Chicago Tribune, whose July 4 issue concluded a summary of the Louisville-Cincinnati league match with the following observation: “Snyder appeared in the Harvard wire-mask.”5

Somehow, Snyder’s mask-wearing escaped attention in Louisville and Cincinnati newspapers. Circumstances surrounding the July 3 match may explain why. It was the first league game played by a reorganized Cincinnati franchise coming back from oblivion.

Cincinnati had finished dead last in the NL’s inaugural season of 1876, and insufficient funds drove Reds owner Josiah L. Keck to disband the once-again last-place Reds in mid-June of the league’s second campaign. A consortium of Cincinnati businessmen was able to retain the franchise in the city.6

Seventeen days since their last match, the Reds were back in action against Louisville. Controversy swirled for months over whether league standings should reflect matches played against the “new” or original Reds, but for now league officials and club owners were thrilled to no longer limp along with a five-team league.7

With time enough for just a few hours of practice together, the new Reds welcomed the Grays back to Avenue Grounds to pick up where they’d left off. The two teams had just completed the opener of a three-game series there, an 8-4 win by Louisville on June 16, when Keck pulled the plug.

A crowd of nearly 1,000 was on hand the first Tuesday in July, serenaded by the sounds of carpenters hammering and sawing on the roof of the ballpark throughout the game.8 Cincinnati featured a battery making their Queen City debut: pitcher Candy Cummings, a curveball maestro who’d been pitching for the Live Oaks of Lynn, Massachusetts; and Scott Hastings, a veteran catcher from the International Association Guelph (Ontario) Maple Leafs, who’d spent most of the previous season roaming the outfield for Louisville.9

In a precursor to the color-coded uniform scheme that the entire NL tried five years later,10 each Red wore differing “parti-colored caps”: red for Cummings, white for Hastings, with the rest of the team sporting blue, green, striped, or multi-colored versions. Surely none of them were pleased to read in the next day’s Cincinnati Enquirer that they “[looked] cute.”11

Opposite Cummings and Hastings, Louisville had its own curveballer, Jim Devlin, the only pitcher the Grays would use all season, and Snyder. The Grays scored first, when stocky Jumbo Latham reached on a third-inning error, stole second, and came home on a Devlin single.

The Reds proved unable to break through against Devlin until the sixth, when Jack Manning scored on an extra-base hit to left-center field by Charley Jones, tying the game, 1-1. (Only three days earlier, the Cincinnati slugger had been returned from the Chicago White Stockings, who’d “borrowed him” for two games after the original Reds went belly-up.) According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Jones reached third on the play for a triple, but was tagged out by Louisville third baseman Bill Hague, who shoved Jones off the bag. Accounts in several other newspapers credited Jones with a double.

The Grays retook the lead in the bottom of the sixth, with George (later known as Orator) Shaffer scoring from third after doubling to left and moving to third on a sacrifice; driven in by either a Snyder single (according to the Enquirer) or a Haldeman groundout (according to the Cincinnati Commercial). Down 2-1, the Reds rallied in the top of the seventh. After Devlin retired the first two batters, Hastings singled and Will Foley reached on an error by the newest Gray, second baseman John Haldeman.

A newspaper reporter for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Haldeman had been drafted to play in this game by Grays manager Jack Chapman when regular shortstop Bill Craver came up sick. An amateur first baseman in his spare time, Haldeman was the son of Walter Haldeman, owner of the Grays and president of the Courier-Journal. Chapman moved regular second baseman Joe Gerhardt to shortstop and put his boss’s son at the keystone corner. This proved to be the only official major-league game in which Haldeman appeared.12

After Haldeman’s seventh-inning miscue, a walk to Cummings loaded the bases for the next batter, Lip Pike. A three-time National Association home-run champ, albeit with only 15 round-trippers in those three years, Pike clubbed a Devlin offering down the right-field line, circling the bases as the ball disappeared between “the inside and outside fence.”13 After Louisville protested, umpire William Walker ruled the ball foul. Pike regrouped and singled to left, scoring Hastings and Foley to put Cincinnati up, 3-2.

“Hope ran high in the breasts of the friends of the Cincinnati club,” commented the Cincinnati Gazette,14 but not for long. In the Louisville eighth, Cummings made what the Enquirer called “a vital mistake.” Throwing slow curves, he loaded the bases with nobody out and Gerhardt cleared them with a double to left-center. Cummings went back to “his old pace” but the damage was done.15 A fly ball hit by either Snyder (according to the Gazette) or Haldeman (according to the Cincinnati Commercial) brought Gerhardt home to make the final score 6-3.

Snyder, who collected a pair of singles and two RBIs, allowed one passed ball and probably threw a runner out attempting to steal second.16 Most consequentially, he became the first documented big-league catcher to wear a mask in a game.

Several baseball references identify Pete Hotaling of the League Alliance Syracuse Stars as likely the first professional ballplayer to wear a mask in competition, and Mike Dorgan of the NL’s St. Louis Brown Stockings as the first (or “perhaps the first”) to wear one in a major-league contest.17 Hotaling probably first played in a catcher’s mask on July 10,18 while Dorgan definitely did so on August 8, against Louisville.19

Two weeks after the latter game, the Cincinnati Enquirer echoed and then challenged a claim that Dorgan was first to don a mask in a league game. “This is a mistake of about four or five weeks. Both Snyder and Hastings,” the Enquirer asserted, referring to Louisville’s Charley and Cincinnati Red Scott Hastings, “wore the mask and found it a failure before Dorgan ever saw one.”20

Indeed, Hastings wore a mask when facing Hotalings’ Stars on July 13, and, according to a Cincinnati Commercial game summary, did so again in a July 21 home game against the Boston Red Stockings.21 The only mention of Snyder using a mask in Louisville newspapers was a remark in the July 6 issue of the Courier-Journal. Snyder “bought himself a catcher’s mask in Boston,” wrote an unnamed correspondent, “but he hasn’t mustered up a sufficient amount of heart or cheek, whichever it may be, to introduce it to a Louisville audience yet.”22

This statement has been interpreted to mean that Snyder hadn’t yet worn it a regular-season match,23 but more likely it was a red herring. The Grays did not play a single home game between their only previous trip to Boston, when Snyder would’ve presumably purchased a mask from Wright Brothers, and the date of the newspaper’s remark.

In fact, Snyder had introduced his mask not to a hometown audience, but one in nearby Cincinnati. And unlike Hastings’ later experience when he first wore Thayer’s contraption in that city, Snyder’s play was unaffected by his mask.24 Nonetheless, there is no sign in surviving newspaper accounts that Snyder wore a mask again that season.

By the end of July, Louisville had overtaken the Boston Red Stockings to take the lead in the pennant race. Questionable play by several Grays during a string of late-August losses caught the attention of one Courier-Journal reporter who was extraordinarily well acquainted with the team: Haldeman. He shared his suspicions on the pages of the Courier-Journal, which helped uncover a game-fixing scheme known as the Louisville Scandal.25 On October 30, the directors of the Louisville Base Ball Club expelled four players, including the man Haldeman replaced in this game (Craver), two who played in it (Devlin and left fielder George Hall), and another who joined the Grays later (Al Nichols). Unable to go on, the franchise folded five months later.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Peter Morris for providing sources for information he used in Catcher regarding the first use of a mask, and Robert Tiemann for providing a contemporary newspaper account of Dorgan’s first use of a mask. This article was fact-checked by Laura H. Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted James Charlton, ed., The Baseball Chronology (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1991); Peter Morris’s A Game of Inches (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006) and Catcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009); Charles F. Faber’s SABR biography of Pop Snyder; and Woody Eckard’s “The 1877 National League’s Two Cincinnati Clubs,” published in SABR’s Spring 2023 Baseball Research Journal. He also obtained pertinent material from 1877 Louisville Grays, St. Louis Brown Stockings, and Syracuse Star box scores published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Boston Globe, and New York Clipper; and from Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and statscrew.com.

Notes

1 “Baseball Notes,” New York Clipper, January 27, 1877: 346; “The College Champions for 1877,” New York Clipper, April 14, 1877: 18; “General Notes,” Evansville Journal, April 17, 1877: 8; James A. Tyng, “The First Baseball Mask,” York (Pennsylvania) Gazette, July 17, 1895: 5.

2 “Answers to Correspondents,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 22, 1877: 2. The Wright Brothers store shared the same address as the Boston Base Ball Association headquarters. “Base Ball,” Boston Post, March 22, 1875: 3.

3 See, for example “Non-League Items,” Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1877: 7, and “Yesterday’s Games In and Around New York,” New York Sunday Mercury, June 3, 1877: 5.

4 “Beaten by the Bostons,” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 29, 1877: 1; ”Base Ball,” Boston Globe, June 29, 1877: 5; “Bostons 9; Louisville 7,” Boston Journal, July 2, 1877: 3.

5 “The New Cincinnatis,” Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1877: 5.

6 Woody Eckard, “The 1877 National League’s Two Cincinnati Clubs: Were They In or Out and Why the Confusion,” Baseball Research Journal, Spring 2023, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-1877-national-leagues-two-cincinnati-clubs-were-they-in-or-out-and-why-the-confusion/.

7 For the balance of the regular season, NL owners remained undecided about whether the new Cincinnati franchise should be made a full member of the league and whether games played with the two Reds franchise games should or should not count toward the pennant. It would not be until December that league owners decided to extend league membership to the Cincinnati consortium, with “all of the games played by … the Cincinnati club … thrown out of the count.” “League Association Convention,” New York Clipper, December 15, 1877: 298.

8 “The Game To-Day,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 4, 1877: 2; “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Commercial, July 4, 1877: 3.

9 Cummings had replaced diminutive hurler Bobby Mathews, 3-12, with a 4.04 ERA over 15 of the original Reds’ first 17 games, with Hastings taking over for a pair of original Reds, regular catcher Nat Hicks and utilityman Henry Kessler. The new club also didn’t bring back second baseman Jimmy Hallinan or outfielder Ned Cuthbert. A week later, in summarizing player batting averages across the league, the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote that the Reds new management “got rid of its weak hitters.” “Base-ball,” Cincinnati Star, June 19, 1877: 1; “The New Club Ready for the Opening Game To-Morrow,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 2, 1877: 8; “The Cincinnati Red Stockings Step Down and Out,” Cincinnati Enquirer, June 19, 1877: 2; “The League Batting Averages to Date,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 9, 1877: 8.

10 In 1882 the NL required that each team outfit its players in colors unique to the positions they played, with colors being standardized across the league. So, for instance, all first basemen wore red-and-white-striped shirts and caps. “1882 Color-coding System,” Threads of our game website, https://www.threadsofourgame.com/1882-color-coding-system/, accessed October 6, 2023.

11 “Fresh Notes and News,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 4, 1877: 2.

12 Two days later, Haldeman filled in at center field, not for his father’s team but for the shorthanded visiting Reds. The young journalist handed two chances in the field without error and singled to drive in the final run in a 3-1 Cincinnati victory. In the next day’s Courier-Journal, Haldeman (or one of his co-workers) joked, “The new $10,000 center-fielder of the Cincinnati Reds appeared with them for the first time yesterday. He possibly might command a better salary in some soup-house.” That game was later reclassified as an exhibition. “Good!” Louisville Courier-Journal, July 6, 1877: 4; “The Cincinnati Club,” New York Clipper, September 15, 1877: 197.

13 “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 4, 1877: 2.

14 “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Gazette, July 4, 1877: 4.

15 “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Gazette.

16 The Cincinnati Commercial box score showed one Louisville runner thrown out at second.

17 See, for example, Peter Morris, Catcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), 123, who called Dorgan the first major-league mask wearer, and James Charlton, ed., The Baseball Chronology (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1991), 32, which said he was “perhaps the first.” Morris told the author he tabbed Dorgan as the first major-league mask wearer based on The Baseball Chronology mention.

18 In his biography of Hotaling, late SABR author John F. Green describes the Stars catcher as having first worn a mask when returning from a one-month layoff after a foul tip injured an eye. The author identified a pair of games in mid-June during which Hotaling suffered eye injuries from foul tips; a June 11 contest with Tecumseh and a June 14 match with the St. Louis Brown Stockings. After the second injury, Hotaling was sidelined not for a month, but for eight days; out of the Stars lineup for games on June 15, 16, 18, and/or 19, he is shown in box scores catching in a June 23 rematch with the Brown Stockings. Multiple newspaper accounts of that game say nothing of Hotaling wearing a mask. Over the next 16 days, the Stars played seven games, with Hotaling playing right field in five of them and not at all in one other. No lineup information survives for a match Syracuse played against the Binghamton Crickets on June 29 in Syracuse, so it’s unknown where (or even if) Hotaling played that day. The earliest surviving contemporary mention of Hotaling wearing a mask appears in a newspaper account of a Stars match on July 10 in Pittsburgh vs. the Allegheny nine. In its account of that game, the Pittsburgh Commercial and Gazette describes how future Hall of Famer Pud Galvin stole home when Hotaling (his name misspelled Hoetling) “left the home base to get his wire mask.” John F. Green, Pete Hotaling SABR biography, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/pete-hotaling/; “The Browns Defeated by the Syracuse Stars,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 15, 1877: 5; “The Stars Eclipsed,” Pittsburgh Commercial and Gazette, July 11, 1877: 4.

19 “A Lost Art,” St. Louis Times, August 9, 1877. For more details, see also Larry DeFillipo, “August 8, 1877: Brown Stockings’ Mike Dorgan becomes first major leaguer to adopt a catcher’s mask,” https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-8-1877-brown-stockings-mike-dorgan-becomes-first-major-leaguer-to-adopt-a-catchers-mask/.

20 “Notes, News and Miscellany,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 22, 1877: 2.

21 “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Gazette, July 14, 1877: 10; The remark in the Cincinnati Commercial was uncovered by protoball.org’s Richard Hershberger. Richard Hershberger, “Clipping: The Catcher’s Mask 3,” Protoball website, https://protoball.org/Clipping:The_catcher%27s_mask_3, accessed August 4, 2023; “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Commercial, July 22, 1877: 4.

22 “General Notes,” Louisville Courier-Journal, July 6, 1877: 4.

23 Morris, Catcher, 123.

24 In its coverage of Hastings’ first masked game, the Cincinnati Enquirer claimed that the backstop missed a foul bound because he was “blinded by the sun and his mask.” The Cincinnati Gazette snarked that either “Tyng’s mask” or nervousness “marred his usual fine play.” “The Cincinnatis Defeat the Famous Syracuse Stars,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 14, 1877: 8; “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Gazette, July 14, 1877.

25 Daniel Ginsburg, “The 1877 Louisville Grays Scandal,” Road Trips: SABR 1997 Convention Journal, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-1877-louisville-grays-scandal/.

Clapp, like nearly all catchers of the day, had played without any protective gear on his face, but Dorgan took the field wearing a wire mask.2 At least two catchers had already worn a mask in a regular-season (championship) major-league game: Charley Snyder of the NL Louisville Grays, five weeks earlier on July 3, and Scott Hastings of the Cincinnati Reds on July 21.3 Newspapers were reporting that other catchers had purchased masks and even used them in nonleague games. Still, it was a rare sight.

Why Dorgan elected to wear a mask is uncertain, but a number of factors likely contributed to his decision. Most obviously, the seriousness of Clapp’s injury may have driven Dorgan to better protect his face. He’d filled in for Clapp a handful of times when the Browns’ veteran backstop suffered an injury too severe to go on, but the blow from Latham’s foul tip was the most serious one Clapp had absorbed all year.4

As a 23-year-old rookie, Dorgan may have been more willing to try a newfangled mask than would an older catcher, many of whom considered masks dehumanizing or, even worse, emasculating. A catching injury to his younger brother, Jerry, in late July may have also inspired Dorgan to try using a mask. His ill-fated sibling5 had his lip split open by a foul tip while catching for the Stowe baseball club of central Connecticut. Or perhaps the most substantial factor in Dorgan’s decision was a recent brush with a former foe.

Less than two weeks earlier,6 the Browns had played host to Dorgan’s former and already known-to-be-next team, the Syracuse Stars, members of the new International League. (Dorgan had by then signed a contract to become the Syracuse player-manager in 1878.7) Catching for Syracuse in that game was Pete Hotaling, who’d been recruited along with primary catcher and team captain Dick Higham to replace Dorgan, the Stars’ top producer, and eventually their manager, the year before.8

A few weeks before the Stars-Browns clash, Hotaling had “created quite a sensation” by wearing a mask while catching in a League Alliance game with the Indianapolis Blues.9 The mask was a copy of the as-yet-unpatented wire contraption created by Harvard base-ball team captain Fred Thayer and first worn by Crimson catcher Jim Tyng in collegiate games in the early spring.10

There’s no record of whether Hotaling wore a mask in the St. Louis game, but Dorgan certainly would have been aware of Hotaling’s wearing one in previous games, and might’ve heard the derisive nickname Hotaling’s teammates gave him for wearing it: “Monkey.” It’s plausible that Dorgan got a good look at Hotaling’s mask, which had been custom-made,11 and maybe even borrowed a copy, but it’s more likely Dorgan got his mask for $3 from Peck & Snyder’s of New York, which had begun advertising its new mask in early June.12

St. Louis stood in second place, with two fewer wins than first-place Louisville, when the Grays arrived in the Mound City for a two-game series starting August 7.13 Louisville earned a come-from-behind 4-2 win in the first game of the series, scoring three runs in the top of the ninth, with Joe Gerhardt’s triple to deep left at Grand Avenue Park being the difference-maker.14 Blong took the loss for the Browns, while his batterymate Clapp came away with a split finger.15

The Browns took the field for the Wednesday, August 8, series finale with Clapp back behind the plate but missing two other regulars. Shortstop Davy Force was too ill to play, prompting St. Louis manager George McManus to have Dorgan make his second start of the season at shortstop.16 Center fielder Jack Remsen, out since mid-July with a knee injury,17 was replaced by Tricky Nichols, who’d been the Browns’ primary pitcher through Independence Day. Blong was starting in the box for a 12th straight championship-season game. Opposite Blong was Jim Devlin, the Grays’ only pitcher, making his 38th consecutive start.

As Dorgan donned his mask and replaced Clapp in the bottom of the first, local amateur George Newell trotted out to shortstop, making his one and only major-league appearance. Five “elegant” hits by Louisville along with what the Globe-Democrat called “palpably erroneous” umpiring decisions quickly put the Browns in a five-run hole.18

In the second inning, Blong and Nichols switched positions, McManus’s confidence in the 23-year-old St. Louis native clearly shaken. The Browns clawed two runs closer in the bottom of the second on hits by Art Croft, Joe Battin, and Blong. A trio of St. Louis errors in the fourth gave Louisville another run and a 6-2 lead.

Baserunning calamity marked the Browns’ next turn at bat. First, Herman Dehlman was called out for missing first base on an apparent double to left. Then after singling to center, Dorgan was picked off by catcher Snyder, leaving the home crowd fit to be tied.

Louisville tacked on three unearned runs off Nichols in the sixth on an error by first baseman Dehlman and four hits, the last a triple by Snyder. Sometime during the inning, Gerhardt became sick and was replaced by British-born Art Nichols, believed to be no relation to the Browns pitcher.

The Grays scored their final run in the seventh on a missed catch by 16-year-old reserve Leonidas Lee, covering right field for Dorgan (the Browns’ regular there over the previous three weeks), and an error in judgment by Dorgan, who left home plate uncovered. Anxious to catch a train to Chicago, Louisville skipped its turn at bat in the top of the ninth, but it made no matter. Croft tallied a final run for St. Louis in its last turn at bat, but that was all the home team could muster in its 10-3 defeat.

At the time, Dorgan was believed by some, as repeated in the August 22 Cincinnati Enquirer, to be the first major-league catcher to wear a mask in a regular-season game.19 Modern baseball histories, like The Baseball Chronology, published in 1991, and others that relied on that seminal work, identify Dorgan as first, albeit from a source other than the Enquirer.20

The unattributed claim that Dorgan was first to wear a mask, buried in the Enquirer’s “Notes, News and Miscellany” baseball column, was rejected later in the same column. The Enquirer asserted that “both Snyder and Hastings wore the mask and found it a failure before Dorgan ever saw one.”21

Snyder wore “the Harvard wire-mask” in a game in Cincinnati after suffering a head injury days earlier, but the absence of any further mention of it in game accounts suggests he stopped wearing it soon after.22 Hastings quickly abandoned his mask after first wearing it in a championship match, electing to use only a rubber mouth guard in the Reds’ next game.23

While Dorgan was at best the third backstop to wear a mask in a game that mattered, he can be credited as the first to adopt using one. Unlike Hastings, and apparently Snyder as well, Dorgan continued wearing a mask after his initial experience with it,24 paving the way for his peers to embrace, rather than shrink from, face protection.

One of those peers was Dorgan’s teammate Clapp, whose injury proved to be much less severe than feared; he returned to action two days later without missing a game.25 Limited to playing in the field for a few games, he resumed catching against the Chicago White Stockings on August 17 – wearing a catcher’s mask.26

A week after Dorgan’s masked debut, the Brooklyn Eagle threw down the gauntlet in an editorial calling for professional catchers to wear masks. “Amateur catchers have wisely adopted this valuable invention, and why the professional catchers do not use it is a puzzle,” asserted the anonymous writer. “There are plenty of men in the fraternity brave and courageous enough to face any physical danger, but they lack the moral courage to do many things requiring that virtue, and being afraid to wear the mask is one of them.” Clapp’s facial injury, and another suffered by Louisville’s Snyder, were given as examples of what masks could prevent.27 

Dorgan, brought to St. Louis for his catching prowess, caught only a handful more games in 1877, and fewer than 20 more over the remainder of his career, which ended in 1890. By that time, mask use was ubiquitous, and Dorgan’s early adoption of the catcher’s mask had faded from baseball’s collective memory. So much so that one obituary penned on Dorgan’s death in 1909 trumpeted how he never wore a mask or chest protector until late in his lengthy career.28

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Peter Morris for providing sources for his identification of Dorgan as the first major leaguer to wear a mask in a regulation game, and Robert Tiemann for providing the contemporary newspaper account of the August 8 game that formed the basis for his entry of Dorgan’s feat into The Baseball Chronology. This article was fact-checked by Laura Peebles and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Peter Morris’s books A Game of Inches (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006) and Catcher (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2009), John F. Green’s SABR biography of Pete Hotaling, and 1877 St. Louis Brown Stockings game summaries published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He also obtained pertinent material from Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and statscrew.com.

Notes

1 “Broken Up,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 9, 1877: 7.

2 “A Lost Art,” St. Louis Times, August 9, 1877.

3 “The New Cincinnatis,” Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1877: 5. A remark in a Cincinnati Commercial game summary, uncovered by protoball.org’s Richard Hershberger, confirms that Hastings wore a mask that day against the Boston Red Stockings at the Cincinnati’s Avenue Grounds. Richard Hershberger, “Clipping: The catcher’s mask 3,” Protoball website, https://protoball.org/Clipping:The_catcher%27s_mask_3, accessed August 4, 2023; “Base Ball,” Cincinnati Commercial, July 22, 1877: 4.

4 Dorgan caught his first game of the year for St. Louis on May 22 to allow Clapp’s sore hands to heal; he relieved Clapp during a June 21 contest to again rest his sore hands, and caught on August 4 after Clapp was hit in the jaw the day before in an exhibition game against Indianapolis. “A Tie in Twelve Innings,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 3, 1877: 8.

5 Jerry died at the age of 35 in a Middletown, Connecticut, prison cell from alcohol poisoning after being found drunk in a livery stable the night before. “Base Ball,” Meriden (Connecticut) Republican, July 28, 1877: 3; “World of Sports,” Waterbury (Connecticut) Democrat, June 10, 1891: 4.

6 Coincidentally, it was on July 21, the same day that Hastings wore a facemask in the Cincinnati Reds-Boston Red Stockings game.

7 “Short Stops,” Manitowoc (Wisconsin) Pilot, July 19, 1877: 2.

8 Hotaling was well known to several of the Browns, because he had toiled for the Ilion (New York) Clippers, an amateur team that once fielded Clapp and Latham on their way to the NL. “Matters in Syracuse,” Chicago Tribune, March 18, 1877: 7.

9 “Another Scoop,” Indianapolis Sentinel, July 18, 1877: 8.

10  “Baseball Notes,” New York Clipper, January 27, 1877: 346; “The College Champions for 1877,” New York Clipper, April 14, 1877: 18.

11 According to SABR researcher John F. Green, Hotaling had commissioned the Remington Arms Company of Ilion, New York, for the mask he first used. John F. Green, Pete Hotaling SABR biography, Pete Hotaling – Society for American Baseball Research (sabr.org).

12 “Peck & Snyder’s New B.B. Goods,” New York Clipper, June 2, 1877: 80. It’s ironic that Dorgan might’ve been helped in getting protective gear from Hotaling. In mid-June of 1876, Hotaling, then playing for the amateur Ilion Clippers, barreled into Dorgan at home plate while the then-Stars catcher was waiting for a popup. Hotaling reportedly broke Dorgan’s shoulder on that seemingly dirty play, which at that time was legal. Luckily for Dorgan, his shoulder wasn’t broken, and he returned to the diamond later that month. “Star vs. Ilion,” New York Clipper, July 8, 1876: 117; “Star vs. Brooklyn” New York Clipper, July 15, 1876: 125.

13 Just days before the start of their series, in an ersatz role reversal from those of their namesakes – a canonized French monarch (Saint Louis IX) and another demonized in the French Revolution (Louis XVI) – Louisville’s leading newspaper accused the Browns of baseball heresy. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported a claim from NL umpire Dan Devinney that Browns manager George McManus had recently attempted to bribe him to throw games to be played in Louisville. Before that story broke, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat preemptively countered that Devinney’s bribery claims were “a put-up job,” a “tissuey tale.” One that, according to McManus, was concocted by Grays manager Jack Chapman in retaliation for McManus’s signing of Louisville’s battery of Jim Devlin and Snyder to play for the Browns in 1878. Devinney’s claims went nowhere, eventually lost amid the game-fixing scheme by Grays players that came to be known as the Louisville Scandal. “That Bribery Affair,” Louisville Courier-Journal, August 3, 1877: 1; “‘Twas Ever Thus,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 2, 1877: 8; “Summer Sports,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 5, 1877: 7; Daniel Ginsburg, “The 1877 Louisville Grays Scandal,” Road Trips: SABR Convention Journal Articles, 1977, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-1877-louisville-grays-scandal/; “Base-Ball,” Chicago Tribune, November 11, 1877: 8; “A Message to Louisville,” Chicago Tribune, November 25, 1877: 7; “Local Base Ball Notes,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 19, 1878: 3.

14 “Louisville Luck,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 8, 1877: 8.

15 According to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Clapp “stuck to his work like a Major” after getting his finger hurt in the fourth inning, staying behind the plate for the rest of the game.” In A Game of Inches, Peter Morris described Dorgan as recovering from an injury during the August 8 game; however the Globe-Democrat remark, coupled with no mention in St. Louis newspapers of any recent injury to his replacement, suggests it was Clapp and not Dorgan who came into the August 8 contest nursing an injury. “Louisville Luck.”

16 Dorgan also filled in for Force at shortstop on May 19, playing nine innings there against the Chicago White Stockings. The Chicago Tribune summary of that game and accompanying box score both identify Dorgan as playing short. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat account of the game puts Dorgan at shortstop but the accompanying box score shows him in left field. The author’s review of 1877 game accounts identified no other contest in which Dorgan played shortstop. Baseball-Reference.com lists Dorgan as playing only one game at shortstop in 1877, for a total of six innings. It’s unclear whether Globe-Democrat inconsistency is to blame for missing one of his two appearances there. “Base-Ball,” Chicago Tribune, May 20, 1877: 7; “Leather-Hunting,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 20, 1877: 7.

17 “Sadly Crippled,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 9, 1877: 8; Chris Rainey, Jack Remsen SABR biography, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/jack-remsen/.

18 “Sadly Crippled.”

19 “Notes, News and Miscellany,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 22, 1877: 2.

20 The Baseball Chronology contributor Robert Tiemann identified to the author that he relied on an August 9, 1877, game summary in the St. Louis Times as his source for Dorgan’s pioneer status. Author Peter Morris shared with the author that he relied on The Baseball Chronology in crediting Dorgan as the first in his Catcher and A Game of Inches.

21 “Notes, News and Miscellany.”

22 “The New Cincinnatis”; “Beaten by the Bostons,” Louisville Courier-Journal, June 29, 1877: 1.

23 “Sky-Larkin’,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 25, 1877: 8.

24 Newspaper summaries of the Brown Stockings’ next game, on August 11, the last caught by Dorgan until mid-September, are silent on his mask-wearing, but several weeks later the New York Sunday Mercury identified Dorgan, and not Hastings or Snyder, as a mask user. Hastings did again wear a mask for an August 21 game in Boston, but his inconsistent use of it told the Sunday Mercury writer that he was not yet an early adopter. New York Sunday Mercury, 2nd edition, September 8, 1877: 7; “Summer Pastimes,” Boston Globe, August 22, 1877: 5.

25 “Sporting Trifles,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 10, 1877: 3.

26 “Pastimes,” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1877: 5.

27 “The Wire Mask Protection,” Brooklyn Eagle, August 16, 1877: 3.

28 That same obituary implausibly asserted that Al Spalding, who played for Harry Wright, “the father of professional baseball[,]” and alongside longtime NL career hits leader Cap Anson, considered Dorgan, a .274 lifetime hitter, “the greatest man on the ball field that ever donned a uniform.” “Michael Dorgan’s Career,” Meriden (Connecticut) Morning Record, May 5, 1909: 3.

Leagues rose and crumbled in those early days, franchises came and went (or switched home cities), but one thing was steadfast – pro baseball was a White man’s game. At least until early in the 1878 season, when Bud Fowler, an itinerant 20-year-old from upstate New York, became the first Black player in what came to be called Organized Baseball,

Although he was known as Bud Fowler throughout his long career, his birth name was John W. Jackson Jr. Born in 1858 in the village of Fort Plain, New York, Fowler grew up in nearby Cooperstown – in fable the birthplace of baseball, and the modern home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, where Fowler was to be enshrined in 2022 for his decades of contributions to early Black baseball.

Why John W. Jackson Jr. became Bud Fowler is a subject of speculation. The best explanation of why he changed his last name is that he wanted to make a clean break from his staid family existence. John Sr. was a barber, a trade that amounted to a middle-class profession in the economically suppressed African American world of the nineteenth century, while his son seems to have been intent on becoming a professional ballplayer, a rare and precarious existence in the 1870s for any man. As to his nickname, he appears to have been given it because he himself called other guys Bud.1

Fowler didn’t mind traveling for his baseball. Over a 30-year career, he played in locales ranging from New Mexico to New Orleans to Ontario, Canada. It was in Massachusetts that he first caught the baseball public’s eye while pitching for the amateur Chelsea Franklins outside Boston in the spring of 1878.

On April 24 he was on a “picked nine,” mostly made up of Chelseas, that defeated the Boston Red Stockings, the National League’s defending champion, 2-1. Pitching in typically chilly New England springtime weather, Fowler gave up only three hits, although the Bostons didn’t seem all that inspired – “the boys were rather unwilling,” most playing without their baseball shoes, and wearing jackets in the field.2

Hurling for Chelsea, again in lousy weather on May 15, Bud allowed a professional nonleague team from Worcester only five hits. But Chelsea lost, 3-0, as Bud was matched up against Bobby Mathews, one of the outstanding pitchers of the day.

By now he had caught the eye of the nearby Lynn Live Oaks of the International Association, a two-tier league formed in 1877 with junior members in smaller cities and towns and, in 1878, a 12-team championship tier in the United States and Ontario that included Lynn. The International Association meant to challenge the new National League for major-league hegemony; while it failed to achieve that stature, it became known as one of the first minor leagues.

So when the Live Oaks, mired in a slump and with Price, their starting pitcher, out with an injury, took the field against the London (Ontario) Tecumsehs on May 17, they tried something new. They enlisted “the young colored pitcher of the Chelseas,” integrating professional league ball to solve their pitching problem.3 This was no Jackie Robinson moment – Fowler’s tenure with the team was short-lived and did not lead to a movement to further integrate pro baseball. But there he was, a Black man on a White team.

Bud’s performance was stellar: He threw hitless ball until the fifth and gave up only two hits and a walk in seven innings. At that point the Oaks were ahead 3-0. They had scored their first run in the third inning when Patrick Gillespie, the second baseman, got a hit and was driven in on another hit by catcher Tom “Sleeper” Sullivan. Lynn followed right up with two more in the fourth on consecutive hits by right fielder George Wood, third baseman Harry Spence, and first baseman Bill Lapham.

What was meant to be a nine-inning game ended in the seventh when the Tecumsehs refused to continue after a second disagreement with an umpire’s call. Shortstop Mike Burke, the recipient of Fowler’s only base on balls, was thrown out trying to steal in the second inning. The Tecumsehs’ manager, the veteran Ross Barnes, protested and succeeded in getting umpire Henry Murphy replaced on the spot. Then, in the seventh, Burke tried to score on a hit to the outfield, but had no better luck with the second ump, James Tufts, who called him out at the plate. At that point the Tecumsehs walked off, and the game was forfeited to Lynn.4

Fowler was back in the box wearing a Live Oaks uniform the next day, again facing Worcester and Mathews.The outcome was about the same as on May 15. Mathews gave up four hits and Fowler six, but Worcester won, 6-4. Even in these early times when fielders didn’t wear gloves and many errors were made, the Live Oaks were notable for their lousy defense – they made 16 miscues (although three of them were Bud’s).5

With Price still on the mend, the Live Oaks continued to employ Fowler. He made at least two more starts for them, losing both games. Then, on June 1, the struggling Lynn team merged with independent Worcester. Players from both squads made up the new team, but the roster did not include Fowler. Mathews was Worcester’s hurler, and while he was on a short hiatus from the majors, in the end he pitched for 15 years in the big leagues and won 297 games. He was the easy choice for the merged team.

Bud was demoted to a new secondary Lynn squad. In addition to his athletic ability and baseball acumen, however, he had a third valuable trait: availability. He was ready on July 11 when the Live Oaks needed a “first class” pitcher to face the New Bedford, Massachusetts, team, Mathews having been suspended for drunkenness.6 New Bedford won, 6-0, although Bud gave up only five hits. Changing home cities did nothing to improve the Live Oaks’ fielding; they were charged with either nine or 10 errors, depending on the newspaper box score.

Fowler stayed around the Boston area at least for the first half of 1879, pitching for a team in Malden, and then for the semipro Aetnas. Jeffrey Michael Laing, his biographer, says Bud then went west to the Massachusetts-New York state line in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, for the rest of that year and 1880.7 There was only amateur ball in the Berkshires at that time, but Fowler had also followed his father into the barber profession, and could have used it, as he often did later, to sustain himself between paying baseball opportunities.

In 1881 he showed up in Guelph, Ontario, for a short time, but objections by some of his White teammates caused him to leave.8 It was just one of many times that he voluntarily or involuntarily left a team because of racism, as a promising start for Blacks in pro ball met racial opposition. Bud and dozens of others after him who were clearly identified as Black were completely forced out of Organized Baseball by 1900.

Fowler, becoming an infielder later in his career due to arm trouble, played, managed, and promoted baseball until 1909 on integrated teams, Black teams run by others and teams headed by Bud himself. Most prominently, he organized the Page Fence Giants, a leading Black team of its time, in 1895. His many career moves were the result of discrimination, discovery of better opportunities and, one suspects, a penchant for roving the world of baseball.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the Baseball-Reference.com website provided statistics and team information.

Notes

1 Jeffrey Michael Laing, Bud Fowler, Baseball’s First Black Professional, (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013), 65; Brian McKenna, “Bud Fowler,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bud-fowler/.

2 “Base Ball. The Bostons Defeated by a Picked Nine – Score, 2 to 1,” Boston Globe, April 25, 1878: 3.

3 “Base Ball. Games at Lynn, Lowell, Providence, New Haven and Other Places – Notes of the Field,” Boston Globe, May 18, 1878: 4.

4 Boston Globe, May 18, 1878.

5 “Base Ball,” Worcester Daily Spy, May 20, 1878: 4.

6 “Base Ball,” Worcester Daily Spy, July 12, 1878: 4; “New Bedford vs. Worcester,” New York Clipper, July 20, 1878: 131; McKenna, “Bud Fowler.”

7 Laing, Bud Fowler, 70.

8 McKenna, “Bud Fowler.”

When the National Association’s last place Worcester club sent a collegian out to pitch against the National League leading Chicago White Stockings in an exhibition game, it sounded like a mismatch. The result bore out that presumption … but it was the Chicagoans who were over-matched.

Lee Richmond, a 22-year-old left-hander from the Brown University team, not only shut out Cap Anson’s proud White Stockings, 11–0, that afternoon in Worcester, he did so without allowing a hit. That makes Richmond’s debut arguably the most remarkable by any pitcher against a big-league team.

The exhibition—common in those days as teams on long road trips tried to generate revenue during off days on their league schedule—was played at the Worcester Agricultural Fairgrounds, also known as Driving Park, the home field of the Worcester nine. About 500 spectators attended, most doubtless drawn by the chance to see such stars of the only major league then in existence as Anson, Abner Dalrymple, George Gore, and Ned Williamson.1

At the time of the game, Chicago stood 14–1 and led the National League by four games over Providence. The White Stockings had won eight consecutive league games with the last six coming against Boston. Worcester, just 5–13, was in last place in the nine-team National Association, then a minor league.

In an effort to invigorate his club, Worcester manager Frank Bancroft brought in three new players for their first professional game and “materially reinforced his nine.”2 Richmond was the star left-hander of the Brown University nine. Also making their debuts that day were Richmond’s catcher at Brown, W. H. Winslow, and infielder Arthur Irwin.

Initially, Richmond had no interest in challenging the National League leaders. Walter F. Angell, Richmond’s classmate and lifelong friend, later wrote that Richmond had received several telegrams from Bancroft asking Richmond to pitch, one of which Angell saw Richmond open. “He handed it to me with the comment that of course he could not go; but his college catcher Winslow came along and persuaded him to take chances and change his mind, Winslow agreeing to go with him and play as catcher.” Angell recorded.3 Those “chances” involved the cutting of classes and recitations to make the Worcester trip. Richmond and Winslow were each paid $10 and expenses for the game. According to the New York Tribune it was the need for a pair of pants that induced Richmond to turn professional. Because “Winslow figured that he would need a new pair of trousers and the $10 would help foot the bill, he induced his battery mate to go for friendship’s sake.”4

Despite never having appeared in anything more than a college game, Richmond dominated the afternoon. He walked lead-off batter Dalrymple and then retired the next 21 Chicago batters in order in the game, which was shortened to seven innings due to rain. Richmond struck out eight and did not allow a ball to be hit out of the infield.5 All of Richmond’s strikeouts came against Chicago’s four lefthanded batters, Dalrymple (1), Gore (3), Orator Shafer (3), and Bill Harbridge (1).

The Worcester defense played errorless ball. “Tricky” Nichols did good work at short, Arthur Irwin made two brilliant plays at third, and first baseman Charlie Bennett made what was described as “a remarkably fine foul catch.”6

The Worcester offense garnered 12 hits, good for 20 bases, off Chicago pitcher Frank Hankinson. Steve Brady hit the game’s first pitch for a triple and was promptly driven in by Lon Knight’s single.7 No one knew it at this stage but that was all the runs the Worcesters would need. They went on to score a total of three in the top of the first inning. Worcester had three singles, two doubles, and a triple as they batted around in the fifth to score four times and ice the game. The final score was 11–0. Brady had four hits on the day.

Those who didn’t see the game had a hard time believing the result. The next day’s Worcester Evening Gazette reported that “the progress of the game was … bulletined as usual, but the crowd who watched the black board were inclined to believe that there was some misplacement of figures…”8

Richmond’s success was primarily due to his skill. But he also had a couple of other advantages. The first was the Chicago batters’ unfamiliarity with him. It also helped that he was left-handed, for the NL featured only one left-handed pitcher at the time, Bobby Mitchell, and he pitched infrequently. Chicago’s four left-handed hitters found making contact with Richmond’s deliveries especially difficult. Further, Richmond had pitches that were unusual. He utilized a “peculiar set of curves that he had evolved. Instead of throwing curves that broke in and out his ball broke upward or downward. His jump ball was one of the biggest successes of the period, while his tantalizing drop greatly resembled the far-famed ‘fade-away’ employed by Christy Mathewson of the Giants.”9

The Chicagos and Worcesters met in another exhibition game later that same season, on September 18. The result was much the same with Richmond shutting out the Chicagos 7–0 in an eight-inning game. The Chicagos held the lead in the pennant race until August 14 and then fell all the way to fourth place, 10½ games behind the league champion Providence Grays. Richmond proved to be a “franchise player” for the Worcesters in leading them to a 19–23 record and solid fourth-place finish in the National Association. He had another no-hitter later in the year, won his major league debut, and totaled 47 wins (amateur and professional) for the season. The outstanding play of the Worcesters following the acquisition of Richmond propelled the city into the National League in 1880.

• Related link: June 12, 1880: Baseball perfection, by John R. Husman

Notes

1 Worcester Evening Gazette, June 3, 1879.

2 Providence Daily Journal, June 3, 1879.

3 Walter Angell, letter to editor of the Boston Post, August 18, 1925.

4 “Richmond’s Debut In Professional Baseball,” Brown Alumni Monthly, 1910-1911, from the New York Tribune.

5 Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1879.

6 Worcester Daily Spy, June 3, 1879.

7 Worcester Evening Gazette, June 3, 1979.

8 Worcester Evening Gazette, June 3, 1979.

9 “Richmond’s Debut In Professional Baseball,” Brown Alumni Monthly, 1910-1911, from the New York Tribune.

William Edward White’s 1879 appearance for Providence made him the first Black player to play in a major league game. He played on Brown University’s 1879 championship baseball team. White is sitting directly behind the man in the suit holding the bat.

An answer commonly given to the question of who was the first black man to play major-league baseball is still Jackie Robinson in 1947. Knowledgeable baseball people know that Robinson was preceded by the Walker brothers, Moses and Weldy, for Toledo in 1884. Recent research, led by SABR’s Peter Morris, has uncovered evidence of still earlier African American participation in the major leagues. Morris’s detective work reveals that William Edward White, a former slave, had a one-game career for the National League’s Providence Grays on June 21, 1879.

White had come north from his native Milner, Georgia, to attain his education.1 He was a student at Brown University and a member of the school’s crack baseball team, which had just claimed the college championship of 1879.2 He was, no doubt, known to the professional club that shared the same city and ballpark and which had faced the Brown nine in several early-season games that year. When the Grays’ regular first baseman, “Old Reliable” Joe Start, “broke the second finger on his left hand”3 during the Grays game of June 19, White was pressed into service as his replacement. Though he played well, he was replaced, in turn, by Jim O’Rourke, the Grays’ regular right fielder, for the remainder of Start’s absence.

The Grays were a very strong club that included future Hall of Famers O’Rourke, player-manager George Wright, and John Ward, and stood second to Chicago in the National League standings in what would be a pennant-winning season for the Rhode Island team. The Clevelands rested in the cellar on White’s career day. After falling behind early, Providence rallied for a 5–3 win as the 19-year-old Ward notched one of his 47 victories that season.

For his part, Bill White “played first base in fine style.”4 The Providence Journal wrote of his play at first base in the game, “White, first baseman of the University Nine, occupied that position for Providence, and it is needless to state that he was as expert and effective, as ever, catching some widelythrown balls with great ease. He was apparently cool and collected throughout and will be a valuable substitute for the unfortunate [injured Joe] Start.”5 The Providence Morning Star commented on his offense and the support of his Brown University teammates, “The Varsity boys lustily cheered their favorite at times, and howled with delight when he got a safe hit in the ninth inning, as they also did his magnificent steals of second in that and the fifth inning.”6 He had a single in four at-bats and the two stolen bases, scored a run, and played errorless ball, recording 12 putouts.

The Providence Journal article, discussing the upcoming series with Boston, wrote that “White has been engaged to cover first in the series.”7 This did not come to pass and, for reasons undetermined except by speculation, William Edward White never again played in the major leagues.

He did continue to play for Brown through the fall 1880 season and subsequently left school without graduating.

Peter Morris has determined that White was indeed partially African American by identifying him, in federal census records, as the mulatto son of Andrew J. White, a white man, and Hannah White, his mulatto domestic servant.8 Confirmation was found when Morris examined Andrew White’s will of 1877 and found that William Edward White, Anna Nora White, and Sarah Adelaide White were “the children of my servant Hannah.”9 He stipulated that William and a sister “now at school in the North” be able to complete their education.”10

Other than census reports, no known contemporary record made after White moved north contains reference to his race. These records include those at Brown University and newspaper accounts of the Grays’ game in which he played. In the 1880 Federal census he identified himself as a 19-year-old white student born in Georgia and living in Providence.

Research by W. Zachary Malinowski, a Providence Journal investigative reporter, has shown that White attended the Friends Boarding School in Providence before enrolling at Brown. Malinowski found an undated White record there that included a Chicago address for him. Morris did followup work and found White in Chicago in both the 1900 and 1910 federal censuses where, in each case, White again declared his race to be white.

By the retroactive application of genetic rules, William Edward White is the first known black man to play major-league baseball. Within his society, however, he was not. He played baseball and lived his life as a white man. If White, who was also of white blood, said he was white and he was not challenged, he was white in his time and circumstances.11

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.

Notes

The first professional baseball game played in Manhattan took place on September 29, 1880, between the Metropolitan Club of New York and the National Club of Washington. This late a date is remarkable. Organized baseball had arisen among New York clubs a quarter century previous, and openly professional baseball had been played for over a decade. So why did it take so long to reach Manhattan? The explanation lies in geography and economic and social history.

The geography of New York City (meaning, in this era, the island of Manhattan) tended against professional baseball within its limits. The city grew from the south end, gradually spreading up the island. Within the developed area there were no good locations for a professional ball ground, for the simple reason that any suitable lot could be more profitably developed for other purposes. There were suitable lots above the line of development, but inadequate transportation infrastructure for spectators to easily get to them. It was cheaper and easier to take a ferry, crossing either the Hudson River to Hoboken or the East River to Brooklyn.

Many clubs based in New York City played in Hoboken or Brooklyn. The first ballfields enclosed by a fence – a necessary condition for charging admission – were constructed in Brooklyn. This had the proper balance of enough population density (both those residing in Brooklyn and visiting from New York) to support large paying crowds, with land values low enough that baseball exhibitions were an economically rational use of the land. The most prominent New York nine was the Mutual Club. It played in Hoboken in the amateur era and then moved to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn in the professional era.

Baseball in Manhattan was further delayed by the general economic Depression of 1873-1879. Indeed, professional baseball went into general decline. The National League, founded in 1876, had a high turnover of club failures in its early years, with vacancies filled by bringing in outside clubs. The nadir was the summer of 1880. The National League had its full complement of eight members, but there were only two other fully professional clubs in existence.

This general decline does not explain why such a large metropolis as New York could not support a professional club. The Mutuals collapsed late in the 1876 season. The Hartford club stepped in and played the 1877 season in Brooklyn, but they too failed and were not replaced. A similar process occurred in Philadelphia, leaving the two largest metropolises in the country without professional – much less major league – baseball clubs. Their long histories with baseball worked against them. They both had baseball establishments, which were inflexible and often corrupt. Advances in both playing and business techniques occurred elsewhere, leaving the New York establishment unable to compete. Professional ball’s absence acted like a farmer leaving a field fallow, giving it time to renew itself. This allowed a new generation, and the more forward-looking of the previous generation, to create a new establishment unburdened by the past.

The baseball recovery began late in the season of 1880. In August the Nationals and the Rochester Club scheduled a series of games in Brooklyn. This would prove visionary, but the decision was one of desperation. Recent history had shown the metropolis to be a baseball dead zone, but both clubs were in dire straits and prepared to try anything. They played three days in a row, beginning Wednesday August 11. The first game drew only three or four hundred spectators, but attendance increased with each successive game.

This caught the attention of the dormant New York baseball community. Several respectable nines sprung up, recruiting from the ample supply of inactive players. Most were ephemeral organizations, essentially pick-up teams that wouldn’t outlast the season. Two men, however, saw potential for something more substantial.

These were John B. Day, a cigar manufacturer, baseball fan, and unaccomplished player, and James Mutrie, an experienced professional player and manager, if not at the top level. Day provided the capital and Mutrie the baseball know-how. Day’s genius was in recognizing that he was in the right place at the right time. Baseball was reviving in New York, with no established club holding the public’s loyalty. Furthermore, the time had come for professional ball to be played on Manhattan. Railroad infrastructure had developed such that paying spectators could easily reach a site beyond the edge of development.

An eminently suitable parcel was available immediately beyond the northern end of Central Park, and easily reached by no fewer than four rail lines. This property was owned by James Gordon Bennett, son of the founder of the New York Herald. He was a member of the Manhattan Polo Association, which had been using it for several years. Day leased the ground, its use to be divided between the polo club, with two days a week, and Day’s new Metropolitan Baseball Club, with four days. Sunday, of course, was off limits, both being respectable organizations.

By acting quickly to set up a ball club on a permanent basis, Day could gain control of the New York market. The venture came with risk. Setting up the club on a permanent basis meant investing capital in salaries and real-estate improvements. Should the baseball revival prove illusory, this capital would be lost.

The improvements were substantial, with facilities not only for polo and baseball, but for track and field sports (“athletics” in the vocabulary of the day) and football, with a grandstand capable of holding a thousand spectators and encircled by a fence to ensure payment for entry.

Mutrie recruited the new Metropolitan team as the Polo Grounds were being prepared, rapidly putting together a credible nine. On September 15 they opened a series of warm-up games in Brooklyn and Hoboken against some of the new ad hoc collections, winning eight of nine games, most of the easily.

The occasion of the opening game of the new Polo Grounds called for more substantial competition than a glorified pick-up team. This was the National Club of Washington. The Nationals were an established team, the second of that name. The original Nationals had been the premier Washington club in the 1860s, most famous today for their being the first eastern club to tour the west (meaning what we today call the Midwest) in 1867. They faded away in the early professional period. The second Nationals were founded in 1877. This was an inauspicious time to be getting into professional baseball, and it is a testament to their management that they rode out the darkest years. Their prospects were excellent in the fall of 1880. They had good reason to believe that they would be inducted into the National League for 1881 and were making the investments to be competitive at that level. They provided the Metropolitans with the perfect balance. They were decent competition while still being beatable, still fielding their lineup of 1880.

The afternoon of the game opened well. Some 2,000 to 2,500 spectators showed up. While tiny by modern standards, and small by the standards of just a few years later, this was a very good crowd in 1880. Matters took a turn for the worse when the Nationals were late. Play was advertised for 3:30. By 4:00 some of the crowd was beginning to leave and a scrub game was being organized. The Nationals finally arrived, and play was called at 4:20 with the Metropolitans batting first. The game was everything that could be asked for given the late start. The leadoff batter opened with a triple and scored two outs later on a ground ball through the second baseman’s legs. The score was tied 2-2 after two innings. The Metropolitans scored two runs in the top of the fifth, and the game was called on account of darkness in the sixth, for a 4-2 victory for the home club.

This victory was followed by two more over the Nationals the next two days. These early victories set a good tone. It was fortunate that they got them in early. The end of September closed out the National League season and opened the October barnstorming season. The following Monday the decidedly mediocre Worcester club came into town and beat the Metropolitans 7-3. The Metropolitans would go on to win against National League clubs about one game in three. They weren’t yet ready for the big time, but their future was bright. (The Nationals faced a bleaker future. The National League chose the new Detroit club over them, and proceeded to find a thin excuse to steal away the Nationals’ best players. This broke the club, and it finally collapsed the following summer.)

The new Polo Grounds would prove a financial bonanza. The Metropolitans could limit their travel, and their travel expenses, and let other teams come to them, to large crowds. They managed this for the next two seasons. This strategy had run its course by 1883. Both the National League and the new American Association courted Day, and he managed the neat trick of playing both sides and getting a franchise in both leagues.

With two franchises and only one team, he signed the players of the defunct Troy team en masse, combined the Metropolitan and the former Troy players into one pool, and divided them up again, assigning the better half to the National League club. He sold the American Association half a few years later, and it lasted only a few years beyond that. He kept the National League side for a decade, until he succumbed to a later economic depression and was forced to sell.

The National League team was, of course, the Giants. The American Association side kept the old “Metropolitan” name. Some modern moderns dismiss the connection between the Metropolitans of 1880 and the Giants of today because of this. This is misguided. The Metropolitans of 1880 fathered the Giants every bit as much as they did the Metropolitans of 1883. Or better, to choose a different biological metaphor, they underwent mitosis, splitting into two. The 1880 season was a watershed year in professional baseball, with not only its entry into Manhattan but the creation of one of its storied franchises.

Photo credit

The earliest known image of Polo Grounds I in New York, from a Yale-Princeton baseball game in 1882. Originally published in Harper’s Young People, v. III, 1882. (PUBLIC DOMAIN)