April 21, 1875: Three’s a Crowd: Centennials become Philadelphia’s third National Association team

In the waning days of December 1873, a small group of National Association executives known as the Championship Committee voted to award that season’s pennant to the Boston Red Stockings in a contentious 2-to-1 decision.1 The deciding vote was cast by Elias Hicks Hayhurst, a representative of the Philadelphia Athletics. In siding with fellow committeeman and Red Stockings founder Harry Wright, Hayhurst had broken ranks with the group’s third member, David Reid. Reid, the corresponding secretary of the Philadelphia Base Ball Club, commonly known as the White Stockings or Whites, favored disqualifying Boston over its use of a player he considered ineligible.2

Within the next year, Hayhurst further alienated his Philadelphia brethren by leaving the Athletics to form the Centennial Base Ball Club, the City of Brotherly Love’s third entrant in the 13-team Association.3

Hayhurst somehow believed that another professional nine could prosper in Philadelphia despite a lackluster economy brought on by the Panic of 1873. He may have felt that he could form a team that locals would support by parlaying the business acumen he’d gained during 13 years as a member of the Athletics management4 with the influence he was gaining as a recently elected member of the Philadelphia Common Council.5

The New York Clipper suggested that a three-way competition would help the two incumbents “if it is properly managed,” recalling how the formation of the Whites in 1873 had “put thousands of dollars into the pockets of the Athletics.”6 “There is nothing like rivalry to give interest to baseball contests,” added the unnamed writer, most likely editor Henry Chadwick.

Whatever his motivation, Hayhurst was committed to making the club a success, starting with its name. In selecting Centennials, he was associating the team with the highly anticipated  celebration of the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which took place in Philadelphia.7

A few weeks after the close of the 1874 championship season, Hayhurst had already secured the core of his new team. Retaining the role of manager for himself, he had 30-year-old Bill Craver, previously with the Whites, as captain,8 George Bechtel, another ex-White and member of the 1871 NA champion Athletics, as pitcher, and local amateur Tim McGinley as catcher.

Rebuffed by a city council committee in his efforts to build a ballpark on a former parade ground in the Moyamensing section of Philadelphia,9 Hayhurst gained use of a former horse market lot at 24th Street and Ridge Avenue in North Philadelphia, a location served by several streetcar lines. The Centennial Base Ball Grounds was in place by mid-April. Though “lacking in size,” it boasted two “fine” pavilions, a new clubhouse, a level diamond with a “hard and barren” dirt infield, and “a high and neat fence to inclose the place.”10

The Centennials were to have opened their championship season on Monday, April 19, at home against the Whites, recast as the “Pearl Stockings,” or simply Pearls, by the Philadelphia Inquirer, after the color of their hosiery.11 That contest, planned for the 100th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first skirmishes of the American Revolution, was pushed out two days due to unseasonably low temperatures.12

Roughly 1,000 spectators were on hand for the Centennials’ inaugural game on Wednesday, a number that the New York Clipper claimed would have been higher had the weather not been “cold and disagreeable.”13 Both sides made a positive first impression on the sportswriters covering the game. The Pearls, identified as “Philadelphia” in most game accounts but typically as the Quakers by the Philadelphia Times, wore “gray pants, white flannel shirts and dark red stockings.”14 The Centennials were clad in “neat and tasteful” uniforms, with white flannel caps, pants, belts, and shirts, the latter emblazoned with a large C across the chest, and “stockings of chocolate hue.”15

After the two sides agreed to have John Clapp, catcher of the idle Athletics, serve as umpire, the Pearls won the toss and elected to take the field first. Philadelphia native Cherokee Fisher, a two-time Association ERA leader who depended “more upon speed than strategy,”16 took his place in the pitching box, with 20-year-old Charley Snyder behind the plate. Both were new to the team, Fisher last with the Hartford Dark Blues and Snyder with the Baltimore Canaries.

First to bat for the Centennials was a player well known to their opponents – John Radcliff. A utility player for the Whites in 1874, he had been expelled from the team in September for trying to bribe an umpire to throw a game for an opposing nine. Reinstated by the Association before the 1875 season, Radcliff signed on with Hayhurst.17

The Centennials failed to score in the opening frame, but the Pearls had more luck off the Centennial pitcher, Bechtel, in their first turn at bat. A single by Irish-born left fielder Tim Murnane, followed by a trio of errors (two committed by Centennial backstop McGinley), gave the visitors the first tally of the game.18

The Centennials knotted the score at 1-1 in the second, on a rally that began with a “fine hit” by their “handsome” left fielder,19 Fred Treacey. The co-holder of the NA’s first home-run crown in 1871, Treacey reached second when Pearls second baseman and manager Mike McGeary muffed a throw from Snyder on what may have been an attempted steal.20 A succession of Pearl blunders, by third baseman Levi Meyerle, center fielder Orator Shafer, and possibly journeyman shortstop Charles Fulmer, brought Treacey home.21

Despite a limited track record as a hurler (he pitched in only 12 Association games over four seasons), Bechtel was a handful for the Pearls in the early innings. His “peculiar delivery,” described as similar to that of Boston’s soon-to-be-star Jack Manning, enabled him to throw a sinker of some kind, “the ball dropping as it nears the bat.”22

Batting third in Hayhurst’s lineup, Bechtel helped give himself the lead in the fourth. After knocking a “splendid” double, he came home on a single by Treacey.23 The Pearls came right back with a run in the bottom of the fourth, made possible by the shoddy fielding of Craver at first base and Radcliff at shortstop.

McGeary’s squad took back the lead in the sixth, scoring three times on defensive lapses to go up by a score of 5-2. The Centennials tallied three runs of their own over the next two innings, one on Bechtel’s second double of the game, “hit down to the centre-field fence,” but gave up a pair on “unearned singles.” Neither side scored in the ninth, giving the Pearls a 7-5 victory.

The Centennial bats put up a good fight on offense, collecting eight hits as compared with nine for their opponent. Their fielding on the other hand was abominable – aside from Bechtel, who turned a pair of line drives into double plays. According to the New York Clipper box score, Hayhurst’s nine committed 23 errors, including eight by McGinley and four each by Radcliff and Craver.24

Consistently overmatched by their opponents, by mid-May the Centennials were drawing ever-diminishing crowds to Centennial Park. After being “Bostonized” at home on May 30, losing 5-0 to the Red Stockings in a game played before only 100 spectators, the 2-12 team disbanded.25 The Centennial ballplayers were scattered to the winds. Bechtel and Craver moved over to the Athletics, Treacey joined the Pearls, and McGinley hooked up with the New Haven Elm Citys.  Several, Radcliff among them, were set adrift, never to play for another Association team, nor any member of that organization’s successor, the National League.

The 1875 season proved to be the Association’s last, due in part to the actions (or inaction) of Hayhurst. Weeks before the start of the season, Hayhurst, in his role as Chairman of the NA Judiciary Committee, presided over a hearing at the NA annual convention to resolve a contract dispute between the Athletics and the Chicago White Stockings, who both claimed to have a valid contract with shortstop Davy Force.26

When the committee elected to award Force to the Athletics, White Stockings President William Hulbert was furious. He was convinced that he’d been swindled by a committee that included a majority of Philadelphians: Hayhurst, Pearls President George Concannon, and Athletics President Charles Spering, who used his authority as NA president to appoint himself to the committee. Hayhurst could have resigned the chairmanship in protest of Spering’s conflict of interest, but he didn’t.

Determined to break free of the corrupt practices that the Force Case epitomized, Hulbert set about forming a new league to begin play in 1876. The allure of that venture, the National League, drained the Association of its most profitable members, bringing about its downfall.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the Sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted summaries of National Association annual winter meetings as described in Baseball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900 (Phoenix: SABR, 2018) as well as the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites.

Notes

1 “The Professional Championship,” New York Clipper, January 10, 1874: 323.

2 “Philadelphia Base Ball Club,” Philadelphia Inquirer, November 25, 1873: 2; William J. Ryczek, “1874: Nine Men Are Quite Enough,” in Baseball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900 (Phoenix: SABR, 2018), 121. The player in question was Canadian Bob Addy. Reid contended that by playing for an ad hoc team in a July pickup game, Addy should not have been eligible to play for any Association club for 60 days, in accordance with league rules – a restriction that Boston presumed did not apply to Addy.

3 “The Professional Gathering of 1875,” New York Clipper, March 13, 1875: 397.

4 Joining the Athletics as an outfielder in 1861, Hayhurst represented the club in various capacities over the next 13 years, including serving as vice president from 1866 to 1867 and president in 1872 and 1873. As vice president, Hayhurst in 1867 encouraged the Pythian Club of Philadelphia, a prominent all-Black baseball club to submit an application for membership in the National Association of Base Ball Players, an application they later withdrew on Hayhurst’s advice to avoid outright rejection by the Associations’ openly racist governing body. That episode is widely considered to have precipitated the NABBP issuing the first color line, barring, in writing, Black ballplayers from playing organized professional baseball in the United States. “Elias Hicks Hayhurst,” Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/88335448/elias-hicks-hayhurst, accessed December 12, 2024; “The History of the Philadelphia Pythians,” Philadelphia Baseball Review, https://www.philadelphiabaseballreview.com/p/the-history-of-philadelphia-pythians.html, accessed December 12, 2024.

5 After winning the Republican primary by reportedly a single vote, Hayhurst was elected to the city’s governing body, representing the 16th Ward. “Municipal Politics,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 21, 1874: 1; “Ward Officers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 18, 1874: 1.

6 “Baseball in St. Louis,” New York Clipper, January 9, 1875: 322.

7 Hayhurst was also joining a growing trend of Pennsylvanians naming their baseball nines “Centennials.” The author identified four municipalities that had teams of that name by April 1875: Harrisburg, Lebanon, Hummelstown, and Shippensburg.

8 Baseball-Reference lists Craver as manager of the Centennials but the author found multiple sources that identified Hayhurst as the team’s skipper. See, for example “Base Hits,” Philadelphia Times, April 10, 1875: 4, which identifies Hayhurst as manager along with someone named Rollins, or “Mutual vs. Centennial,” New York Clipper, May 8, 1875: 45.

9 “Improving Independence Square,” Philadelphia Times, March 24, 1875: 4. Hayhurst’s inability to secure the approval to use the roughly one square block of unused land east of Moyamensing prison suggests that he had little influence with fellow Council members after his first year in office.

10 “The Centennial Club,” New York Clipper, April 3, 1875: 2. Initial plans called for the park to include three pavilions – “two for ladies and the other for gentlemen.” “Ball, Base and Bat,” Philadelphia Times, April 22, 1875: 1.

11 “Base Ball,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 26, 1874: 3.

12 “Baseball Notes,” New York Clipper, April 24, 1875: 27. Temperatures dipped to 20 degrees, an all-time low for that date in Philadelphia. National Weather Service, “NOWData – NOAA Online Data,” weather.gov, accessed December 15, 2024, https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=phi.

13 “Philadelphia vs. Centennial,” New York Clipper, May 1, 1875: 35. An 1876 classified ad suggests the ballpark had seating capacity for double that number. “Centennial Base Ball Grounds,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 24, 1876: 5.

14 “Philadelphia vs. Centennial.”

15 “Ball, Base and Bat”; “Philadelphia vs. Centennial.” In advance of this game, the Centennial’s dark brown socks prompted the Philadelphia Times to dub them the “Chocolate Stockings.” The name apparently didn’t stick. The author failed to uncover its further use beyond first mention. “Base Hits,” Philadelphia Times, April 10, 1875: 4.

16 “Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1875: 16.

17 “Base-Ball,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 9, 1874: 2; “Base Ball,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, March 2, 1875: 4.

18 “Philadelphia vs. Centennial.” Murnane went on to lead the NA in stolen bases in 1875, with 30. Box scores and summaries of this game consistently identified him as “Murnan.”

19 Four years earlier, while with the Chicago White Stockings, Treacey’s four four-baggers earned him a share of the NA’s first home-run crown, along with Lip Pike and Levi Meyerle.

20 “Ball, Base and Bat.”

21 “Ball, Base and Bat.” The New York Clipper game summary differed slightly on the events of this inning, claiming errors by McGeary, Shafer and Meyerle brought Treacey in the first Centennial run.

22 “Ball, Base and Bat.” In 1875 and 1876, Manning went 34-7 with a combined ERA of 2.24, while playing multiple positions on the diamond for manager Wright when not in the pitching box.

23 “Philadelphia vs. Centennial.” Given his hands-on nature, it’s just as likely that Hayhurst set the lineup, not the captain, Craver, the latter being the convention throughout professional baseball in the 1870s.

24 “Philadelphia vs. Centennial.”

25 “The Championship Record,” New York Clipper, June 5, 1875: 74; “Base Ball,” Boston Globe, May 25, 1875: 5. Coincidentally, Opening Day umpire John Clapp also officiated the Centennials’ final match.

26 William J. Ryczek, “1875: The Force Case,” in Baseball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900 (Phoenix: SABR, 2018), 126.