Big-Time Baseball in A ‘Sub-Arctic Lumber Village’: The Red Stockings Come To Ottawa

“On their arrival at the grounds, the Club at once proceeded to practice with their ball, pitching and catching with an expertness that opened the eyes of the spectators. The sinewy arms of the players sent the ball almost with the velocity of a musket shot, without describing a curve, but straight and true to the hands of the catcher. . . . The “Red Stockings” are all heavy men, very strong and active, in fact, picked men. They are paid regular salaries of from $1,800 to $2,500 per annum each, by the Boston club, to do nothing else but to play base ball, and they go from one city to another through the United States and Canada, playing matches for the gate money and for large stakes.” — Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872.1

 

 

It was as if the Red Sox or the Braves had come to town to play your office softball team. It was a total mismatch from beginning to end. But nobody seemed to mind.

On Tuesday, August 27, 1872, the Boston Red Stockings, of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, got off the train in Ottawa. The rough-hewn city of 21,545, recently dismissed as a “sub-arctic lumber village” by a visiting Oxford historian2, was about to play host to arguably the best baseball team on the planet3, here for an exhibition match against the fledgling Ottawa Base Ball Club, est. 1870. The match was to take place at the club’s brand-new 10-acre grounds near the southern foot of Elgin Street, just beyond the then city limits. The facility featured a seven-foot-high wooden fence and seating for spectators. “Ample refreshments”4 would be available, but no “spirituous liquors.”5

In those early days of organized baseball, barnstorming was often a more lucrative proposition than playing erratically scheduled league games. And so the Boston team spent a chunk of each season traversing baseball’s hinterlands, to smaller centers—even “sub-arctic lumber villages”—where curious fans might be willing to part with 50 cents for a glimpse of baseball played at its highest level.

For the Red Stockings the Ottawa appearance marked the seventh stop on a nine-game rail journey that began in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on August 20 and finished up in Montreal 10 days later. Apparently, the unwritten rule that a clearly superior team shouldn’t go out of its way to run up the score on a hapless opponent had not been written yet: Six games into their trip the Red Stockings had outscored their amateur opponents in Michigan and Southern Ontario by a 276–19 margin. Not surprisingly, nobody expected much of a showing from the Ottawa lads, a spirited group of amateurs in just their second year of play. But that was hardly the point.

A SPORTING HOLIDAY

As it happened Tuesday, August 27, 1872, in the capital might have been the greatest confluence of bat-and-ball talent in Canadian history, and the city declared a civic holiday to mark the day. If the Red Stockings weren’t enough of a late-summer sporting diversion, the best cricket team in the world, the touring English Gentlemen, featuring a bearded bear of a man, the legendary family doctor and all-rounder William Gilbert Grace, the Babe Ruth of the wickets, was also in town.6 In 1872 the leisurely, class-bound, British sport was still more widely played in Canada than the fast, brash, cash-driven American upstart. That would quickly change.

The big cricket match was a two-day affair, with play getting under way at Rideau Hall, the residence of Canada’s Governor General, slightly before noon. The days leading up to the holiday had been hot and humid. But late Monday night, as if on cue, it had rained enough to clear the air and settle the dust, but not enough to turn the city’s unpaved streets into rivers of mud. The day was fresh and breezy, with a scattering of white clouds. Three thousand spectators, including, for a few overs at least, several curious Red Stockings, packed the grounds at Rideau Hall to watch the Gentlemen XI go up against a team of 22 local players, as was their custom on these colonial visits. The final score when the match ended the following day: England 201, Ottawa 42.

AWE AT FIRST SIGHT

Ironically, the captain of the Red Stockings, a man later anointed “The Father of Professional Base Ball Playing”7, was himself a member of a prominent English cricketing family. He was Sheffield-born Harry Wright, whose father Sam had been lured to the United States to work as a cricket professional in 1837. The younger Wright, too, had begun his athletic career as a 15-year-old cricket pro in Hoboken, New Jersey. But around 1858 he discovered baseball. And over the next decade, although continuing to earn a living at cricket, Wright became convinced that baseball was destined to become America’s game, and that people would willingly pay to watch it played at an elite level.

On the day of “the great international baseball match”8, the Red Stockings arrived at the field by horse-drawn bus for a 3 P.M. start. They stepped out in their light-brown flannel uniforms with their trademark red hose and red belts, and wowed the crowd with their rapid-fire, Globetrotteresque pregame routine. It was awe at first sight.

“The few minutes play previous to the commencement of the match convinced all who were present that the Ottawa club would have no show against the professionals,” said the Eeyores at the Ottawa Free Press, “and there were very few even of the most sanguine of the Ottawa men who would bet one to ten that our club would obtain a single run.”9 Again—hardly the point. The event was more Chautauqua—equal parts entertainment and education—than serious sporting competition.

The Red Stockings lineup boasted three future Hall of Famers—both of baseball’s Wright Brothers, Harry and George, and pitcher Albert Goodwill Spalding, the future sporting goods magnate—as well as second baseman Ross Barnes, who, four years later, would become the National League’s first-ever batting champion, with an average of .429. The squad featured no fewer than four future big-league managers—both Wrights, first baseman Charlie Gould, and catcher Cal McVey.

Their opponents that day were 23-year-old refrigeration dealer Harry Cluff at second base; hotel barkeep Freeman Daniels, 23, in right field; John Cutler, likely a lumber salesman, at third; blacksmith and team founder Tom Cluff, 29, at first; 23-year-old painter Tommy Blythe (often written “Blyth”) behind the plate; Bob Lang, a 28-year-old land surveyor, in the pitcher’s box; Alastair Larwill (sometimes written “Larwell”) in center; clerk Will (or “Billy”) McMahon, in left; and another clerk, Tommy Spencer, 25, at short.

There were as yet no gloves, no catchers masks, no pitching mound. Spalding and Lang threw underhand from a distance of 45 feet, batters could call for a pitch high or low, and it took nine balls to earn a walk.

The festivities got underway at 3, before about 1,000 spectators (some estimates said up to 3,000), who had arrived on foot, by horse-drawn carriage and by boat on the Rideau Canal. The Garrison Artillery band played throughout the two-and-a-half-hour game.

SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Ottawa won the toss, and elected to bat second. It was downhill from there. Although the Red Stockings reportedly found Lang’s pitching a little baffling early on, they adjusted quickly, blowing the game open with 17 runs in the third. All told Barnes knocked a pair of two-run homers and tallied eight runs, as did both Wright brothers. McVey scored nine runs.

Ottawa managed about seven base hits off Spalding, including a single and a double by Harry Cluff and a single by his brother Tom. But they failed to push across a single run. Final score: Boston 64, Ottawa 0.

“The ‘slaughter of the innocents was wholesale’,” reported the Ottawa Times, “and they left the field, realizing how much they had yet to learn to obtain a degree of proficiency in the game. We do not mean to insinuate that the Ottawas are inapt players; on the contrary, we believe them to be an excellent amateur club, but totally unfit to hold a candle to the Red Stockings. . . .”10

Perhaps the biggest skill gap between the clubs—more of a chasm, really—was in their defensive play. The Ottawas allowed 24 men to reach base on errors, leading to 46 unearned runs. Boston made just two errors. “The extraordinary fielding of ‘the short stop,’ Mr. G. Wright, who, in this position, is excelled by none, was watched with eagerness,” said the Free Press. “The wonderful velocity with which he delivers a ball to the first baseman is marvellous.”11

If August 27, 1872, was a landmark day in Ottawa sports history, it was a watershed one as well: Ottawa fans had seen the future, and it was the Red Stockings.

THE RED STOCKINGS RETURN

A year later just before a return visit by the peripatetic Boston club, the Ottawa Citizen ran its first-ever story exposing the dangers of boys playing ball—baseball, not cricket—on downtown streets. “The police will bear this in mind,” tut-tutted the anonymous reporter.13 The game was putting down some roots in the capital.

The Red Stockings paid a return visit on August 26, 1873, with an even stronger lineup than they’d mustered the previous year. In the offseason, Harry Wright bolstered his squad with two more future Hall of Famers—future National Association and National League batting champ, catcher Deacon White, and first baseman and Yale-educated attorney “Orator Jim” O’Rourke. He also added the first Canadian-born major leaguer, Bob “The Magnet” Addy, an ex-cricketer from Port Hope, Canada West (now Ontario), the man often credited with inventing the baseball slide.

But the Ottawas had also strengthened their lineup, adding five new players. The recruits included two buddies from Utica, New York—20-year-old second baseman George “Juice” Latham and teenage hurler-third baseman William “Dink” Davis, who also served as team captain in 1873. They came to Ottawa along with catcher Mike “Bucky” Ledwith, from Brooklyn, New York. Improbably, two of these men would see big-league action within two years.

Ledwith (whose name usually appeared in the Ottawa press as “Leadworth” or even “Latchworth”) played one game with the National Association Brooklyn Atlantics, on August 19, 1874, making him the first ex-Ottawa player to make it to the big time. The second, Latham, eventually played for four major-league teams and managed two. Davis, meanwhile, made headlines across the U.S. in the 1880s and 1890s, not for his baseball prowess but for his wizardry with a deck of cards. In the early 1880s he was rumored to have pocketed $100,000 during a 48-hour binge of the gambling card game faro in New York City.

How the Ottawas enticed these ringers north is unclear. It’s extremely unlikely the club would have been in a position to pay them much, if anything. Perhaps it provided them opportunities for employment. Indeed, during Latham’s time in Canada, he reportedly worked in a factory and as a baggage man on a train.

WEAK AND PUNY

But even with Juice, Dink, and Bucky in the lineup, the Ottawas, in their blue-and-white uniforms, were no match for the Red Stockings. “The Ottawa players are all slim, lithe young men, but they look weak and puny beside the fine brawny fellows against whom they are pitted,” said the Ottawa Times.14

Fifty-five years later an elderly former Ottawa resident offered this glimpse of the kind of showmanship the brawny Bostonians brought to the game. “One peculiar incident . . . recurs to my mind,” he said of the Red Stockings’ 1873 appearance. “A short but very high fly was knocked towards Harry Wright. He took off his cap and held it as if to catch the falling ball, but dropped it when the sphere seemed about a foot or two away and caught the ball in his efficient hands.”15

This time around the locals knocked 20 runs off Boston’s total from the year before. They even managed to score a few runs off Al Spalding. The final score, under dark and drizzly skies, was 44-4 in favor of Boston. For the Ottawa boys it must have felt as good as a win.

The next morning, with a day to fill before heading off to Ogdensburg, New York, the restless Wright arranged for a cricket match against a patchwork 11 “hurriedly got up”16 by the Ottawa Cricket Club. Boston, with the Wright brothers sharing the bowling, came out on top 110-62, “the large score run up by them, undoubtedly due to the wretched fielding of the Ottawa men.”17

That was the morning. After lunch the Red Stockings returned to the Base Ball Grounds, where, in front of a small weekday crowd of mostly boys, the visitors and their hosts formed two nines, with Harry Wright’s picks taking on Spalding’s. The Wrights scored two in the ninth to win 19-18. It was the first remotely competitive match the Bostons played on Canadian turf.

The “got up” cricket-baseball doubleheader in Ottawa towards the end of a long road trip is indicative of how much the boys from Boston lived to play. They were keen to work up a sweat even when they didn’t have to. The next morning, having further stoked baseball passions in the Canadian capital, the Red Stockings grabbed the 7:15 train for their next stop, Ogdensburg, New York. It was the last time they would visit Ottawa.

AN OTTAWA RED STOCKING

Among the Ottawa boys the two future big leaguers, Ledwith and Latham, earned especially positive reviews in the local papers for their play against (and with) the Red Stockings. The Ottawa Times said Ledwith “did good service, and, as a catcher, has few, if any, equals in the city.”18 Latham earned praise from the Times as “a quick catcher and a steady batter.”19 The Ottawa Citizen meanwhile called his play “equal to anything on the side of the Bostons.”20

And Latham impressed more than just the press. Two years later George Wright, based on what he had seen in Ottawa, signed the 22-year-old to a three-year contract to play first base for the Red Stockings. The deal was worth $560 in its first year and $800 in subsequent years. But Latham, his weight increasingly becoming an issue, appeared in just 16 games with Boston, batting .269. The big-boned Latham eventually carried 250 pounds on his 5’ 8” frame and earned the nickname “Jumbo.” Wright released him, ostensibly so he could become player-manager of National Association rival New Haven Elm Citys.

In 1876 Latham returned to Canada as second baseman-manager—and the first openly professional hire—of the London Tecumsehs of the Canadian Association of Base Ball. His old Ottawa buddy Mike Ledwith soon joined him, and the Tecumsehs won the inaugural league pennant. In 1877 Latham played for the Louisville Grays of the fledgling National League.

Long-time SABR member DAVID McDONALD is a writer, filmmaker and broadcaster with a particular interest in Ottawa baseball history. He has contributed to a number of SABR publications, including Our Game Too, Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings, and The Babe, as well as The Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and SABR’s Bio Project. Other baseball writings have appeared in the Ottawa Citizen, the Globe and Mail, and the Canadian anthology All I Dreamed About Was Baseball. He has also presented papers on left-handed catcher Jack Humphries and on communications guru Marshall McLuhan at the Canadian Baseball History Conference.

 

NOTES

1 “The Civic Holiday. The Great Cricket Match. The Boston Red Stockings, Picnic on Major’s Hill,” Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

2 Goldwin Smith, quoted by Anthony Wilson-Smith. “Thomas Mackay, Ottawa’s Master Builder,” Historic Canada, https://www.historicacanada.ca/news-media/president-notes/thomas-mackay-ottawas-master-builder, April 26, 2022.

3 The National Association lasted five seasons before being supplanted by the National League. The Red Stockings finished first four times. Altogether, they won 225 games and lost only 60, for a .790 winning percentage. At the time of their 1872 tour, they had a 30-3 record in league contests.

4 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Free Press, August 23, 1872: 2.

5 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Free Press, August 23, 1872: 2.

6 Grace was considered the third most recognizable individual in Victorian England, after the Royal couple. Although quite ill on the day, he insisted on playing. Despite tallying 73 runs his play was considered lackluster.

7 Henry Chadwick, Spalding’s Base Ball Guide, and Official League Book for 1895-1896 (New York: A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1896), 162.

8 “International Match,” Ottawa Free Press, August 28, 1878: 1.

9 “The Civic Holiday,” Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

10 “Base Ball,” Ottawa Times, August 29, 1872: 3.

11 “The Civic Holiday,” Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

12 “The Civic Holiday,” Ottawa Citizen, August 28, 1872: 4.

13 “Improper,” Ottawa Citizen, August 8, 1873: 4.

14 “Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Times, August 27, 1873: 2.

15 «Another Version of Famous Red Stockings-Ottawa Match,” Ottawa Citizen, August 11, 1928: 1.

16 “Cricket,” Ottawa Times, August 28, 1873: 2.

17 “Cricket,” Ottawa Times, August 28, 1873: 2.

18 “Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Times, August 27, 1873: 1.

19 “Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Times, August 27, 1873: 1.

20 “The Base Ball Match,” Ottawa Citizen, August 27, 1873: 4.