Boston Red Stockings: The 1873 Season

The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies are known for staging one of the most precipitous collapses in the history of major-league baseball, squandering a 6½-game lead with 12 games to play. Nearly a century earlier, another Philadelphia team, the White Stockings, also lost a seemingly insurmountable lead and gave the National Association flag to Harry Wright’s Red Stockings of Boston.

Boston had captured the pennant in 1872, and since the core of the team returned intact, the Red Stockings were favored to repeat in 1873. The White Stockings were a new organization, but in the 1870s, newly formed teams did not face the same obstacles as those encountered by 20th-century expansion clubs. With no reserve clause, the White Stockings were able to use their substantial capital to sign talented veterans, including a number of players induced to defect from the rival Athletics. The new club sent its $10 entry fee to Harry Wright, chairman of the Championship Committee, and prepared to battle for the pennant. Upon receiving the funds, Wright responded to Philadelphia president David Reid, “May the best club win is the wish of yours truly.”1

The White Stockings were an artistic and financial success from Opening Day. On June 11 they played the Athletics, and the rivalry, plus the presence of a number of former Athletics in the White Stockings nine, attracted a crowd of 8,000 to 10,000, yielding about $5,000 to the White Stockings treasury. For the season, the White Stockings won eight of nine games with the Athletics, and by mid-July they were 27-3 and in first place by a whopping 8½ games.

The Red Stockings were in second place with a 16-8 record, not bad but leaving them well in arrears of the new Philadelphia club. Boston had lost a game to the Atlantics, one of the league’s poorer teams, and another to the pathetic Resolutes of Elizabeth, New Jersey, who won just twice all season. On June 5 the Red Stockings lost to Philadelphia by the embarrassing score of 22-8. The 1872 champions looked awful in the field and on the bases, and Al Spalding pitched so poorly that Harry Wright took his place in the box. Harry was even worse, giving up eight runs in the ninth inning.

Boston usually started the season strongly, for Harry Wright had each player join the local YMCA and work out daily, but in 1873 they left the gate haltingly. George Wright, the Red Stockings’ best player, was suffering from rheumatism. Jim O’Rourke, who’d been a rookie the previous season with the Mansfields of Middletown, signed late and had taken some time to get in fighting trim. James White, who seemed to have an annual period of indecision regarding his desire to play professional baseball, likewise was dilatory in getting to Boston.

In mid-July, following a Red Stocking loss to the mediocre Mutuals of New York, the New York Clipper stated, “[I]t is evident that [Boston] will not be the champions this year. In fact, if they do not show improvement in September, they will hardly reach second place.”2

In the 1870s it was common for teams to take a hiatus from their schedule during the dog days of summer. Crowds were typically smaller during the heat of July and early August, as many people left the city for the cooler countryside, and NA teams frequently took extended tours. They played in towns and cities that rarely saw big-league ball, where people were more likely to endure a bit of sun and humidity for the rare opportunity to see major leaguers in action.

At the beginning of August, the Red Stockings embarked on a lengthy tour scheduled to take them to Allegheny, St. Louis, Keokuk, Chicago (where the White Stockings of that city were inactive following the great fire of 1871), Rockford, Detroit, Guelph, Toronto, Ottawa, and Ogdensburgh. In addition to giving Canadians an opportunity to fill the Boston coffers, the tour would allow the Red Stockings to benefit from the cooler Northern climate. The Philadelphia White Stockings, eschewing a tour, repaired to the resort town of Cape May, New Jersey, for rest and recuperation. Once they were fully rejuvenated, they expected to coast to the pennant in September.

In early June the White Stockings had released veteran infielder Bob Addy at his own request.3 Addy returned to his home in Rockford, Illinois, where he’d previously played with that city’s Forest City club. Harry Wright thought Addy could help the Red Stockings and wrote to him, “Telegraph you will join us in St. Louis, and we will go for them all, raising the standard of the mighty Reds higher and higher until we—just say you will come, that’s all.”4 Henry Chadwick and the Clipper may have given up on the Red Stockings season, but Harry had not. He had earlier written to Hicks Hayhurst, manager of the Athletics: “Let us get our and your second wind, then look out Philadelphias.”5

When the White Stockings returned from Cape May, they did not seem to be the same nine that left Philadelphia three weeks earlier. The team that had won 27 of its first 30 games before the break lost its first five afterward. Meanwhile, the Red Stockings came off the road red-hot, and closed the gap to 4½ games by September 15, when they faced the White Stockings in a key game at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Street Grounds.

On the day of the game, Philadelphia pitcher George Zettlein was reported to be feeling poorly. He might have been ill, he might have been hung over, or perhaps he was simply not in the mood to play. Whatever the cause, he pitched poorly, yielding 15 hits in a 7-5 Boston win. The Red Stockings were now just 3½ games behind with six weeks to play.

Since there was no fixed schedule in the NA, team managers could arrange their games in any order they chose, as long as they completed their quota. Harry Wright’s correspondence is filled with letters attempting to book games with other NA clubs, and in 1873 he seemed to encounter more difficulty than usual. The delays in booking worked to Boston’s advantage, for during the final six weeks, they had six games against the Nationals of Washington, who finished the season 8-31.

After beating the White Stockings, Boston defeated the Atlantics and Mutuals, while Philadelphia lost to the latter club. The defeat was harmful, but the manner in which it occurred was even more telling, for the White Stockings completely broke down. The Mutuals scored five unearned runs in the second inning on four Philadelphia errors. Zettlein was so ineffective that he was removed in midgame. Fergy Malone and Ned Cuthbert became embroiled in an argument when Malone suspected that Cuthbert was not giving his best effort. The flurry of errors, desperate position switches, and shouting matches on the field were indicative of a club in disarray. Still, the Clipper kept the faith. “Philadelphia will almost certainly win,” it reported, “unless they fall flat on their faces in the next four weeks.”6

That, however, is exactly what they did. Zettlein had done something to cause management to lose confidence in him, and he was replaced in some critical games by George Bechtel, whose later banishment by the National League indicates that he was probably not the most reliable player in the NA. Bechtel pitched against the Nationals on the first day of October and allowed the Washington club to jump out to a 14-2 lead. For a bad team like the Nationals, however, a 12-run margin was not a sure thing, and by the ninth inning, the lead had shrunk to 14-13, with Philadelphia’s Jim Devlin on second with the tying run. Unwisely trying for third on an infield grounder, Devlin was thrown out and the game was over. Despite 18 Philadelphia hits and 19 Washington errors, the White Stockings had lost, and dropped into a virtual tie with the Red Stockings.

The following day, Boston and Philadelphia met in the latter city in a game that would put the winner in first place. With the Red Stockings leading 7-5 in the fourth inning and two Bostonians on base, Al Spalding hit a fly ball to short center field. Center fielder Fred Treacey came in, Captain Jimmy Wood went out from second base, and the ball fell safely as the two men stood looking at each other. While the ball lay harmlessly on the grass, Treacey and Wood began screaming at each other while both Boston runners scored.

Later in the inning, Wood dropped a throw at second base and fired the ball to the ground in disgust, as another run crossed the plate. The next inning, Wood, apparently having lost confidence in some of his players, made a number of changes in the lineup. The final score was 18-7, and Boston, after a long run, was in first place. It was the Red Stockings’ 10th straight win.

Two days later, the White Stockings lost 5-4 to the Mutuals, as Devlin again ended the game by being thrown out after a poor baserunning decision. Devlin, like Bechtel, was later banned from the National League, although there is no evidence he was playing to lose in 1873. Treacey and Zettlein were also suspect characters who were later accused of crooked play, and in retrospect the sorry performance of the White Stockings in the latter stages of the 1873 season took on a somewhat sinister air.

Boston continued to win and finished the year with victories in 26 of its final 31 games. The White Stockings, after their 27-3 start, had finished 9-14. The final standings were as follows:

 

	W	L	Pct.	GB
Boston Red Stockings	43	16	.729	—-
Philadelphia White Stockings	36	17	.679	4
Lord Baltimore	34	22	.607	7½
Philadelphia Athletics	28	23	.549	11
New York Mutuals	29	24	.547	11
Brooklyn Atlantics	17	37	.315	23½
Washington Nationals	8	31	.205	25
Elizabeth Resolutes	2	21	.087	23
Marylands	0	6	.000	16½

Note: Although the NA based its standings on number of wins, the table above has been adapted to the modern standard of percentage of wins.

 

When the games concluded, two controversies lingered. The first had become public knowledge in August, when a number of contracts, supposedly signed in secret, became public. After a two-year hiatus, the city of Chicago was ready to re-enter the Association under the management of Norman Gassette and a local businessman named William Hulbert. Chicago did everything in a big way, and what better way to re-emerge on the scene than with the best players from the NA’s top team. In August, that team was the Philadelphia White Stockings, and Gassette and Hulbert signed seven White Stocking players to 1874 Chicago contracts. Included among the seven were Zettlein, Wood, Treacy, Cuthbert, and Devlin, all of whom had played poorly, and in some cases suspiciously, in the latter stages of the 1873 season. There was a rule prohibiting players from signing for a subsequent year prior to the end of the current season, but NA rules, like latter-day records, were made to be broken. The New York Times, in late September, listed 43 players who had signed for the 1874 season, and all of the newspapers listed 1874 rosters long before the 1873 season had ended.7

While these major rules violations went unpunished, the second controversy, based on a minor alleged technical violation, kept the pennant from Boston until deep into the winter. As noted, when Bob Addy had been released by the White Stockings, he repaired to Rockford, where he played in a pickup game on July 4. The NA had a rule stipulating that a player could not play for a new team within 60 days of appearing in a game with another team. The intent was to prevent revolving from team to team, but no one seriously believed that the rule covered pickup games.

No one except the Philadelphia White Stockings, whose hands were far from clean and who should have been ashamed to claim the pennant after the way they had finished the season. The White Stockings asked that all 31 games in which Addy appeared for Boston be forfeited, which would give the pennant to Philadelphia.

The Championship Committee, which had the duty of officially awarding the title, consisted of Harry Wright and two Philadelphians, Hicks Hayhurst of the Athletics and Frank McBride of the White Stockings. Both Wright and McBride had a direct interest in the outcome, and Hayhurst was a rival of both. Parochialism was a continual thorn in the collective side of the NA, one that would contribute to its ultimate demise two years hence when the Philadelphians conspired to award shortstop Davy Force to the Athletics.

In January 1874 McBride said the Championship Committee could not award the title until the Judiciary Committee ruled on the legality of Addy’s participation in Boston games. Wright sent a number of letters to the members of the Judiciary Committee urging them to meet, but also wrote to Philadelphia president Reid, “Independent of any action you may see fit to charge the Judiciary Committee with, we consider ourselves justly and honorably entitled to the championship honors for 1873. Not from a single source other than the Philadelphia Club have we heard a doubt expressed as to the fairness of our title.”8

Although a prompt meeting would have disposed of the groundless charges, the Judiciary Committee dawdled and did not convene. Finally, Wright convinced Hayhurst, with whom he had a good relationship, to sign the resolution declaring Boston the champion, thus carrying the day by 2 to 1. Reid protested that Hayhurst had been coerced by Wright, but he had been defeated at his silly game, and Boston officially claimed the 1873 pennant of the National Association.

BILL RYCZEK has written a trilogy on 19th century baseball: Baseball’s First Inning, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, and Blackguards and Red Stockings. The latter is a history of the National Association that covers the period when the Boston Red Stockings dominated major-league baseball. He has also written on baseball and football during the 1960s, including books on the Yankees, the Mets, and the American Football League’s New York Titans. Bill is a finance professional who lives in Wallingford, Connecticut.

 

Notes

1 Wright Correspondence, Wright to Reid, April 4, 1873.

2 New York Clipper, July 26, 1873.

3 In his biography of Addy for the SABR BioProject, Peter Morris indicated that he believed the reason Addy asked for his release was to be present at the birth of his son, who was born, Morris believed, on August 1.

4 Wright Correspondence, Wright to Addy, date illegible.

5 Wright Correspondence, Wright to Hayhurst, June 23, 1873.

6 New York Clipper, September 27, 1873.

7 New York Times, September 21, 1873.

8 Wright Correspondence, Wright to Reid, February 12, 1874.