The 1877 International Association Championship Game

Mike Timlin scurried toward the first-base line, scooped up Otis Nixon’s bunt, and tossed to a waiting Joe Carter at first base. The play retired the speedy Nixon, and the Toronto Blue Jays were World Series champions for the first time. The year was 1992, and the Toronto victory was hailed as Canada’s first championship on the major-league baseball stage. Forgotten in the euphoria were the exploits of the London Tecumsehs, who 115 years earlier had won the championship of the International Association. The Association, and its 1877 champion Tecumsehs, have been relegated to the dustbin of history by a 1969 decision to deny the league major-league status, a decision with which not all baseball historians agree.1

BACKGROUND

The International Association was established on a basis different from that of its rival, the National League. The latter was controlled by the owners, and operated for their benefit. Many of the Association’s teams, in contrast, were cooperatives, interested more in the social and political benefit to be gained from hometown glory than in financial profit. Some were even player-led.2 Twenty-three such teams comprised the Association for its inaugural season of 1877. Of these 23, seven paid the additional $15 fee required to contend for the championship pennant.3 Only games played between pairs of these teams were to count toward the championship; all other games were the equivalent of exhibitions.

The Association season represented London’s first opportunity for structured play against top-level competition. The highlight was the opening of Tecumseh Park as the Tecumsehs’ new home.4 The park hosted its first professional game on May 6, as the Tecumsehs fell 6-2 to the visiting Hartfords of Brooklyn of the National League.5 A Victoria Day game against the League’s Boston team drew a crowd estimated at between 6,000 and 8,000 on the national holiday; a late London rally went for naught as the Bostons prevailed 8-7 in 10 innings behind ace Tommy Bond, who would win a league-leading 40 games for the eventual league champions.6 Any Guelph-London game was another highlight, as the rivalry between the two cities had intensified over the preceding years.7

The pennant race developed into a two-team affair, but it was a tight one. Tuesday, October 2, dawned with these championship standings, the Lynn Live Oaks having disbanded two weeks earlier:8

 

London	13-4
Pittsburgh	11-4
Rochester	8-8
Manchester	7-9
Columbus	4-8
Guelph	3-12

 

Since the Pittsburgh Alleghenys had only two games left to play (both against Guelph) after Tuesday, and London none, a win by London would give the Tecumsehs the title. But both London and Pittsburgh were still in contention.

THE GAME

Tuesday’s cool, clear skies belied the Tecumsehs’ sombre mood. Ed Somerville, the team’s popular shortstop, had taken ill during the previous week. He died, a victim of pneumonia, on October 1, the day before the game. His teammates took the field wearing “crape [sic] bows on their breasts”9 in his memory, having served as his pallbearers a mere 24 hours earlier.10 No less daunting was the prospect of facing the Alleghenys’ starting pitcher, Pud Galvin. The 20-year-old right-hander, the ace of the Pittsburgh staff, was early in a Hall of Fame career in which he would win 365 games, the fifth-highest total in baseball history.11 Starting for London was the Tecumsehs’ own ace, 21-year-old right-hander Fred Goldsmith. Goldsmith was a popular figure in London, having recently married a local woman and taken up residence there. He had also been instrumental in the team’s success that year; he was credited with 46 wins in total, including a 13-4 record in championship games.12

As was the rule in the International Association that year, the Tecumsehs batted first. Galvin retired the side in order, shortstop Mike Burke being caught on a fine one-handed catch by center fielder Russ McKelvy.13 A single by McKelvy was the only damage off Goldsmith in the bottom half. Both pitchers quickly warmed to the task at hand. Through five innings, Galvin allowed no hits, the only batter to reach base doing so on an error. Goldsmith allowed only the McKelvy single over the same span, striking out the side in the third.

The Alleghenys threatened in the sixth. With one out, first baseman Jake Goodman singled to right, and McKelvy to center. Goldsmith escaped unscathed when shortstop Candy Nelson hit into a fielder’s choice, and Galvin struck out for the third time. In the top of the seventh, the home side struck. With one out, Burke reached on an error by second baseman Chick Fulmer. Left fielder Joe Hornung singled past shortstop for the Tecumsehs’ first hit. Both Burke and Hornung scored as first baseman George “Foghorn” Bradley14 tripled into right-center, Bradley himself scoring on a subsequent sacrifice by Marshall Quinton. London led 3-0.

Goldsmith continued to dominate, allowing only a harmless single by Bill Holbert in the eighth. The Tecumsehs struck again in the top of the ninth. Phil Powers’ double and Goldsmith’s single with one out put runners on first and third, Powers scoring on a misplay near home plate by catcher Tom Dolan. Burke’s single scored Goldsmith, and London led 5-0. A third single followed, by Hornung, but Galvin escaped further damage by inducing successive popups. To this point in the game, London had committed no errors, a remarkable display of fielding for the era. This changed quickly in the bottom of the inning, as a single, a wild pitch, an infield single, an overthrow and a subsequent outfield fumble allowed two Pittsburgh runs to score. It was too little, too late, for the Alleghenys, though, as London triumphed 5-2.

Pitching and fielding prevailed, as each team managed only six hits. Goldsmith in particular was excellent, his 10 strikeouts an impressive indication of his dominance.15 That evening the team was feted at the Tecumseh House Hotel downtown. The International Association pennant had been won by one of its two Canadian entries.

MAJOR LEAGUE?

The Tecumsehs’ victory was acknowledged with approval at the time by no less than Henry Chadwick in the New York Clipper.16 It has not been widely recognized as the first international baseball championship by a Canadian team, however. This is primarily because the International Association has not been recognized as “major league,” a distinction denied it by the 1969 decree. But is the reasoning behind that decision sound? Two of the more important characteristics of major-league status are stability and caliber of play. Let’s look at these more closely.

Stability refers to strength of ownership, franchise retention from one year to the next, and the ability of teams to complete their schedules. In these respects, it is true that the International Association did not distinguish itself. For the Association’s 1877 season, not all of its seven original competing franchises completed their championship schedules. The Lynn Live Oaks disbanded before season’s end. After the season two more franchises disbanded, and three new ones were added. The numerous cities comprising the Association for 1878, including the nonparticipants for the championship, included places as small as New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Hornellsville, New York. The Association was too large, scattered over too large a geographical area, and financially shaky. By 1880, it was out of business.

But what of the National League, the Associations only rival? Now regarded as a long-standing bastion of consistency, the National League of 1877 was all of one year old. In its first season, 1876, it consisted of eight teams. Here’s how it evolved over the course of the next three years alone:

1877 (6 teams)

• Drop New York, Philadelphia

1878 (6 teams)

• Drop Louisville, Hartford, St. Louis
• Add Providence, Indianapolis, Milwaukee

1879 (8 teams)

• Drop Indianapolis, Milwaukee
• Add Buffalo, Cleveland, Syracuse, Troy

Instability was the rule, as league founder William Hulbert struggled to find reliable competition for his Chicago franchise. During the first decade of the League’s existence, 21 teams were members at one time or another. In fact, National League expansion and contraction, and replacement of franchises with others, was to be commonplace for the next few decades. It wasn’t until the settlement of its dispute with the Western League at the turn of the twentieth century that the League settled into the largely stable structure that we know today.

So, yes, the International Association was unstable. But so was the National League. Rather than considering this a weakness peculiar to the Association, then, it’s more reasonable to view this instability as a typical characteristic of the professional baseball landscape at that time. And when comparing the Association with the League, it’s important that we focus on the League of 1877, rather than view the League as we know it today.

With respect to caliber of play:

One of the biggest issues facing baseball in its professional youth was the problem of “revolving,” or contract-jumping. It was very common for players not to meet their contractual obligations, abandoning one team for another in the same league, or moving to another league, in midseason.17 Such was the case between the Association and the League in 1877. The more players switched from one league to the other, the more homogeneous the player pool of the two leagues became. It therefore becomes hard to accept that either league could boast a caliber of play noticeably better than its rival’s.

In 1877, the supposedly superior National League lost 72 games to outside clubs.18 It has been noted that a number of these games were against semipro teams, competition that might not warrant the National League team’s best lineups or efforts. This cannot be said of any games involving the two Canadian Association franchises. Both London and Guelph paid salaries, were stockholding companies, and had wealthy backers supporting them.

Collectively, the players on the top six International Association teams of 1877 accumulated more past or future seasons of major-league play than did the players of the top six National League teams.19

Clearly, then, the Association’s caliber of play was at least the equal of the League’s, if not better.

Evidence suggests that the Tecumsehs’ league of 1877 was a viable competitor to the National League, in no way a poor cousin. The International Association should be recognized as a major league, and its championship as a major-league championship. A number of baseball historians do so already. David Voigt, for one, discussing the financial problems faced by the National League in its early years, comments, “Although managerial austerity, salary cuts, and new stock issues lightened the burden somewhat, it was a discouraging picture. Ranged alongside the modestly profitable Association era, it goes far to debunk the myth of League superiority.”20 Author David Pietrusza, for another, opines that “a good caliber of ball was played by these nines. International Association and National League players were equally named to nationally recognized all-star teams.”21 And the New York Clipper obviously held the Association in high regard, referring to it early in the 1878 season as “the ruling professional association in the country – which it now unquestionably is.”22

The London Tecumsehs’ victory was Canada’s first on the international baseball stage, and its only major-league championship until 1992. It deserves to be recognized as a significant milestone in Canadian baseball’s historical development.

Note: A radio recreation of this game was a featured presentation at the 2018 Canadian Baseball History Conference in London. The Conference venue overlooked the outfield fences of Tecumseh Park (now Labatt Park).

ANDREW NORTH is a retired developer of statistical software. He is a director of the Centre for Canadian Baseball Research and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal for Canadian Baseball. A SABR member since 1982, he lives in St. Marys, Ontario, where he maintains the research library at the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

 

Acknowledgments

A tip of the author’s cap goes to London journalist and historian Chip Martin. His research for his book The Tecumsehs of the International Association provided the basis for much of the content of this article.

 

Sources

Statistics from Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

 

Notes

1 In 1968, Commissioner William Eckert formed a Special Baseball Records Committee to determine (among other things) that portion of baseball’s statistical record to be considered “major league.” The committee’s rulings the next year accorded six leagues such status; the International Association was not one of them. Questionable in particular are the designations of two leagues that could be considered little more than vanity projects: Henry Lucas’s Union Association of 1884 and, to a lesser extent, John Montgomery Ward’s Players’ League of 1890. The special committee and its decisions were in the news again more recently, as Major League Baseball in 2020 granted major-league status to the Negro Leagues.

2 Brian Martin, The Tecumsehs of the International Association (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2015), 4.

3 The seven were the Columbus Buckeyes, Guelph Maple Leafs, London Tecumsehs, Lynn Live Oaks, Manchester, Pittsburgh Alleghenys, and Rochester. The Guelph and London teams were Canada’s first professional league franchises. The rivalry between the two, fueled by civic boosterism, had been ongoing for several years.

4 The park is still in use for baseball today, having been renamed Labatt Park in 1937. It is the oldest continuous-use ballpark in the world.

5 Martin, 119.

6 Martin, 122.

7 The crowd for a holiday game in London the previous year, for example, had been estimated by a visiting Guelph reporter at between 9,000 and 10,000. See Guelph Mercury, August 10, 1876. While this may be an overestimate, note that attendance for National League games in 1877 was typically in the 1,500 to 2,000 range.

8 London Advertiser, October 2, 1877.

9 London Advertiser, October 3, 1877.

10 Martin, 142.

11 Galvin was baseball’s first 300-game winner. He reached that milestone late in the 1889 season, although it was neither recognized nor celebrated at the time. Were Galvin’s 36 wins in his two seasons in the International Association to be included, he would have reached 300 early in the 1888 season. His career wins total of 401 would then have been surpassed by only Cy Young and Walter Johnson in baseball history.

12 Goldsmith compiled a 112-68 record in his subsequent six-year major-league career. He is recognized as one of the earliest practitioners of curveball pitching. He formed what may have been baseball’s first pitching rotation with teammate Larry Corcoran on the Chicago White Stockings teams of the early 1880s.

13 All play-by-play details are from the London Free Press, October 3, 1877.

14 “Foghorn” is George H. Bradley, not the George Washington Bradley who threw the National League’s first no-hit game, in 1876.

15 To put this into perspective, strikeouts per nine innings for the entire National League in 1877 were just over 2.

16 New York Clipper, October 13, 1877.

17 Such frequent player movement was facilitated by the absence of anything resembling a reserve clause, which emerged only gradually during the next decade.

18 David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball (New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1997), 102.

19 Nemec, 102.

20 The 1877 season was a particularly trying one for the League. Every League team lost money, even champion Boston. League magnates also had to deal with the Louisville Grays game-fixing scandal, the June disbanding and subsequent reorganization of the Cincinnati club, and the discovery that the latter franchise had never paid its membership dues, resulting in the nullification of all Cincinnati game results. (Most modern sources do include these results; see, for example, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1877/YJ877.htm.) See Martin, Chapter 9. Also see David Voigt, American Baseball Vol. I (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983), 76.

21 David Pietrusza, Major Leagues: The Formation, Sometimes Absorption, and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1991), 48.

22 New York Clipper, May 12, 1878.