The Day the Reds Lost

Tuesday, June 14, 1870, was fair and warm in New York City. The mercury on this pleasant day climbed slowly and steadily until the thermometer at Hudnut’s popular pharmacy at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street registered 86 degrees at 3 P.M.

Up the Hudson a few miles, at West Point, relatives and friends of the 1870 Class were grateful that the planning committee, in arranging for tomorrow’s graduation ceremony had selected a shady, grassy plot rather than the customary treeless parade ground. Today the cadets would stage their last drill.

But for most Manhattanites, those who were sports-minded at least, the doings up the Hudson were of little moment. The big story for them was the battle scheduled to take place in the city across the East River, sleepy old Brooklyn.

It was a glorious day for a game of ball and Patrolman Wilson, of the 28th Precinct, was unquestionably the only baseball addict in the bustling city of a million and a half souls whose blood didn’t race through his veins at the thought of the big doings that lay ahead. Officer Wilson had other thoughts on his mind, for last night, according to James Gordon Bennett’s Herald, a cowardly sneak thief, entering his bedroom at 111 Prince Street, stole his pants, his shield (No. 1,530), his fire alarm key (No.6), and $7 in cash. Wilson, who had intended going to the ball game (his off-duty day), was destined to spend the morning and most of the afternoon making out reports and attempting to regain his status symbols-along with his trousers. For the rest of New York’s ball fans, there was but one thing to do and that was to make tracks for the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn. The Cincinnati Red Stockings-the mighty Reds were in town and scheduled to cross bats with the once mighty Atlantics.

Nothing like the Red Stockings had ever happened to baseball before. Organized in 1869 as the first avowedly all-professional baseball club, they had proved a remarkable success on the field and become the greatest gate attraction the game had known.

When the English-born Harry Wright sat down with his club directors in the winter of 1868-69, he proposed to get the very best players in the country, many of whom were in the status of what was subsequently called semiprofessional players—those who shared in gate receipts but worked outside baseball for a living—and turn them into outright professionals, drawing regular salaries which would enable them to do nothing all summer except play baseball. But how much would it cost, the directors asked. Harry had it all figured out and, if he could get the players he wanted, he told them the payroll would come to $9300.

Top salary would go to Wright’s younger brother George, who in 1868 was playing with the Unions of Morrisania, a region of Westchester County then, since absorbed by the Bronx. George would go west for a wage of $1400, and they say he was worth every cent of it, inasmuch as he was the outstanding player of his day. Harry himself would draw $1200 for managing the club and playing the outfield (and managing the club entailed all the duties that are now delegated to the general manager, the manager, and the road secretary, as well as the scheduling of games).

From New Jersey came Doug Allison and Irish-born Andy Leonard; from New Hampshire, Charlie Sweasy, whose name through the years has been misspelled more ways than any other ballplayer’s including Carl Yastrzemski. Cal McVey hailed from Montrose County, Iowa, and, except for Cincinnatian Charley Gould, was the only midwesterner on the club. The other four regulars, the Wright brothers, Asa Brainard, and Fred Waterman, came from New York State. The locales of substitutes Hurley, Fowler, Bradford, and Taylor are not known.

Because Gould was the only Cincinnati native on the team there were some critics who insisted on calling it an “eclectic” nine (“all-star,” future generations would term it). These critics predicted some terrible things would come of such an arrangement, a team whose motivation was pecuniary rather than civic. (The same dire sentiments have more recently been directed toward George Steinbrenner’s “eclectic” nine.)

The Reds swept the baseball scene literally from coast to coast in 1869, defeating all comers and arousing such interest that by the spring of 1870 every city of any size had organized its own team of professionals to beat the Reds when they dared to come to town. From that point on there was no question as to which way baseball was going. Gone was the heyday of the amateur and semiprofessional teams, except as feeders for the play-for-pay game.

As the Reds invaded New York in 1870, they were riding a two-year winning streak of90 games. And only yesterday they’d trounced the Mutuals to make it 91.

The Capitoline, the first enclosed baseball grounds, lay between Nostrand Avenue on the west and Marcy Avenue on the east, and between Putnam Avenue on the north and Halsey Street on the south. It was located on part of a farm leased from the Lefferts family, who had owned the land since Revolutionary days, by Reuben s. Decker’s father. Reuben Decker it was who, along with H. A. Weed, built the stands in 1862. (Later, in 1879, the original farm was forced into physical oblivion as Jefferson Avenue and Hancock Street were cut through the ballpark by the city. Today this four-city-block area is part of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section, much in the news in recent years.)

Many years later Decker’s daughter recalled the 1870 scene for the writer.

Sheds and stables were located about half the length of the Putnam Avenue side, beginning at Nostrand Avenue. In front of these were permanent buildings housing the restaurant, bandstand, private rooms for the families of the proprietors, sitting rooms for the ladies on the second floor and, on the first floor, lockers and storage rooms for the baseball teams. In addition, bleachers for the accommodation of 5,000 persons were erected along the Nostrand Avenue and Halsey Street sides of the grounds. The entrance was on Nostrand about 200 feet south of Putnam.

The field was known formally as the “Capitoline Skating Lake and Base-Ball Ground.” In November the grounds were flooded from a city main at the corner of Haley and Nostrand and used for skating all winter, as well as baseball matches on ice featuring many of the stars of the field. Come spring, the water was drained off and the grounds turned over first to Phineas T. Barnum for his circus, and then prepared for the baseball season.

If you were a baseball fan in 1870 and lived in Manhattan you crossed the East River to Brooklyn on the ferry. Construction work on the Brooklyn Bridge had just started and wouldn’t be finished until 1883; indeed, so little progress had been made that, stare as you might while crossing the river, you could see nothing that indicated a bridge was being built.

In your horsecar, you then followed Fulton Street in a southerly direction through the heart of downtown Brooklyn (population 419,921, 1870 census), and turned eastward for a ramble through the countryside. The total distance from the ferry slip to the ball field was three and a quarter miles. You left the horsecar at the corner of Fulton and Nostrand and walked north a few hundred feet to the Capitoline.

One street west of Nostrand is Bedford Avenue, and if you had left the car at the corner and followed Bedford Avenue south exactly one mile you would have found yourself at the future site of another ballpark that figured large in baseball history—Ebbets Field.

On this second day of the Reds’ 1870 invasion of the metropolis the fans sensed the possibility of an Atlantic victory. They flowed toward the Capitoline from all directions, starting shortly after noon, until the field was engulfed with humanity. The grounds were jammed to capacity and many hundreds stood on the field itself, along both foul lines and behind the outfielders.

Harper’s Weekly estimated the crowd to be between 12,000 and 15,000 shoehorned into a park that could seat at best 5,000. Said the New York World: “Hundreds who could or would not produce the necessary fifty-cent stamp for admission [Harry Wright always insisted on that fee although twenty-five cents was the norm of the period] looked on through cracks in the fence or even climbed boldly to the top, while others were perched in the topmost limbs of the trees or on roofs of surrounding houses.”

The cause of this wellspring of optimism isn’t quite clear. Only the day before, the Red Stockings had mauled the Mutuals, 16 to 3. Yet on their previous visit to New York they had eked out a 4-2 win—an unprecedentedly low score for the time, at this level of play—over these same Mutuals—before moving on to clobber the Atlantics by 32-10. On comparative records, then, the visitors appeared likely to overwhelm the Brooklynites.

Add to this the fact that the Atlantics had already suffered defeat three times in 1870, due mostly to trouble within the ranks—trouble so acute that it was freely predicted that Dickey Pearce and other stars would not play in the game with the Reds. Tactless Bob Ferguson, captain of the Atlantics, was in the midst of a feud with the baseball writer of the New York Herald. A lively discussion between these worthies had ended with the writer charging the other with running off his best players by his insolence, and Ferguson countering with an offer to do some dental work on the scribe without benefit of a forceps.

As a result, the Herald man refused to cover the Atlantics-Cincinnati game, although he had reported the previous day’s Mutual match with a thousand word story. And so, while other papers gave the game of June 14 full coverage, the Herald man stayed at home and devoted just 200 words to a critique of the game and the unruly nature of the crowd. And his paper didn’t even print a box score of the greatest game of baseball played up until that time.

That the gamblers did not expect a home team win is shown by what the racing people call the morning line. Before the game, betting was 5-1 on the Red Stockings—and when Cincinnati moved ahead in the early innings, 3-0, the odds zoomed to 10-1 with few takers.

The Atlantics, however, had patched up their differences and their strongest team took the field, nattily attired in long dark blue trousers (with a light cord down the outer seams), shirts with the initial letter of the club name embroidered on the chest, and light bufflinen caps. The Reds wore their customary knickerbockers and bright red stockings. They had an Old English “c” on their shirt panels. During the day George Zettlein, the hard-working pitcher of the home team, deviated somewhat from the uniform of the day: he worked much of the game stripped to a silk undershirt and his uniform pants.

Every newspaper commented on the boisterous and unruly conduct of the spectators. “As the Red Stockings entered the field,” said one paper, “a few of the toughs in the assemblage attempted to hiss them, but at once a round of applause greeted the strangers. . . . ” Another reported that “the visitors were annoyed throughout by catcalls, hisses, and jeers, their misplays being applauded, and their finest efforts received in silence.”

As the opponents squared off, the batting orders looked like this:

CINCINNATI: George Wright, ss; Charley Gould, 1b; Fred Waterman, 3b; Doug Allison, c; Harry Wright, cf; Andy Leonard, lf; Asa Brainard, p; Charlie Sweasy, 2b; Cal McVey, rf

ATLANTICS: Dickey Pearce, ss; Charles Smith, 3b; Joe Start, 1b; John Chapman, lf; Bob Ferguson, c; George Zettlein, p; George Hall, cf; Lipman Pike, 2b; Dan McDonald, rf

The Reds lost no time once the game got under way, George Wright singling down the left field line and after the next two men were retired, scoring on singles by Allison and Harry Wright. On the latter’s blow there was an error by McDonald, and Allison also crossed the plate. The Reds increased their lead to 3-0 in the third with hits by George Wright and Waterman proving the decisive blows. Dickey Pearce ended the threat of a big inning by coming up with Allison’s sharp grounder and starting a fast double play.

The Atlantics, meanwhile, could do nothing with Brainard’s delivery. Pitchers in 1870 worked from a distance of only forty-five feet from home plate but were restricted by the rules to an underhand “pitch.” The wrist snap needed to throw curveballs would not be legalized until 1872, so pitchers had to rely on nothing except speed and a change of pace.

Cincinnati was at its defensive best this day. Henry Chadwick, baseball editor of the New York Clipper, was fascinated by the style in which the fielders moved about as the different batsmen took their turns. A model display, he thought. “In fact,” said Henry, “Harry Wright would at one time be seen playing almost back of second base, while Sweasy would be nearly a first base fielder, and so they changed about, coming in nearer or going out further,just as they judged the balls would be sent to the different batters. It is in the lack of judgment like this that our outfielders show their inferiority to the skillfully trained Red Stockings.”

Zettlein, greatest fastballer of his day, was the first line of defense for the Atlantics, who were noted more for their batting prowess than for their fielding finesse. The Reds had never seen Zettlein before, but fastball pitching didn’t usually bother them. The previous year, when the Reds clobbered the Atlantics, they pounded Tom Pratt, a fastballer, from pillar to post.

Singles by Pearce, Start, and Ferguson and a two-base overthrow by Waterman gave the home team lads two runs in the fourth. In the sixth, the Atlantics’ slashing drives handcuffed Sweasy and Waterman to account for two more, sending them into the lead for the first time.

Cincinnati had not scored in three innings, but as soon as they found themselves trailing they resolutely hammered out a new lead. Brainard, Sweasy, and the irrepressible George Wright pounded out clean hits in the seventh, the younger Wright’s hit driving in his fellow Reds.

But the boys in blue weren’t licked yet. With one out in the eighth, Smith tripled to deep left field and Start (first player to earn the nickname “Old Reliable”) clouted viciously down the right field line. Cal McVey, traveling at top speed, made a brilliant catch and threw quickly to the plate. Smith, holding third until the catch, tried to score but McVey’s spectacular throw had him beaten. And then, in this most crucial moment, Allison muffed the ball. The crowd really let loose as Smith crossed the plate with the tying run.

Only three men faced each pitcher in the ninth. Pike closed out the Reds by taking George Wright’s hot grounder and converting it into a double play, and Andy Leonard retaliated in the last half with a great catch of Hall’s line drive.

Entered at this point the rules book. Several of the Atlantics’ directors, reasoning that a tie with the invincible Red Stockings was better than a probable loss, even an extra-inning one, instructed Captain Ferguson to take his team off the field. Exactly opposite reasons prompted Cincinnati to play it out; Harry Wright was so ordered by president Aaron B. Champion.

As the Brooklyn players began to “stack bats” preparatory to leaving the field, the crowd, uproarious all afternoon, swarmed over the field. President Champion clambered onto a bench and announced that the Reds would claim the game by forfeiture if Brooklyn refused to continue. He pointed to Rule 5, which plainly stated that in case of a tie score at the end of nine innings the game should be continued “unless it be mutually agreed upon by the captains of the two nines to consider the game as drawn.”

And now Father Chadwick got into the action. Henry was the supreme expert on the rules and the author of several of them. Year after year he served on the rules committee, where his voice was the most respected of all. “How about it, Henry?” asked Harry Wright, and Chadwick agreed that the visitors were right. It was the first time the Reds had been forced into extra innings.

Some of the Atlantics had already reached the clubhouse but they were hastily recalled, the field was cleared with some difficulty, and the game resumed.

Cincinnati was easy in the tenth and the Atlantics were turned back once more by George Wright. With one out McDonald and Pearce singled in succession. Smith lifted a high fly to shortstop; Wright, playing the ball so as to catch it close to the ground, intentionally dropped it, thus forcing the runners to leave their bases. This, of course, was the play whose abuse in later days led to the adoption of the infield fly rule to protect the helpless baserunners. At that time, there being no infield fly rule, Wright scooped up the ball and started an easy double play.

Years later Albert G. Spalding, writing the first large-scale baseball history, jumped to the conclusion that this was the origin of the trapped-ball play, and present day writers relied upon Spalding for the dope. Spalding, however, was wrong: When the Reds beat the Mutuals in 1869, Fred Waterman, Cincinnati third sacker, pulled an identical play after the New Yorkers had tied the score in the ninth inning, and there’s no reason to imagine that this was the first instance of the trapped-ball maneuver.

The Red Stockings cast deep gloom over Flatbush by tallying twice in the eleventh, apparently sewing up the old ball game. After Leonard was retired, Brainard doubled to right center. Sweasy lifted one in the same direction and Hall was about to make the catch when McDonald, cruising over from right field, ran into him. McVey also hit into Hall’s territory, but this time his mates gave him plenty of room and he grabbed it, Brainard scoring easily from third after the catch. The poisonous George Wright then singled to score the second run of the inning, making the score 7-5.

Charley Smith, who had batted into the spectacular double play to end the tenth inning, led off for the home team in its last chance at bat. If that sounds a bit peculiar, take a look at the 1870 rules. Rule Three, Section 2, specified that: “Players must strike in regular rotation, and, after the first inning is played, the turn commences with the player who stands on the list next to the one who was the third player out.”

Now, while Smith had hit into the double play in the tenth he had not been put out: McDonald and Pearce were the victims of Wright’s skullduggery. Pearce was the third player put out, and Smith followed Pearce in the batting order. An odd consequence of this rule was that Pearce, the Atlantics’ lead-off man, batted only five times while the next three men-Smith, Start, and Chapman each batted six times.

Smith opened the eleventh by punching a sharp single toward left field. He went all the way to third on a wild pitch. The crowd really came alive when Joe Start slammed a drive to deep right field that landed in the fringe of the crowd. McVey was on the ball in an instant, but as he bent to pick it up a spectator leaped on his back. By the time McVey could fight his way clear and hurl the ball to the infield, Start, representing the tying. run, was on third and the complexion of the game had changed.

Now, that’s the way the story has always been told. Everyone who has attempted to recount the story of the great game of 1870 has reported the naughty behavior of the Brooklyn crowd and every sportsman-reader has, presumably, responded with “tch! tch!” and rolled his eyes piously heavenward. Not so, said McVey, shortly before he died. Cal told a newsman that he remembered the play very well and that no one climbed his back. He said that he encountered some difficulty in digging the ball out of the crowd, but that no one deliberately interfered with him.

At any rate, Chapman, the next batter, hit hard to third, but Waterman handled the ball well, held Start at third, and threw the batter out.

If the Atlantics had learned anything at all it was that George Wright could do nothing wrong today. And so, with the object of keeping the ball out of Wright’s grasp, Ferguson, a right-handed batter, went up to the plate to hit left-handed. This seems to be the first recorded instance of a batter switching, although the New York Clipper, leading sports weekly of the day, suggested it was not the first time he had done so, remarking that Ferguson “can use one hand as well as the other.”

That stratagem worked. Ferguson ripped the ball past the second baseman and scored Start with the tying run.

Zettlein kept the rally alive with a torrid smash to Gould’s right. The first baseman couldn’t handle it, and when he did recover the ball he flung it to second in a desperate attempt to force Ferguson. The ball, however, was in the dirt and Sweasy missed it completely, the sphere scooting into the outfield. As Ferguson stretched his legs and raced for home base all Brooklyn went mad.

The impossible had happened! Cincinnati had lost!