Chronology: 1866 - 1876
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The chronology from 1866 to 1876 (108 entries)
1866c.1 Umps Finally Begin to Call Strikes and Balls
Age of Players:
Association rules permitted umps to call strikes in 1858, and to call balls in 1864, and it's a little hard for us to imagine a game in which those features were missing. But when did they become common?
"The safe generalization is that balls and strikes were rarely called before 1866, gradually became more and more a routine part of the game, with the process reaching completion at some point in the professional era."
Having found and summarized over 25 newspaper articles from 1858 to 1872, Richard suggests three factors that delayed implementation of the key rules:
[1] Close calls were disputed, making umpiring uncongenial.
[2] Players didn't insist on called pitches, even though longer games resulted when umpires declined to make calls.
[3] Resistance to novelty, especially outside greater New York city.
Sources:
Richard Hershberger, "When Did Umpires
Start Calling Balls and Strikes?," available on Protoball at <url>. Page 5 of 7.
Circa
1866
1866.2 Early African American Club in Philly Plays Initial Game Agains Albany Visitors
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"On October 3, 1866, at the Wharton Street grounds, the Pythians played and lost a match against the Bachelor Club of Albany, 70-15. This game is the only known regular match for he Pythian in their inaugural year."
"In spite of their enthusiasm for playing ball, the Pythian initially had trouble competing out of their neighborhood. Apparently, there was a turf boundary, and the Irish tried to keep the blacks of the inner-city wards from venturing south of Bainbridge Street . . . the 'dead line,' and any movement beyond 'meant contention.'"
For this game, however, a large crowd accompanied the club to the playing ground, and the game proceeded.
Sources:
Jerrold Casway, "Philadelphia's Pythians: The "Colored" Team of 1866-1871," National Pastime (SABR, 1995), page 121. Jerry's source is the Sunday Dispatch, October 7, 1866.
Year
1866
1866.3 Five-Home Run game
Game:
Age of Players:
Lipman Pike hit 5 home runs for the Athletic BBC of Philadelphia on July 16, 1866, a feat never equaled.
Sources:
Jerrold Casway, "Lipman Pike's Home Run Record-- Athletic vs. Danville", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 49-50.
Year
1866
1866.4 Admission charged for Atlantic - Athletic championship matches
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
The Atlantic of Brooklyn and the Athletic of Philadelphia played two of three scheduled matches for the championship of 1866; admission was charged for both games.
Sources:
Eric Miklich, "Money Ball-- Atlantics vs. Athletics", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 51-52.
Year
1866
1866.5 Modern Game Compared to Traditional Town Ball in IL
Tags:
"Base Ball resembles our old-fashioned favorite game of Town Ball sufficiently to naturalize it very quickly. It is governed by somewhat elaborate rules, but the practice is quite simple. Nine persons on a side, including the Captains, play it. Four bases are placed ninety feet apart, in the figure of a diamond. The Batsman, Ball Pitcher, and one Catcher, take the same position as in Town Ball. Of the outside, besides the Pitcher and Catcher, one is posted at each base, one near the Pitcher, called the “Short Stop,â€â€”whose duty is the same as the others in the field—to stop the ball. The Innings take the bat in rotation, as in Town Ball,—and are called by the Scorer. The ball is pitched, not thrown to them—a distance of fifty feet. The Batsman is permitted to strike at three “fair†balls, without danger of being put out by a catch, but hit or miss, must run at the third “fair†ball. He may "tip" or hit a foul.
The full article, with commentary from finder Richard Hershberger, is found below in the Supplemental Text section.
Sources:
Illinois State Journal, May 10, 1866.
Query:
() Any idea why this morsel hadn't turned up before 2014?
() By 1860, the modern game seems well-established in Chicago -- was it still unfamiliar elsewhere in IL as late as 1866?
() The writer seems unfamiliar with the modern force-out rule; wasn't that introduced prior in base ball prior to 1866?
() Is it possible that the absence of a comment about the modern no-plugging rule means that local town ball already used a no-plugging rule?
() Many throwback articles mention that the new ball is harder than traditional balls. Could local town ball have already employed hard balls?
Year
1866
1866.6 First Known Table-top Base Ball Game Appears
Game:
Age of Players:
John Thorn writes:
"Who is the Father of Fantasy Baseball? Most today will answer Dan Okrent or Glen Waggoner, but let me propose Francis C. Sebring, the inventor of the table game of Parlor Base-Ball. In the mid-1860s Sebring was the pitcher (clubs only needed one back then) for the Empire Base Ball Club of New York (and bowler for the Manhattan Cricket Club). At some time around the conclusion of the Civil War, this enterprising resident of Hoboken was riding the ferry to visit an ailing teammate in New York. The idea of making an indoor toy version of baseball came to him during this trip, and over the next year he designed his mechanical table game; sporting papers of 1867 carried ads for his “Parlor Base-Ball” and the December 8, 1866, issue of Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly carried a woodcut of young and old alike playing the game. A few weeks earlier, on November 24, Wilkes' Spirit of the Times had carried the first notice. (In a previous 2011 post I discussed other fantasy-baseball forerunners, from Chief Zimmer's game to Ethan Allen's: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2011/10/17/fathers-of-fantasy-baseball/)
Sources:
Our Game posting, June 2, 2014; see -- http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2014/06/02/first-baseball-table-game/. An illustrated advertisement for Parlor Base-Ball had appeared in Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, December 8, 1866.
Comment:
The game had spring-loaded mechanisms for delivering a one-cent piece from a pitcher to a batter and by a batter into a field with cavities: "a pinball machine is not very different," John observes.
For a short history of table-top games, see
baseballgames.dreamhosters.com/BbHistory.htm
Query:
[] are there other reliable published sources of the evolution of table-top games, besides John's 2011 blog?
[] is anyone known to be attempting to reconstruct and play this game, or others?
[] can we determine what game events are given in the field of this apparatus?
Year
1866
1866.8 Earned Runs Concept Advanced
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Game:
Age of Players:
"Taking a fair average of the Eureka pitching, by deducting the additional runs in the first inning from the four miscatches, and allowing the one run only which the Athletics first earned in that inning, we find a total of 17 runs in three innings charged to Ford’s pitching, to offset which there was but one miscatch, and but 16 runs charged to Faitoute in six innings, an average of over two to one in his favor. These figures tell the story. We refer to this matter in order to do justice to Faitoute; many laying the defeats sustained in the two matches mainly to his pitching, whereas the fault lay in the errors in the field and in the lack of skill displayed at the bat, the superior of play on the part of their adversaries of course having a great deal to do with the result."
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, September 2, 1866, per 19cbb post by Richard Hershberger, Sep. 4, 2012
Comment:
This is remarkably advanced analysis. It doesn't take the final step of calculating the earned run average per nine innings, but it is otherwise identical to the modern ERA stat. It then argues that the true abilities of the players are better shown through statistical analysis than by superficial judgments. Gentlemen, we have a sabermetrician here!
Year
1866
1866.11 California Clubs Hold Conventions, View Championship Games
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Game:
Age of Players:
"In 1866 . . . about a half dozen California baseball clubs sent representatives to first Pacific Base Ball Convention in san Francisco. This was primarily a San Francisco affair; only one team, the Live Oaks from Oakland, came from outside the city. This gathering of baseball tribes sought to standardize rules and organize a local championship."
A second SF convention was held the following year, and "twenty-five clubs from as far away as San Jose attended the meeting. One account claims that one hundred clubs" attended.
Sources:
P. Zingg and M. Medeiros, Runs, Hits, and an Era: The Pacific Coast League, 1903-1958 (University of Illinois Press, Chicago, 1994), page 2. Cited in Kevin Nelson, The Golden Game: The Story of California Baseball (California Historical Society Press, San Francisco, 2004), page 12.
Comment:
Is there an indication of what standardization was needed, and whether rules were discussed or adopted that wee at variance with New York rules?
Query:
Can we determine what original sources Zingg and Medeiros used?
Year
1866
1866.15 Vassar has First female Base ball club?
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
The Vassar Encyclopedia (online) cites a letter from a Vassar student in 1866 saying she'd joined one of the base ball clubs on the college. The encyclopedia suggest the club might have been the Laurels or the Abenakis. Several sources claim this is the first verified proof of a female base ball club.
Sources:
The Vassar Encyclopedia
Year
1866
1866.17 Baseball Introduced to the Richmond Public as a Novelty From the North
Game:
Age of Players:
BASE BALL--MORE MATCH GAMES--DESCRIPTION OF THE MODE OF PLAYING IT.
Two match games of base ball are to come off this afternoon. First. The second game between the Stonewall and the Richmond Junior Clubs, at the grounds of the former, on Church Hill, when both clubs will appear in full uniform, and undoubtedly attract a large attendance of spectators. The next game, the clubs being composed of adults will probably excel in interest, will be played between the Old Dominion and Richmond Clubs at the grounds of the Richmond Club, opposite Elba Park. This game will also attract many spectators, and it is quite probable that among them will be the elite and beauty of Shockoe Hill. We call especial attention to these games, from the fact that the exercise is healthy and inspiring; and we truly hope that our prediction of a large attendance on both grounds will not be thwarted by the result.
The game of base ball was imported here from the North since the close of the war, and though copied in the main from the English game of cricket, is undoubtedly of American origin. It is unquestionably one of the best means in vogue for cultivating the physical powers. And, moreover, it may be set down as a remedy for many of the evils resulting from the immoral associations which the boys and young men of our towns and cities are very apt to become connected with. These opinions have been endorsed by some of the most eminent clergymen in the country, who themselves have formed clubs for purposes of "moral and healthful recreation."
Having been requested to give a sketch of the manner in which base ball is played, we have procured from Messrs. Cole & Turner the rules of the game; and in giving it we comply more particularly from the fact that many of us, in our school-boy days, played a game called "cat," which some think superior to the game of "base." The game of base ball is played in the following manner:
[Here follow, slightly edited into prose form, the entirety of the contemporary NABBP rules essentially verbatim]
In concluding this somewhat elaborate article upon the subject of base ball, we may state that it is seriously in contemplation to form a club for the purpose of playing heavy base by the most weighty (avoirdupois) and influential men in Richmond. We have in our possession the names of the first nine, who have already agreed to become members, and we may at no distant day, or at least so soon as the organization is perfected, give a more particular description of the "Heavy Base Ball Club." Their first game will be looked forward to with much interest.
Sources:
Richmond Daily Dispatch, 31 August 1866
Comment:
"Baseball didn't take root in Richmond until 1866, and the pioneer appears to have been Alexander Babcock, a New Yorker who played for Atlantic of Brooklyn in the 1850s, but went south and fought for the Confederacy, settling in Richmond after the war. He founded the Richmond Club, probably the first there, and then the Pastimes, which was a sort of City All-Stars and touring team." -- Bill Hicklin, 10/5/2020
Year
1866
1866.18 Stoolball in Selmeston
Game:
"Another early game played in Selmeston, as well as other villages in East Sussex, was stoolball (sometimes called “cricket in the air” ). This game was first recorded being played in 1450, and gets a mention in The Two Noble Kinsmen, a play attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. It is also referred to in Parish’s dictionary by the name of bittle-battle.
Stoolball was probably at its height from 1866 to 1887 when the Selmeston Harvest Bugs were often matched against other local teams such as the Firle Blues, the Glynde Butterflies and the Chailey Grasshoppers. It was revived during the First World War at the Royal Brighton Pavilion Military Hospital for the injured troops, as it was not as strenuous as the proper game of cricket. Stoolball is still being played today in East Sussex and, until very recently, was a feature of the annual Selmeston Flower Show."
Year
1866
1867.1 New York and Philly Colored Clubs Hold Championship -- Philly Win Is Disputed
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
From the New York Sunday Mercury, October 6, 1867:
THE COLORED CHAMPIONSHIP – The contest for the championship of the colored clubs played on October 3, on Satellite grounds, Brooklyn, attracted the largest crowd of spectators seen in the grounds this season, half of whom were white people. The Philadelphians brought on a pretty rough crowd, one of them being arrested for insulting the reporters. They also refused to have a Brooklyn umpire, and insisted upon an incompetent fellow’s acting whose decisions led to disputes in every inning. The Excelsiors took the lead from the start, and in the sixth inning led by a score of 37 to 24. But in the seventh inning the Brooklyn party pulled up and were rapidly gaining ground, when the Philadelphians refused to play further on account of the darkness. A row then prevailed.
The following particulars, as far as the reporters could record the contest, the black members of the organization imitating their white brethren in betting and partisan rancor which resulted from it:
EXCELSIOR [Philadelphia]: Price, 3b; Scott, c; Francis, 2b; Clark, p; Glasgow, 1b; Irons, cf; Hutchinson, lf; Brister, rf; Bracy, ss.
UNIQUE [Brooklyn]: Morse, cf; Fairman, p; H. Mobley, c; Peterson, 1b; Anderson, 2b; Bowman, 3b; D. Mobley, ss; Farmer, lf; Bunce, rf.
Excelsior – 42 Unique – 37 (7 innings)
Umpire: Mr. Patterson of the Bachelor Club of Albany
Scorers: Messrs. Jewell (Unique) and Auter (Ecelsiors)
---
In the same edition:
A GRAND DISPLAY BY THE COLORED CLUBS
The baseball organization among the colored population of Brooklyn, are in a fever of excitement over the advent of the celebrated champion Excelsior Club of Philadelphia, which colored nine will visit Brooklyn on October 3 to play two grand matches with the Eastern and Western Districts, the games being announced to come off on the Satellite Grounds on October 3rd and 4th. These organizations are composed of very respectable colored people well-to-do in this world, and the several nines of the three clubs include many first-class players. The visitors will receive due attention from their colored brethren of Brooklyn: and we trust, for the good name of the fraternity, that none of the “white trash” who disgrace white clubs, by following and bawling for them will be allowed to mar the pleasure of their social colored gathering.
---
Sunday Mercury, September 29, 1867:
CONTEST BETWEEN COLORED CLUBS
Arrangements have been made between the Excelsiors, of Philadelphia, and two Brooklyn clubs, all colored, to play two games for the colored championship of the United States at Satellite grounds, on the 3rd and 4th of October. We are informed that the contending clubs play a first-class game, and from the novelty of such an event colored clubs playing on an inclosed (sic) ground will excite considerable interest and draw a large crowd.
---
New York Clipper, October 19, 1867
EXCELSIOR VS. UNIQUE
The Excelsior Club of Philadelphia and the Unique Club of Brooklyn, composed of American citizens of African (de)scent, played a game at the Satellite Ground, Williamsburgh, on Thursday, October 3d. The affair was decidedly unique, and afforded considerable merriment to several hundred of the “white trash” of this city and Brooklyn. The game was a “Comedy of Errors” from beginning to end, and the decisions of the umpire – a gentlemanly looking light-colored party from the Batchelor Club of Albany – excelled anything ever witnessed on the ball field. Disputes between the players occurred every few minutes and the game finally ended in a row. At 5 ½ o’clock, while the Brooklyn club was at the bat, with every prospect of winning the game, the Excelsiors, profiting by the examples set them by their white brothers, declared that it was too “dark” to continue the game, and the umpire called it and awarded the ball to the Philadelphians. Confusion worse confounded reigned supreme for full an hour after this decision, and the prospect seemed pretty fair at one time for a riot, but the police, who were present in large force, kept matters pretty quiet, and the crowd finally dispersed…
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, September 29, 1867 and October 6, 1867
New York Clipper, October 19, 1867
A shorter account appeared in New York Sunday Dispatch, October 6, 1867
See also Irv Goldberg, "Put on Your Coats, Put on Your Coats, Thas All!," in Inventing Baseball: the 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 38-59.
Comment:
Was the October 4th game played between these African American clubs?
Query:
Is this game properly thought of as a national championship?
Year
1867
1867.2 Colored Clubs Play in Philly: Frederick Douglass Attends a Game
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
Notables:
Frederick Douglass
[A] "FRED. DOUGLAS [sic] SEES A COLORED GAME. – The announcement that the Pythian, of Philadelphia, would play the Alert, of Washington, D.C. (both colored organizations) on the 16th inst., attracted quite a concourse of spectators to the grounds of the Athletic, Seventeenth street and Columbus avenue, Philadelphia.
"The game progressed finely until the beginning of the fifth innings, when a heavy shower of rain set in, compelling the umpire, Mr. E. H. Hayhurst, of the Athletic, to call [the] game. The score stood at the end of the fourth innings: Alert 21; Pythian, 18. The batting and fielding of both clubs were very good. Mr. Frederick Douglas was present and viewed the game from the reporters’ stand. His son is a member of the Alert."
Note: From two weeks later:
[B] "COLORED BALL PLAYERS. At Philadelphia, on the 19th inst., the Pythians, of that city, played a match game with the Mutuals of Washington, with the following results: Pythians – 43; Mutuals – 44
Pythian: Cannon, p; Catto, 2b; Graham, lf; Hauley, c; Cavens, 1b; Burr, rf; Adkins, 3b; Morris, cf; Sparrow, ss.
Mutual: H. Smith, p; Brown, c; Harris, 1b; Parks, 2b; Crow, lf; Fisher, cf; Burley, 3b; A. Smith, rf; Whiggs, ss.
Sources:
[A] New York Clipper, July 13, 1867.
[B] New York Clipper, July 27, 1867.
Comment:
For more on one early African American club, the Pythian Club, see J. Casway, "Philadelphia's Pythians; The "Colored" Team of 1866-1871," National Pastime, (SABR, 1995), pp. 120-123.
Year
1867
1867.3 Upset Gives Western Clubs First win vs. the East
Game:
Age of Players:
When the Forest City BBC of Rockford, IL, upset the touring National BBC of Washington, D.C., it marked the first win for a "western" club against a team from the east.
Sources:
John Thorn, "The Most Important Game in Baseball History?-- Rockford vs. Washington", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 55-57
Year
1867
1867.4 Cummings' Curve Curtails Crimson's Clouting
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
Candy Cummings claimed that he first used his curve ball successfully (after numerous previous attempts) in a game against Harvard College on Oct. 7, 1867
Sources:
Mark Pestana,"Candy Cummings Debuts the Curve-- Excelsiors vs. Harvard", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century SABR, (2013), pp. 60-61
Candy Cummings, "How I Pitched the First Curve", The Baseball Magazine, Aug. 1908. Cummings dated his first boyish attempts at a curve to the summer of 1863.
Warning:
There are many issues with any individual claim to invention of the curve ball.
Year
1867
1867.5 Morrisania Club Takes 1867 Championship, 14-13
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Game:
Age of Players:
The Union Club of Morrisania won the 1867 Championship, winning its second game of the series, 14-13, over the Atlantic Club. Charlie Pabor is the winning pitcher. Akin at shortstop and Austin in center field make spectacular fielding plays.
Game played Oct. 10, 1867.
Sources:
Gregory Christiano, Baseball in the Bronx, Before the Yankees (PublishAmerica, 2013), page 75. Original sources to be supplied.
Query:
Can we add something about the first game, and the sites of each game? A bit more about interim game scoring?
Year
1867
1867.6 Batters' "Hits" First Appear in a Game Report
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
In the first issue of The Ball Players’ Chronicle, edited by Henry Chadwick, a game account of the “Championship of New England” between the Harvard College Club and the Lowell Club of Boston featured a box score that included a list of the number of “Bases Made on Hits” by each player. This was the first instance of player’s hit totals being tracked in a game.
Sources:
The Ball Players' Chronicle (New York City, NY), 6 June 1867: p. 2.
Comment:
Note: for a 1916 account of the history of the "hit," see the supplemental text below.
For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,” p 1 – 9:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/
Query:
Do we know if Hits were defined in about the way we would define them today?
Year
1867
1867.7 Nationals Inaugurate Western Tours
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Game:
Age of Players:
"...the Nationals (of Washington, DC)...were the first Eastern club to widely "tour." And so among their other accomplishments should be noted their popularizing of the "tour" which came to dominate the baseball seasons of 1868, 1869 and 1870, before the National Association began in 1871...these tours did much to help convince club owners and supporters that baseball could sustain a professional existence."
Sources:
Greg Rhodes,19cbb post June 17, 2002
Year
1867
1867.8 Signs Go Back To At Least 1867
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Game:
Age of Players:
"Always have an understanding with your two sets of fielders in regard to private signals, so as to be able to call them in closer, or place them out further, or nearer the foul-ball lines, as occasion may require, without giving notice to your adversaries."
Sources:
Haney's Book of Base Ball Reference, 1867
Comment:
19cbb post by Peter Morris, Nov. 8, 2002
Year
1867
1867.10 Mitts in Michigan
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"We have noticed in all the matches played thus far
that the use of gloves by the players was to some
degree a customary practice, which we think, cannot be
too highly condemned, and are of the opinion that the
Custers would have shown a better score if there had
been less buckskin on their hands."
Sources:
Detroit Free Press, 8/4/1867, reference in 19cbb post #2124, Aug. 4, 2003
Year
1867
1867.12 Post-War Spread of Baseball Noted
Tags:
Game:
"The Base Ball Mania
Since the cruel war was over, the patriotism of our nation's young
men has commenced to manifest itself in the shape of a general
mania--no, not mania, but passion--for the game of base ball, generally
denominated our "national game," with evident propriety, seeing that it
is much better and much more generally played in American than in other
countries. The popularity of base ball was greatly increased,
especially at the West, within the present season. In Wisconsin, where,
three years ago, there was scarcely a club playing anything like the
"regulation" game, there are now probably not less than a hundred
clubs, all in the "full tide of successful operation." Nearly every
country newspaper that we take up contains either an account of a match
between the club of Dodge's Corners and the invincible First Nine of
Smithville, or else a notice for the "Irrepressibles," the "Athletics,"
the "Badgers," or the "Gophers" to turn out for practice on Saturday
afternoon. An immense amount of proper healthy physical exercise if
thus afforded, and a fearful amount of muscle and dexterity developed.
And at the same time the youths who thus disport themselves can have
the satisfaction of realizing that they are practicing at our great
nation's own patriotic game. "
Sources:
Milwaukee Sentinel, July 25, 1867, per 19cbb post by Dennis Pajot, Jan. 28, 2010
Year
1867
1867.13 Moneyball 1867
Game:
Age of Players:
"Many will be surprised to learn that the Atlantics have vacated the scene of their greatest triumphs, and have located themselves on the Eckford grounds, or rather the Union ball grounds, in Williamsburgh, entirely out of the way of the residence of the majority of their members, and in opposition to the wishes of many of the best men in their club. It would appear from all accounts that the present ruler of the club, failing to make any advantageous arrangement with Weed & Decker for a greater share of the proceeds in match days than the players received last year, and finding Cammeyer of the Union grounds ready to offer good terms to secure the club, they availed themselves of the latter offer of sixty per cent of the receipts and closed with him at once. But this being against the rules of the association, they made out a new form of agreement and hired the grounds after paying forty per cent of the receipts taken in lieu of rent. They change will not benefit the club, and it is the worst precedent Cammeyer could have adopted as all clubs can now fully claim a share of the sale money."
Sources:
New York Daily News, April 21, 1867, per 19cbb post by Richard Hershberger, Sep. 30, 2013
Comment:
1867 would be a watershed year for baseball finances. At the beginning of the season ten cents was still the standard admission. Midway through the season some clubs would experiment with twenty-five cent admissions. It turned out that the public was willing to pay this, and this changed everything. At ten cents the receipts paid for expenses, but only the top draws like the Atlantics and the Athletics could turn a significant profit. At twenty-five cents this opened up a revenue stream to many more clubs, and the fraternity found itself awash with cash (at least compared to previously). A similar thing would happen a century or so later with television money. The effect in the 1860s was to lock in professionalism. By 1868 there were openly professional picked nine games being played, and the following year they dropped the pretense entirely.
Year
1867
1867.14 NABBP Draws Color Line
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"...the report of the Nominating Committee, through the acting chairman, Mr. James W. Davis, was presented, the feature of it being the recommendation to exclude colored clubs from representation in the Association, the object being to keep out of the Convention the discussion of any subject having a political bearing, as this undoubtedly had.
Sources:
The Ball Players’ Chronicle December 19, 1867
Year
1867
1867.15 First Uniform with Serif Letter on Shirt
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Game:
Age of Players:
The Pastime Club of Baltimore was the first to display a serif letter on its shirts, in 1867.
Sources:
http://www.threadsofourgame.com/1867-pastime-baltimore/
For more uniform firsts, see http://www.threadsofourgame.com/uni-firsts/#
Year
1867
1867.16 Baseball's Resemblance to English Rounders Discussed
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Game:
Age of Players:
"I have mentioned base-ball as one of our principal out-door games. We play cricket, but base-ball is to our lads what cricket is to yours. It is the English ball game “rounders,” but developed into something much more interesting and important. It is preferred to cricket, because the play is more varied and less formal; but nevertheless it has become a very formidable and solemn game." Sydney Morning Herald, April 11, 1867, quoting the London Spectator
Sources:
[from “Yankee Pastimes” by “A Yankee”], Sydney Morning Herald April 11, 1867, quoting the London Spectator.
Comment:
Finder Richard Hershberger also notes, 6/3/2016:
The distinction between baseball as a developed version of rounders and baseball as a development from rounders is subtle, but I think it is important. In the first, baseball/rounders is perceived as a family of closely related games, some more and some less developed. In the second, baseball is a single game defined by an official set of rules, descended but distinct from rounders. The former emphasizes the similarities, the latter the differences. This is a necessary precursor to the later claim that baseball is completely unrelated to rounders.
This is a late example of the formula that baseball and rounders are the same game, albeit baseball a more developed form. You can find such statements in the 1850s, but by 1867 the more typical version was that baseball developed from rounders. Here is English commentary on the [1874] American baseball tourists:
"Baseball is an American modification, and, of course, an improvement of the old English game of rounders..." New York Sunday Mercury, August 16, 1874, quoting the London Post of August 1, 1874
Query:
Is Protoball correct in thinking that the unnamed American's quote had appeared in an earlier "Yankee Pastimes" column in the London Spectator, and was then cited in the Sydney (Australia?) Morning Herald of April 11, 1867?
Year
1867
1867c.17 Some First Female teams and games in US cities
Tags:
The games and clubs entries in the "Pre-Pro Baseball Database" contain the following entries (and years) for female/women/girl/ladies teams and clubs (as of 7-10-2018):
1866--Vassar
1867--Pensacola, Portsmouth
1868--Nashville, Peterboro NY
1869--Evanston, IL
1870--Rockford, Cincinnati, Lancaster Ohio
1871--Elgin, IL
1874--Pittsfield, NH
1874--Prospect Hill School in Greenfield, MA (Indianapolis News, May 16, 1874)
1875--Springfield, IL
1876--Virginia, IL
1884--Glendive, MT
1895--Fox Lake, IL
1914--Nome, AK
Sources:
See Pre-Pro Baseball Database on this website
Circa
1867
1867.17 First Multi-Racial Baseball Team?
Game:
The Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 31, 1867, ran a box score on what may be the first reported baseball match in Hawaii, between the Pacific and Pioneer Clubs.
The players for the Pacifics included three non-Anglo names: J. Nakookoo, 2b; J. Naone, ss; and G. Laanui, rf. The Pacifics won the game 11-9.
Now, baseball had been played at the famed Punahou School for years and that school included pupils from prominent Polynesian-Hawaiian and Anglo-Hawaiian families.
This might be the first club integrated with Asians. Florence, MA in 1865 had a black player on their club.
The same issue of the newspaper included a report on the formation of a "pure Hawaiian" (presumably Polynesian-Hawaiian) team:
A new base ball club will soon be organized, to be composed entirely of pure Hawaiians.... The Pioneers and Pacifics [the 2 existing clubs, which played in the game above] will have to look out for their laurels."
Sources:
The Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 31, 1867
Year
1867
1867.18 First Inter-Racial Baseball Game?
Age of Players:
Between a Haole (white) team and a "native" (Polynesian) team, won by the latter 11-9. See
http://protoball.org/Pacific_Club_of_Honolulu_v_Pioneer_Club_of_Honolulu_on_24_August_1867 and sources cited therein.
Year
1867
1867.19 "Bat and Ball" featured in Chicago picnic
Game:
The Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1867 has an ad for the 6th annual St. George's Day picnic. Among the "old English sports" to be played at the picnic are cricket and "trap, bat and ball."
Sources:
The Chicago Tribune, July 18, 1867
Year
1867
1867.21 Wisconsin's First State Base Ball Tourney Lists $1500 in Prizes
Tags:
Game:
"FIRST ANNUAL STATE BASE BALL TOURNAMENT OF WISCONSIN, $1500 IN PRIZES TO BE AWARDED. There will be a State Base Ball Tournament at Beloit, Wis. commencing Tuesday, 30 September, 1867. Under the auspices of the Wisconsin Association of Base Ball Players.
"The following are the prizes to be awarded. . . ."
Sources:
"A New Baseball Discovery," John Thorn, June 17, 2013, posted at https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/a-new-baseball-discovery-a1d8f579388.
(John found the 7-foot broadside for the tournament at the Beloit Historical Society, and posted it in a short article about the experience.)
Comment:
Top first class prize -- $100 cash and $100 Gold Mounted Bat
Junior prizes (under age 18), "Pony Clubs" (under age 15)
Prizes for top out-of-state club, plus several "special" prizes: best pitcher, best catcher, most homers, best runner, best thrower.
From John Pregler: "The Beloit Free Press published the following complete list of the prizes awarded at the Beloit Base Ball Tournament:
Senior Clubs - First Class: 1st prize, Cream City of Milwaukee; 2nd prize: Whitewater of Whitewater; 3rd prize: Badgers of Beloit.
Second Class: 1st, Capital City Jr. of Madison; 2nd: Delavan of Delavan; 3rd, Eagle of Beloit.
Juniors: 1st, Badger Jr of Beloit; 2nd, Excelsior Jr of Janesville.
Pony: Rock River Jr of Beloit
Outside the State - Seniors: 1st, Phoenix of Belvidere, IL; 2nd, Mutual of Chicago" - Janesville Gazette, Sept. 19, 1867
Query:
[A] Is "Pony Club" a common term for teen clubs?
- - from John Thorn, 9/22/20: "The Clipper has citations for "pony team" from 1874 on, perhaps signifying junior team or just whippersnappers. Here, from Sept 8, 1888:"
BOSTON, Sept 2 . —Coming home with a record of seven victories in eight games is a far different thing from doing so after having won four games out of twenty. Add to this the fact that three straight victories were gained over New York on their own heath and that by what Boston fans look upon as a pony team, and it is little wonder that the warmest and most enthusiastic kind of a welcome was bestowed upon the Boston team on Thursday last and that cheer after cheer greeted the appearance of the nine and each man as he stepped to the bat.
---
[B] Wasn't $1500 a tidy sum in 1867?
-- from John Thorn, 9/22/20: "$1500 was a hefty prize: $27,783.73 in 2019 dollars (via Consumer Price Index adjustment)."
Year
1867
1867.22 Eureka! A Press Credential
Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
"The plan introduced by the Eureka Club of having tickets for the regular reporters of the press, none other to occupy seats near the scorer, should be adopted by all our clubs and public ground proprietors."
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, June 23, 1867
Comment:
As of March 2021, this appears to be the earliest reference to a right -- in the form of special tickets -- to exclusive seating being bestowed to reporters.
Peter Morris discusses press coverage arrangements in Morris, A Game of Inches (Ivan Dee, 2006), section 14.5.3, pp 403 ff. He cites two Henry Chadwick sources of press areas in June and August 1867 at the Brooklyn Union Grounds and then the Capitoline and Irvington grounds.
Query:
Are earlier cases known?
Is it known whether these press accommodations were normally granted by a ball club, like the Eureka, or by the owner of the ballfield?
Year
1867
1867.25 The End for the Massachusetts Game?
Tags:
"The Massachusetts Base Ball Association, composed of clubs playing what is know [sic] as the Massachusetts game, has been broken up, and most of the clubs are now practicing the National game."
Sources:
Boston American Traveler, July 20, 1867.
Comment:
Bob Tholkes, 5/6/2021: "Didn't know there was a funeral announcement."
Richard Hershberger, 5/6/2021: "I don't know of any report of the association meeting or otherwise showing any sign of life after the war."
In a 5/9/2021 search, Protoball doesn't find one after 1866 either.
Note: Protoball has an 1868 clipping of a throwback game (28 innings, score 24-23) played by Mass rules. See https://protoball.org/Clipping:The_Mohawk_Club_reverts_to_amateur.
Query:
Might the New England Base Ballist, still alive in 1868, show more about the final passing on the game?
All in all, does the Mass Game differ in major ways from English Base Ball as we now understand it?
Year
1867
1867.27 Union Club Offers Season Tickets in Washington Paper
Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
"The Union Base Ball Club, of Lansingburg, New York, will arrive here today and play a match game with the Nationals, near the State Department, on Wednesday afternoon. Season tickets may be had at Cronin's, or at James Nolan's at No. 372 Pennsylvania Avenue, near Sixth Street. The price of a single admission ticket for a gentleman and ladies is fixed at twenty-five cents."
Sources:
Daily Morning Chronicle, September 3, 1867.
Comment:
From Bob Tholkes, 11/2/2021: "First reference I've seen in '67 for sale of season tickets...seller not named, though likely the Nationals. Innovation?"
Note: Peter Morris' fine A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Ivan R. Dee, 2006), section 15.1.1, notes that the White Stockings charged $10 for a season ticket in 1870. Like the 1867 Washington offering, the Forest Cities of Cleveland in 1871 noted that a $10 season ticket would admit both a gentleman and lady, but the club also sold season tickets for individual entrants at $6.
Query:
Is earlier use of season tickets known?
Year
1867
1867.28 First Detailed Set of Rules for Stoolball Appear
Tags:
Location:
Game:
"RULES OF STOOLBALL
1. The ball to be that usually known as best tennis, No. 3.
2. The [paddle-shaped] bat not to be more than 8 inches in diameter.
3. The wickets to be boards one foot square, mounted on a stake; the top of the wicket to be four feet nine inches from the ground. One of these wickets to be selected by the umpire as that to which the ball shall be bowled.
4. The wickets to be 16 yards apart, and the bowling crease to be eight yards from the striker's wicket.
5. The bowler shall bowl the ball, not throw it or jerk it, and when bowling the ball shall stand with at least one foot behind the crease.
6. The striker is out, if the ball when bowled hit the wicket.
7. Or, if the ball, having been hit, is caught in the hands of one of the opposite party.
8. Or, if while running, or preparing or pretending to run, the ball itself be thrown by one of the opposite party so as to hit the face of the wicket; or if any one of the opposite party with ball in hand touch the face of the wicket before the bat of either of the strikers touch the same.
9. Or, if the ball be struck and the striker willfully strike it again.
10. If the ball be hit by the striker, or pass the wicket so as to allow time for a run to be obtained, the strikers may obtain a run by running across from one wicket to the other.
11. If, in running, the runners have crossed each other, she who runs for the wicket whick is struck by the ball is out.
12. A striker being run out, the run which was attempted shall not be scored.
13. A ball being caught, so that the striker is out, no run shall be scored.
14. If "lost ball" be called, the striker shall be lowed three runs; but if more than three have been run before "lost ball" has been called, then the striker shall have all that have been run.
15. The umpires, one for each wicket, are the sole judges of fair or unfair play; and all disputes shall be settled by them, each at is own wicket; but n the case of any doubt on the part of an umpire, the other umpire may be by him requested to give an opinion, which opinion shall be decisive.
16. The umpires are not to order any striker out unless asked by one of the opposite party.
17. The umpires are not to give directions to either party when acting as umpires, but shall be strictly impartial.
N.B. The bat is in form similar to a battledore."
--
Note: These appear to be, other than Willughby's circa1672 of a non-running version of stoolball and and Strutt's 1801 general description, the first known full set of rules for stoolball, appearing over four centuries after the game's first known play.
Sources:
Andrew Lusted, Girls Just Wanted to Have Fun; Stoolball Reports to Local Newspapers 1747 to 1866, (Andrew Lusted, 2013), inside front cover.
These rules are attributed to William De St. Croix, 1819-1877.
See also Andrew Lusted, The Glynde Butterflies Stoolball Team, 1866-1887: England's first Female Sports Stars (Andrew Lusted, 2011).
Query:
As a set, do these rules resemble contemporary rules for cricket in the 1860s? Do they align with cricket rules in 1800?
Do we know what the ball was like? Presumably, tennis balls were hand-wound string in this era, and the ball may have resembled cricket balls and base balls for the era.
Year
1867
1867.29 Challenge to a game of Two Old Cat
Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
Challenge to a game of two old cat issued.
Sources:
Lockport Journal Courier, July 20, 1867
Year
1867
1867.30 First Patented Baseball Object
"I believe this is the first patented baseball game or toy: Isaac P. Tice's "Toy Ball-Player" of 1867. “Base-Ball Table” was patented by William Buckley of New York on August 20, 1867 but this came along one month earlier."
Sources:
John Thorn, FB Posting, 11/21/2023
Warning:
7
Year
1867
1868.2 "Hits Per Game" Added to Standard Batting Stats
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
A seasonal analysis of the “Club Averages” for the Cincinnati Club in the 1868 season was included in the December 5, 1868 issue of the New York Clipper. “Average to game of bases on hits” is included for the first time for each player, in addition to “Average runs to game,” “Average outs to game,” and “Average runs to outs.” Each of these averages was represented in decimal form for the first time in the Clipper.
Sources:
New York Clipper (New York City, NY), 5 December 1868: p. 275.
.
Comment:
For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,” p 1 – 9:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/
Year
1868
1868c.5 The Manufactured "Figure 8" Base Ball Appears?
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"I inclose a clipping relating to base ball. I am the inventor of the base ball cover referred to. Fifty-five years ago, when a boy of ten years, my mother gave me yarn enough, of her own spinning, for a ball. Next thing was leather for a cover. I was a poor boy and couldn't buy. An old shoemaker gave me two small pieces, and said perhaps I could piece them up. My efforts resulted in the exact shape now in universal use. About twenty years ago I showed to a nephew of mine the cover of my boyhood. He was working for Harwood, the great ball maker, of Natick, Mass. Harwood adopted this cover at once, as it takes much leather and has but one seams [seam?], instead of five or six. Well, I didn't reap the fortunate [fortune?], as I didn't get it patented, but no matter, I've “got there all the same.” (The Sporting Life November 14, 1888)
Sources:
Letter to The Sporting Life from C.H. Jackson, West Brookfield, MA, November 4, 1888 -- printed November 14, 1888.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger notes, 9/12/2017:
"My opinion has been that this is unsubstantiated, but plausible. I want to focus here on the bit about the writer's nephew working for Harwood. I just made the connection with this description of baseball manufacture, from four years earlier:
'On the upper floor of the establishment sat several men with baskets of dampened chamois and buckskin clippings at their sides. Before each workman stood a stout piece of joist, in the end of which was inserted a mold, hemispherical in shape, in which the balls are formed. Taking a handful of cuttings from the basket, the workman pressed them together in his hands and then worked about the mass a few yards of strong woollen yarn. Placing the embryo ball in the mold, he pounded it into shape with a heavy flat mallet, and then wound on more yarn and gave the ball another pounding. After testing its weight on a pair of scales and its diameter with a tape measure he threw the ball into a basket and began another. When the newly-made balls are thoroughly dried they are carried to the sewing-room on the floor below, where they are to receive their covers. Forty young women sat at tables sewing on the covers of horse-hide. Grasping a ball firmly in her left hand, with her right hand one of the young women thrust a three-cornered needle through the thick pieces of the cover and drew them firmly together. A smart girl can cover two or three dozen of the best and eight dozen of the cheaper grades of balls in a day. The wages earned weekly range from $7 to $9. The balls are afterward taken to the packing-room, where the seams are smoothed down and the proper stamps are put on. The best balls are made entirely of yarn and India-rubber. “My brother was one of the pioneers in this business,” said the manufacturer. “He was the inventor of the two-piece cover now in general use throughout the country. If my brother had only patented his invention the members of our family would not be wearing diamonds instead of bits of white glass in our shirt fronts. Ball-covers are made, almost without exception, of horse-hide, which costs $3 a side. We used to obtain our supply from John Cart, a leather dealer in the Swamp for nearly thirty-five years. We are obliged to go to Philadelphia now, there being no merchant here who keeps horse-hide leather. The capacity of our factory when we get our new molding machines in working order will be about 15,000 daily, each machine being expected to turn out 1,200 balls daily.' (St. Louis Post-Dispatch June 14, 1884, quoting the New York Tribune)
"It is the second paragraph that jumped out at me. Was C. H. Jackson's nephew working for Harwood because that was his father's business? It seems plausible. The Post-Dispatch piece doesn't identify the manufacturer, or even the city. I have been unable to find the Tribune original. If anyone else can, this might shed some light on the question. Or confuse it further."
Circa
1868
1868.6 "Ladies Base Ball and Croquet" club formed in Kalamazoo
Tags:
Location:
The Kalamazoo Telegraph, May 29, 1868 reports that local ladies have formed a "base ball and croquet club," have already practiced base ball, and hope to play the men at some future date.
Sources:
The Kalamazoo Telegraph, May 29, 1868
Year
1868
1869.1 "The Best Played Game on Record"
Game:
Age of Players:
Due to the fine standard of play and the unusually low score (4-2), the Cincinnati Red Stockings' win over the Mutual in Brooklyn on June 15, 1869 in Brooklyn was hailed as the best game ever played.
Sources:
Greg Rhodes, "A Cunning Play Saves the Streak-- Cincinnati Red Stockings at Mutuals", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 63-64.
Year
1869
1869.2 The Only Blemish
Game:
Age of Players:
On Aug. 26, 1869, the "Haymakers", the Union BBC of Lansingburgh, NY, held the undefeated Cincinnati Red Stockings to what was officially declared a tie by refusing to continue the match after a decision by the umpire went against them.
Sources:
Greg Rhodes, "Unbeaten but Tied-- Cincinnati vs. Unions", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 65-67
Year
1869
1869.3 Inter-Racial Game in Philadelphia
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
The game between the Olympic and Pythian Clubs of Philadelphia on Sep. 3, 1869, has been cited in 2013 is the first known inter-racial game.
Sources:
Jerrold Casway, "Inter-racial Baseball-- the Pythians vs. the Olympics", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 68-70.
Comment:
In March 2019 we learned of an earlier inter-racial game game in Ohio: see 1869.14.
These may be the first inter-racial games involving African-Americans. But there was an inter-racial game involving a Polynesian team in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1867. See 1867.17, see Honolulu in Pre-pro baseball, and see the Our Game blog article.
Year
1869
1869c.4 Diana Base Ball Club of Northwestern Female Seminary
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
In the fall of 1869, a number of newspapers reported on the existence of the Diana Female Base Ball Club at the "Northwestern Seminary" at Evanston. There has been some confusion in secondary sources about this team, with some scholars linking it to Northwestern University. This is incorrect. The Northwestern Female College (as it was known) was a separate institution from the University. The latter did not admit its first female student until Fall semester 1869. One female student could not have organized a baseball club. Further evidence that the Diana Base Ball Club was composed of younger girls, not college women, is the fact that a junior "pony club" of boys challenged them to a match game. (There is no evidence this game was ever played.) By way of further clarification, the Northwest Female College operated until 1871 when its trustees handed over responsibility for educating young women to the trustees of the newly-chartered Evanston College for Ladies. The original intent of the founders was to operate as the Women's Department of Northwestern University. This did not happen until 1874 when it became the Women's College of Northwestern University. Frances Willard, who would later gain international fame as head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union was a graduate of the Northwestern Female College and first president of the Evanston College for Ladies.
Sources:
Chicago Times (22 Oct 1869), p. 6. Quoted in: Robert Pruter, "Youth Baseball in Chicago, 1868-1890: Not Always Sandlot Ball," Journal of Sport History, 26.1 (Spring 1999): 1-28. Also, The National Chronicle (Boston) (30 Oct 1869), p. 259, “All Shapes and Sizes,” Bangor Daily Whig & Courier (8 Nov 1869), n.p., “The Playground: Our National Game,” Oliver Optic's Magazine: Our Boys and Girls (20 Nov. 1869): 639.
Circa
1869
1869.5 Hits Elevated to Prominent Status in Box Scores
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
In the September 19, 1867 issue of The Ball Players’ Chronicle, hits are placed side-by-side with runs and outs for the first time in a series of box scores throughout the periodical. They are abbreviated with the letter “B” for the number of at-bats in a game for which “bases are made on hits."
Sources:
The Ball Players' Chronicle (New York City, NY), 19 September 1867.
Comment:
For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,” p 1 – 9:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/
Year
1869
1869.6 Slugging Stat Arrives in Early Form
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
“Average total bases on hits to a game” first appears in the New York Clipper on December 4, 1869. It would continue to be used in 1870 and 1871 before falling out of favor. Slugging average—total bases on hits per at-bat—would be adopted by the National League in 1923 as one of two averages, along with batting average, tracked by the official statistician.
Sources:
New York Clipper (New York City, NY), 4 December 1869: p. 277.
Comment:
For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,” p 1 – 9:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/
Year
1869
1869.7 Cincinnati Club Forms as First All-Professional Nine
Game:
Age of Players:
Notables:
George Wright, Harry Wright
"In the fall of 1868, a group of Cincinnati businessmen and lawyers, serving as directors of the Cincinnati Base Ball Club, agreed to a concept so commonplace today that it is difficult to imagine how risky it seemed at the time. The club would recruit the best players it could find, from around the country (and), pay all the players a salary..."
Sources:
Rhodes, Greg & Erardi, John, The First Boys of Summer. Road West Publishing Co., 1994, p.4
Year
1869
1869.11 First Club to Wear Checked/Plaid Stockings
Game:
The National Club of Washington DC was the first to use checked or plaid stockings on their uniforms.
Sources:
http://www.threadsofourgame.com/1869-national-washington-dc
For more uniform firsts, see http://www.threadsofourgame.com/uni-firsts/#
Year
1869
1869.12 Pastimes Adopt First Striped Stockings for Uniforms
Game:
Age of Players:
The Pastime Club of Baltimore was, in 1869, the first to wear striped stockings on their uniforms.
Sources:
http://www.threadsofourgame.com/1869-pastime-baltimore/
For more uniform firsts see http://www.threadsofourgame.com/uni-firsts/
Year
1869
1869.13 George Wright Joins the All-Professional Cincinnati Club
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
In late February 1869, the Sunday Mercury reported that prominent player George Wright had joined the Cincinnati base ball club as its highest-paid player.
The 22-year-old, already counted among the most proficient players in the game; playing for New York's Union club in 1868, he had averaged four runs (and over seven hits) per game, and Henry Chadwick cited him as the best "general player" in base ball.
George Wright was only 22 years old in 1869, but had already had a variety of base ball experiences. Born into a prominent family of athletes (his father was a NYC club pro, and his older brother Harry played cricket and base ball, and was the player-manager of the famous Cincinnati championship club).
Wright's business was base ball. "Arranged employment and waived club dues had been considered acceptable evasions of the NABBP rule forbidding compensation since its adoption in 1859," and at age 19 he played on his brother Harry's Gotham Club in 1863 and 1864. His subsequent migrations:
Age 16-17 (1863-4) -- He played in the outfield of the Gotham Club in New York in 1863 and was the club's catcher for most of 1864.
Age 18 (1865) -- He caught for the Olympic Club of Philadelphia, and also subbed for that city's Keystone Club on its NYC visit. Chadwick would later name him the best catcher in the game.
Age 19 (1866) -- He started the year with the Gotham Club, and then decided to move to the first-tier Union Club of Morrisania, which compiled a better record than the year's unofficial champions, the Atlantic Club, and he became its shortstop.
Age 20 (1867) He moved to Washington and the National Base Ball Club, nominally serving with seven teammates as clerks in the Treasury Department. The National Club won 25 of its first 30 games, and undertook a tour to the West, including two games against his brother Harry's Cincinnati club.
Age 21 (1868) He played for the Union Club in NYC. The club won 39 of its 45 games, and undertook a 20-game tour of the west, including Cincinnati.
The Cincinnati club folded after its 1870 season, and George Wright joined his brother's Boston Red Stockings outfit in the new National Association for 1871 through 1875, where it won four of five league championships. He was named to the Hall of Fame in 1937.
Sources:
Robert Tholkes, "The Young and the Restless: George Wright 1865-1868." Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2016, pp. 95-101.
Comment:
Bob Tholkes' thorough 2016 paper [cited above] throws welcome light on the nature of elite base ball in period immediately following the Civil War, a period also associated with the rise of "Base Ball Fever" during which local clubs, representing individual companies, affinity groups, etc., formed clubs, some of which playing at sunrise [as early as five o'clock AM], prior to the work day.
Year
1869
1869.14 First Known Inter-racial Game of Base-Ball
Age of Players:
"A very interesting game of base-ball was played on the Newtown Grounds on Saturday afternoon, August 7, between the Black Hawks (colored), of Africa, and the Alerts (white) of Plainville. . . . "
The account included a box score showing the Black Hawks as winners, 47-43.
Sources:
Cincinnati Enquirer, August 11, 1869.
Comment:
Newtown OH (1880 pop. about 400) is about 10 miles east of Cincinnati, and is across the Little Miami River from Plainville OH.
Previously the September 3, 1869 Pythians-Olympic match in Philadelphia was seen as the first game between a white and non-white club. See 1869.3
Year
1869
1869.15 Teams Hassle Over Choice of Game Ball -- The Redstockings Liked the Less-elastic Variety
Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
"Over a quarter of an hour’s time was wasted in a dispute as to what ball should be played with, the Athletics insisting that a lively elastic Ross ball should be used, whilst the Cincinnatis claimed that as they were the challenging party, they had the right o furnish the ball, and therefore proposed to use a ball made expressly for them, of a non-elastic nature, by which they hoped to equalize any advantage that the Athletics might possess over them in batting. The dispute was finally decided by the Cincinnatis agreeing to play with the ball furnished by the Athletics, as it always has been the custom for the club on whose ground a match is played to furnish the ball."
The game was Cincinnati vs. Athletic 6/21/1869.
Sources:
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 27, 1869
Comment:
Richard Hershberger explains (email to Protoball, 12/17/2021): "The elasticity of balls varied wildly in this era. Typically clubs that were better hitters than fielders preferred more elastic, i.e. lively, balls, while clubs that were better fielders preferred less elastic, i.e. dead, balls. This was a frequent source of dispute before games. The problem was eventually solved when the National League adopted an official league ball for all championship games."
==
Colleague and ballmaker Corky Gaskell adds, (email of 12/20/2021): "George Ellard made the base balls for the Cincinnati club. I am not 100% sure when he started doing that, but if my memory serves me right, he was making them during the 1869 season, and it wasn't uncommon for them to want that less lively ball to help their defense do its thing."
==
On 12/21/21, ballmaker Gaskell replied to a prior Protoball query for #1869.15: "Was the official NABBP ball relatively elastic or relatively inelastic, compared to the range in available base balls? Were cricket balls, which had very similar dimensions and weights, more or less elastic than base balls in the years prior to the pro leagues? Prior to the NL, was the convention that the home club furnished the ball?"
Corky's Answer: "'Official' base balls came later. . . not so much in the late 60s or early 70s.
From 1869 through 1872, the ball got slightly smaller, ranging 9 1/4" circ to 9 1/2" in 1869, to 9" to 9 1/4+ circ in 1872. The ball didn't get any lighter in weight, ranging 5 to 5 1/4 oz in all 4 years. The ball has not changed size or weight since 1872. A modern ball today has same dimensions. It just got harder with use of machines. In all 4 of those years, the materials specified are India rubber, yarn and a leather cover.
In 1869 it was specified that the "challenging club" would provide the ball. In 1870 through 1872, it was added that the "challenged club" would provide the ball in game 2, and if it were just a single game being played (vs match play) the ball would be provided by the "challenging club".
In 1871 they stipulated the rubber core would weigh 1 ounce. In 1872 they added not only the 1 ounce, but it would be vulcanized into a mould form. Other than that, there were no stipulations on elasticity. Ball makers were known for their type of ball and as long as it met the weight and size and materials guidance, it was a ball.
They did eventually require all match play base balls be stamped with the size, weight and manufacturer.
Cricket balls were 5 1/4 ounce and 9 inches.. very similar to where the base ball finally ended up in 1872. It was written that the larger base ball (from 1858 thru 1868) was probably cause for more injuries to the hands. Cricket was not known as much for hand injuries and they felt the size of that ball (smaller) was a safer ball. I don't think it is a coincidence that the 1872 ball ended up where it did in size and weight. I have not heard of the start of cricket games being delayed over ball elasticity, so would assume they were more consistent in their ball making."
Year
1869
1870.1 The Streak Ends -- Reds Fall to Atlantic, 8-7, in 11 Innings
Game:
Age of Players:
On June 14, 1870, The Atlantic of Brooklyn broke the Cincinnati Red Stockings' 81-game winning streak, beating them 8-7 in 11 innings.
Sources:
Greg Rhodes, "The Atlantic Storm-- Cincinnati Red Stockings vs. Atlantics", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 71-73.
See also George Bulkley. "The Day the Reds Lost," at https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-day-the-reds-lost-eb6bd8dd54a9, reproduced from SABR's National Pastime, 1983.
Comment:
The Bulkley article reports that the Atlantics had lost three times in 1870, and local oddmakers gave 5-1 pregame odds for the Reds . . . lengthened to 10-1 after the Reds forged a 3-0 lead after three innings.
The Atlantic club tied the game in the eighth, and threatened in the ninth, until shortstop George Wright pulled the still-legal trap play that he turned into a double play. There ensued a dispute over whether the Atlantic could claim a tie by vacating the premises, one that was decided by Henry Chadwick in favor of the Reds playing their first-ever tenth inning.
In the 11th, Atlantic catcher Bob Ferguson decided to bat left-handed to avoid hitting to SS Wright, and got on base, scoring the winning run on a throwing error by Cincinnati 1B Charley Gould.
Year
1870
1870.2 "Chicagoed"
Game:
Age of Players:
The 19th-century baseball slang for being held scoreless originated when the Mutuals BBC traveled to Chicago and humiliated the White Stockings, 9-0, on July 23, 1870.
Sources:
Richard Bogovich and Mark Pestana, "The First 'Chicago' Game-- New York vs. Chicago", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 74-76
Year
1870
1870.3 "Homer" Ump Robs Mutuals
Game:
Age of Players:
The Mutuals, named champions for 1870 in the East, were denied enthronement as national champions when, with the Mutuals leading in the ninth inning of the decisive game in Chicago on Nov. 1, 1870, a local umpire refused to call strikes on White Stocking batters.
Sources:
Bob Tiemann, "The Birth of the NA-- Mutuals vs. Chicago" in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp. 77-78
Comment:
Tiemann suggests that the incident was an incentive for the formation over the winter of 1870-71 of the National Association, with the first championship based on total wins over the course of the season.
Year
1870
1870.6 Dead Ball Adopted
Game:
Age of Players:
On November 30, 1870, the National Association of Base Ball Players reduced the amount of rubber permitted in base balls to one ounce, effectively inaugurating a "dead" ball. Balls had previously contained as much as 2 1/2 ounces.
Sources:
Peter Morris, A Game of Inches, 2005, p.37
Comment:
Critics of the game had long insisted that low-scoring games were indicated play of higher quality.
Year
1870
1870c.7 First Catcher's Glove? About 1870, Perhaps
Game:
Age of Players:
"Re: a claimed antedating of catcher's gloves
"Another early primary source glove reference is to Cincinnati Red Stocking catcher Doug Allison wearing gloves in 1870: 'Allison caught today in a pair of buckskin mittens to protect his hands.' Cincinnati Commercial June 29, 1870
"For several yearly editions starting in 1872, the DeWitt Guide had the following advice: "The catcher will find it advantageous when facing swift pitching to wear tough leather gloves with the fingers cut off near the joint and they will prevent him having his hands split and puffed up."
"The earliest advertisement I’ve found for “catchers’ gloves” being sold commercially is 1875.
"There are many secondary source references to gloves being used in the early 1870s by Allison, White, Nat Hicks, Fergy Malone, and others. I agree that gloves were somewhat common and not considered shameful in the early 1870s. The shaming started in the late 1880s and 1890s when the infielders and outfielders starting using very large gloves (originally meant for catchers) which were often derided as “oven mitts” or “boxing gloves.”
Sources:
Cincinnati Commercial, June 29, 1870.
Comment:
In the 1880s we find a claim that catchers' gloves had been known in the 1860s:
"An exchange says that 'Jim White, the third baseman of the Detroit club, was the first man who ever used gloves while catching behind the bat.' This is a mistake. Delavarge, the catcher of the old Knickerbockers, an amateur club of Albany, used gloves when playing behind the bat in the sixties." The Sporting News July 5, 1885.
But in a 9/21/16 19CBB posting, Bob Tholkes wrote:
"I've read several Knick of Albany game accounts in which Delavarge played without running into any mention of gloves. If he wore them, it would have been to protect an injured hand (he was a blacksmith, if memory serves), and not routinely."
And then David Arcidiacono offered the 1870 Allison item listed above.
Year
1870
1870c.8 Base Ball Comes to Massachusetts Youth
Tags:
Age of Players:
"I well remember when baseball made its first appearance in our quiet little community."
[] Charles Sinnott writes that in early childhood "the little boys' ball game was either "Three-old-cats" or "Four-Old Cats," and describes both variations.
[] He recalls that "The game that bore the closest resemblance to our modern baseball was "roundstakes" or "rounders." In some communities it was know (sic) as "townball." He recalls this game as marked by the plugging of runners, use a soft ball, featuring stakes or stones as bases, compulsory running -- including for missed third strikes, an absence of foul territory, an absence of called strikes or balls, and teams of seven to ten players on a team. "It was originally an old English game much played in the colonies."
[] In describing the new game of base ball, he recalls adjustment to the harder ball ("it seemed to us like playing with a croquet ball"), gloves only worn by the catchers, an umpire who was hit in the eye by a foul tip, fingers "knocked out of joint" by the hard ball, a bloody nose from a missed fly ball, and "that we unanimously pronounced [base ball] superior to our fine old game of roundstakes."
SEE FULL CHAPTER TEXT AT "SUPPLEMENTAL TEXT," BELOW --
Sources:
Chapter 13, "The Coming of Baseball," in When Grandpa Was a Boy: Stories of My Boyhood As Told to My Children and Grandchildren, by Charles Peter Sinnott (four types pages; presumed unpublished; from the Maxwell Library Archives, Bridgewater State College, Bridgewater MA).
Comment:
Protoball does not know of other use of "roundstakes" as a predecessor game in the US.
Duxbury MA (1870 population about 2300) is about 35 miles south of Boston.
Sinnott died in 1943. On the date of his hundredth birthday, in August 1959, his family distributed 100 copies of his boyhood memoirs.
Query:
[] Is the date "1870c" reasonable for the item? Sinnott was born in 1859, and writes that he was in his teens when he first saw base ball. His old-cat games would have come in the mid-1860s.
[] It is presumed that Sinnott stayed in or near his birthplace, Duxbury MA, for the events he writes of. Is that reasonable?
Circa
1870
1870.9 Lively Ball Suspected in Mutual-Olympic Game
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"It was supposed that a lively ball was played with, on account of the heavy batting [Mutual had 31 hits and 29 runs]. Both the Olympic games of yesterday and Monday were played with a ball that contained but half an ounce of rubber; the yarn and covering bringing it up to regulation weight."
Sources:
New York Tribune, September 14, 1870.
For a concise account of rules on baseballs, see Chapter 17 ("The Ball and Bat"), in Richard Hershberger, Strike Four: The Evolution of Baseball, (Rowan and Littlefield, 2019, pp 121-126.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger annotation, 9/14/2020: "Missing from [the formal rule on ball makeup] is any discussion of relative proportions of rubber and yarn. In other words, how much rubber? Rubber is denser than yarn, so the size and weight requirements imply a range of legal proportions between the two. Some clubs were rumored to get around this, having illegal balls made with extra rubber, balanced by cork. . . . There were learned discussions of the merits of lively and dead balls, and arguments before the game started over what ball to use. Also, the occasional surreptitious switch mid-game."
Ball Four points out [pp 124-125) that a limit of one ounce of rubber was defined for a regulation ball in 1871. In 1876, the new National League addressed the issue by requiring clubs to use a standard Spalding ball in its games, thus lessening suspicion the club that provides a game ball thereby gains competitive advantage.
Query:
Were the weights and/or circumferences of balls subject to impartial tests at or before games?
Year
1870
1870.10 Philly Paper Lists Betting Odds for US Championship Match in Brooklyn
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"The Athletic Base Ball Club [of Philadelphia]has again been defeated, making the sixth thrashing [of 11-10] which they have received during the present season. This afternoon [September 15] they played on the Union Grounds, in Brooklyn, the deciding game for the championship of the United States, with the Mutual Club . . . . Bets were freely offered prior to the game of a hundred to fifty . . . but even at these heavy odds there were few takers." The crowd was reported as about three thousand persons.
Sources:
"Another Defeat," Philadelphia Inquirer, September 16, 1870. As reproduced on Richard Hershberger's Facebook posting, September 15, 2020
Comment:
"Note also how the betting line is featured prominently in the account. The baseball press routinely decried the influence of gambling on baseball, while carefully reporting the odds. Consistency was not a priority here.
"The crowd of three thousand seems a bit low. It is respectable for this era, but a really big game would draw a lot more. The Philadelphians claimed that that the A's held the championship, with this loss passing it to the Mutuals. No one outside Philadelphia really believed the A's held the championship, or more would have turned out today."
-- Richard Hershberger, 9/15/2020
Year
1870
1870.11 Chicago Switches to the Dead Ball, Starts Winning Again
Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
"Circumstances prevented any improvement in the organization of the [White Sox] nine until some weeks after their return from their disastrous [New York] tour; finally, however, the nine was re-organized . . . the muffin players' rubber ball was re-placed by a dead ball, and from the[n] . . .the Chicago club has been marked by a series of uninterrupted victories, the crowning triumph being the defeat of the strongest nine in the United States in two successive contests."
Sources:
New York Clipper October 29, 1870
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball, FB posting 10/29/2020:
Chadwick on the improvement of the Chicago Club. They wisely took his advice and switched from a lively to a dead ball. Success inevitably followed.
Much as I enjoy tweaking Chad for this sort of thing, in fairness it was pretty standard in this era. A newspaper would publish helpful advice to the local club. If the club did something that could plausibly be taken as consistent with the helpful advice, the paper would claim credit for the suggestion. Say what you will about modern sports talk radio, even those guys don't usually claim that the GM turns to them for trade ideas.
Does the claim about the deal ball make a lick of sense? It is classic Chad, but there is a kernel of truth. Good and poor fielding teams generally favored a dead or lively ball respectively, on the grounds that a dead ball gave the infielders a chance to show their stuff while a lively ball was more likely to get to the outfield. The Red Stockings revolution was mostly about improved fielding, so they favored a dead ball. As clubs' fielding caught up, they followed suit. The eventual consensus was a relatively dead ball, with later discussions being how live or not, within the range of a relatively dead ball. So as the White Stockings got their act together, it is entirely plausible that they moved to a dead ball. In other words, they didn't get getter because they switched to a dead ball; they switched to a dead ball because they got better. And certainly not because Chadwick convinced them.
Year
1870
1870.12 Chadwick Ponders Red Stockings' Decline: Lack of Onfield Harmony?
Game:
Age of Players:
"THE REDSTOCKINGS AND THEIR RECENT DEFEATS -- Everybody in this vicinity is making the inquiry, 'What is the matter with the Reds?' Their recent defeats at Chicago and Rockford have surprised their friends here. . . [B]oth at Chicago and Rockford last week they were badly whipped. Something must be wrong. It is not the lack of skill or generalship that is the cause. We rather suspect that there is that same lack of harmony and acting in concert . . . which marked the play of the first Chicago nine. . . . In the game at Rockford on October 15, the Red Stockings received the worst defeat they have sustained since they first donned the red hose."
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, October 23, 1870.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball, posted October 23, 2020: "Chadwick considers the question of the Red Stockings' decline. How steep a decline this is in fact will be the topic for a post-season roundup. The season has a bit more to go yet, so this would be premature today. But it is certainly true that the Red Stockings are no longer dominant in the way they were in 1869.
"Chad, frankly, doesn't have a great answer. The "lack of harmony" stuff is boilerplate Chadwick, and he doesn't even pretend he has any factual basis for it. Beyond that he falls back on a parity argument. This isn't wrong, but doesn't explain what is different in 1870 from 1869. The rest of the baseball world was catching up, but he doesn't explain what exactly this means.
"The Red Stockings revolution was primarily about fielding. Their pitching and hitting were solid, but their fielding in 1869 was qualitatively better than anyone else's. This was about fielder positioning and where they went once the ball was in play, with an emphasis on backing up other players. And, to be blunt, it was about actually practicing. The New York/Philly baseball establishment had grown complacent. The clubs at the top saw no reason to change, since what they were doing obviously was working. That changed with the Red Stockings' June 1869 tour. That was a wake up call. By the end of the season the established teams were already better. It was June of 1870 when one finally beat the Red Stockings. Here in October, teams are beating them, well, not exactly regularly, but often enough. So it goes. Play in the field is in front of anyone who cares to look, so there aren't really any secrets in the long run."
Year
1870
1870.13 November News: Will the Atlantic Club Stay Strong?
Game:
Age of Players:
"The Atlantics will be divided up among the leading professional nines for 1871. Ferguson and Start are to go to Chicago, Chapman and Hall southwest, and others will help with the Mutuals and Haymakers. The Atlantics, it is said, will then return to an amateur footing for 1871."
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury November 13, 1870.
http://www.brooklynatlantics.org/history.php, (accessed 11/13/2020).
Comment:
"Is the Atlantic Club about to be gutted? Spoiler: Yes. With no reserve system or multi-year contracts, every offseason was a potential cage match. The Atlantics historically have been successful at doing unto others, but this year they will be done unto. Indeed, it will be so thorough that they will sit 1871 out, as a professional club. They will return to the professional ranks in 1872, but will never really recover. The predicted destinations aren't quite right. Ferguson and Start will go to the Mutuals. The vague bit about Hall going "southwest" is right.
"The Olympics of Washington will make a run for it. Mostly this will involve the old Red Stocking players Harry Wright doesn't take with him to Boston. Taking George Hall from the Atlantics will be part of this. It won't work. The Olympics will go 15-15: the very definition of mediocre. Chapman will stick with the Atlantics initially, them jump to the Eckfords. So it goes."
from Richard Hershberger, 150 Years Ago Today, 11/13/2020 Facebook Posting.
In June 1870, the Atlantics had broken the famous winning streak of the visiting Cincinnati Red Stockings, 8-7. In 1872 the club was to become professional again, and join the National Association. The Atlantic website cited above shows a later Atlantic lineage to the Brooklyn Dodgers, formed in 1911.
"Strictly speaking the social club spun off from the baseball club December 16, 1865, the two operating in tandem until the baseball side disbanded. The Hall of Fame library has the program from the club's centennial celebration in 1965. The club later was a bit confused about the connection with the baseball side. It knew it had one, but it always dated itself from 1865." -- Richard Hershberger, email of 11/13/2020.
Year
1870
1870.14 Boston, Other Towns Eye "First-Class Professional Nines" Like the Red Stockings
Tags:
Game:
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[Beyond the Cincinnati-Chicago base ball rivalry] "The pecuniary success attendant upon of the Red Stocking Club -- the best managed club in the country -- has tempted other cities to try the professional nine experiment. The Boston Journal says that for some time past, gentlemen interested in the game of base ball have been considering the subject of securing for Boston a professional base ball nine who should do honor to the city. It seems to be one of the few notions in which Boston is lacking. The success of the Union Grounds as a pecuniary investment has shown that the thing is perfectly safe and feasible. . . . It is proposed to petition the next Legislature for a special charter as a base-ball club, with a capital stock of not less than $10,000, in shares of $100 each."
"Indianapolis is raising a first-class professional nine under competent management. Cleveland will again have a professional nine;: Troy, ditto, and an opposition tot he Athletics is organizing in Philadelphia. St. Louis, too is in the market, and also New Orleans.
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle, November 17, 1870.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, "150 years ago in baseball" [FB posting, 11/17/2020:
"Rumors about new professional clubs for next season. Here we see an intermediate stage, combining the assumption that the Cincinnati Club will keep on doing what it does, along with early rumors of a new club on Boston. The Union Grounds mentioned here is not the one in Cincinnati or the one in Brooklyn, but the one in Boston, so named because it originated as a joint project of several local clubs. Its pecuniary success is in part due to the visits of the Cincinnati Club. The Boston baseball establishment has been paying attention. More developments will soon arise.
"As for the other predictions, they are a mixed bag. Cleveland and Troy will indeed have professional clubs next season, but the other proposals won't pan out, or at least not right away."
Query:
Do we know more about the fate of the Union Grounds and Boston sports?
Year
1870
1870.15 Chadwick Explains Rule Shifts on Called Strikes, Deliberate Flubs Afield
Game:
Age of Players:
[Two of nine newly proposed rules after the 1870 season:]
"Sec. 4. The striker shall be privileged to call for either a 'high' or 'low' ball. . . . The ball shall be considered a high ball if pitched between the height of waist and the shoulder of the striker; and it shall be considered a low ball if pitched between the knee and he waist. . . ."
"Sec 9. The the bal be even momentarily held by a player while in the act of catching it, and he wilfully [sic] drops it in order to make a double play, if should be regarded as a fair catch."
Sources:
New York Clipper, November 26, 1870 (attributed to Henry Chadwick.)
Comment:
"The bit [#4] about high and low balls is an important refinement of an old idea. Called strikes had been around for a while by this time, but there was never total clarity about what was and was not a pitch that should be called a strike. Through the 1860s the batter could request a specific height for the pitch. If the delivery was both over the plate and within some vaguely defined distance to the specified height, there you go. In [early] 1870 they went complete the other direction, taking away the batter's right to request a height and declaring any pitch within some vaguely defined reach of the bat to be a good ball. This proved unsatisfactory and confusing. Here we see a move to a modernish definition of a strike zone, but with a throwback to the old right to request the height. This is codified as two distinct strike zones, the batter requesting which he wants. This may seem bizarre, but it stood until 1887.
"The other interesting proposal is that last one [#9], about the fielder momentarily holding the ball. This is a proto-infield fly rule. That will not take its modern form until a quarter century later, but the idea was floating around. This will not be adopted this year, but it will be a few years later. The problem was not any philosophical objection to the infielder dropping the ball to set up a double play, but that this made umpire decide whether the fielder caught the ball (putting the batter out) and then dropped it, or muffed the ball (for no out on the batter), leading to endless bickering. This objection still stands today, and is the best argument for the infield fly rule."
-- Richard Hershberger, "150 Years Ago Today," Facebook posting, 11/26/2020
Year
1870
1870.16 Red Stocking Leader Explains Background for Club Decision to Exit Pro Base Ball Scene
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
Notables:
Aaron Champion
Aaron Champion, past club President, in a December 1870 speech touching on the costs of excellence after the club decided not to support a pro club after 1870:
" . . . we have tried it [to fund a nine via outside subscription], and have failed most beautifully. The season 1868 we had a professional nine, and succeeded in getting in debt with it. The season of 1869 we engaged a professional nine. . . . [in November 1868] we found that the Cincinnati Club was $17,000 in debt. . . . 1869 went by. We had the best nine in the country -- the leading club. They had played fifty-seven games, and did not lose a single game. We were out of money, and were still in debt."
Sources:
"How Cincinnati Supports Base Ball," Cincinnati Gazette, December 8, 1870. From Richard Hershberger, "150 Years ago in Base Ball, FB posting, 12/7/2020.
Comment:
"The Cincinnati Club holds a meeting. Recall that the Executive Committee recently announced that the club will not be fielding a professional team next season. This meeting is the membership's chance to second guess the committee. There is a moral there, about volunteering to be a club officers. Been there, done that.
"Here Champion backs up [Current President ]Bonte without reservation. We get a lot of inside information about the business of baseball in 1870." -- Richard Hershberger (From FB posting. 12/7/2020.)
Year
1870
1870.17 Wicket Losing Out to Baseball
The Hartford Courant, Sept. 3, 1870 reports that though baseball has just about "crowded out" the "old-fashioned" game of wicket, a wicket game will be played in Bristol between the married men and the single men.
Sources:
The Hartford Courant, Sept. 3, 1870
Year
1870
1871.2 Battery Sought for African American Club in St. Louis
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Game:
Age of Players:
"To Colored Professionals -- A good catcher and good left hand pitcher are wanted for the Brown Stockings, of St. Louis. A good salary will be given for the season. Address Douglass (sic) Smith, 109 North Street, St. Louis."
Sources:
New York Clipper, April 8, 1871.
Year
1871
1871.3 Coup d'grace for the Amateur Era
Location:
Game:
"In March 1871, ten members of the National Association met in New York for the purpose of forming a new group...This act essentially killed the National Association."
Sources:
Marshall Wright, The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870, p.328
Year
1871
1871.4 National Association Urged to Adopt Modern Batting Average
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
In a letter published in the New York Clipper on March 11, 1871, H. A. Dobson, a correspondent for the periodical, wrote to Nick E. Young, the Secretary of the Olympic Club in Washington D.C., and future president of the National League. Young would be attending the Secretaries’ Meeting of the newly formed National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, and Dobson urged him to consider a “new and accurate method of making out batting averages.”
“According to a man’s chances, so should his record be. Every time he goes to the bat he either has an out, a run, or is left on his base. If he does not go out he makes his base, either by his own merit or by an error of some fielder. Now his merit column is found in ‘times first base on clean hits,’ and his average is found by dividing his total ‘times first base on clean hits’ by his total number of times he went to the bat. Then what is true of one player is true of all…In this way, and in no other, can the average of players be compared.”
Dobson included a calculation, for theoretical players, of hits per at-bat at the end of the letter; the first published calculation of the modern form of batting average.
Sources:
Dobson, H.A. “The Professional Club Secretaries’ Meeting.” New York Clipper (New York City, NY), 11 March 1871: p. 888.
Comment:
While "hits per at-bat" has become the modern form of batting average, and was the only average calculated by the official statistician beginning in the inaugural season of the National League in 1876, the definition of a "time at bat" has varied over time. To Dobson, a time at bat included any time a batter made an "out, a run, or is left on his base." However, walks were excluded from the calculation of at-bats beginning in 1877, with a temporary reappearance in 1887 when they were counted the same as hits. Times hit by the pitcher were excluded beginning in 1887, sacrifice bunts in 1894, times reached on catcher's interference in 1907, and sacrifice flies in 1908 (though, they went in and out of the rules multiple times over the next few decades and weren't firmly excluded until 1954).
Consequently, based on Dobson's calculation, walks would have counted as an at-bat but not as a hit, so a negative result for the batter. This was the case in the first year of the National League as well, but was "fixed" by the second year. A fielder's choice would have been recorded as an at-bat and not a hit under Dobson's system, as it is today.
For a short history of batting measures, see Colin Dew-Becker, “Foundations of Batting Analysis,” p 1 – 9:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0btLf16riTacFVEUV9CUi1UQ3c/
Query:
Year
1871
1871.5 Base Ball Attendance Practices at the Dawn of the Pro Era
Game:
Age of Players:
As the Professional Era took shape, 50-cent admission fees were common, if not standard, in the new league.
(Add data on typical crowd sizes?) (On typical bathroom facilities?) (On available food and drink availability and prices?) (On other now-forgotten practices?)
Debate on admission fees persisted for the AA and the NL was to persist into the 1880s.
Admission gave attendees access to standing room. A seat in the grandstand was (always? sometimes?) extra, and within 2 or three years grandstand seats were being sold for one dollar.
Sources:
Sources?
Year
1871
1871.6 Boston Club Puts City Name on Uniform
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Game:
Age of Players:
In 1871 the Boston club put the word "Boston" on the team shirt, the first club to do so.
Sources:
http://www.threadsofourgame.com/1871-boston/
For more uniform firsts, see http://www.threadsofourgame.com/uni-firsts/#
Year
1871
1871.7 Brimmed Uniform Caps Introduced
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Game:
Age of Players:
Several clubs began wearing hats with brims in 1871. 15 examples are shown in the source link below.
Year
1871
1871.8 First Co-Ed college baseball game?
Age of Players:
Sheppard (ed.),"History of Northwestern University and Evanston" p 154 cites the college paper as reporting that on July 4, 1871: "Baseball Match Between Ladies' College nine and Northwestern University: prize a silver ball: score 57 to 4 in favor of Northwestern."
The "Evanston College for Ladies" was at the time separate from the main college.
Sources:
Sheppard (ed.),"History of Northwestern University and Evanston" p 154. Seymour, "The People's Game" also references this event.
Year
1871
1871.9 State-wide Base Ball Association for California?
Game:
Age of Players:
"The Pacific Base-Ball Convention held an adjourned meeting last night . . . on Merchant street, Col. Harry Linden presided. . . .
"Messrs Gorman, Cashman, Linden were appointed a Committee to procure an elegant champion bat, regardless of cost, for future contests among Base-Ball Companies."
"It being suggested that the Constitution and By-laws needed revision, Messrs Hooks, Glascock and Calvert were appointed a Committee for that Purpose. . . .
Standing Committees for Judiciary, Credentials, Finance, Rules and Regulations, and Printing were named.
Sources:
San Francisco Examiner, February 4, 1871
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 2/4/2021:
150 years ago in baseball: the Pacific baseball convention. This is much like the state conventions we see at this time, but more of an independent affair. California was still, even with the trans-continental railroad, the far end of beyond, so the baseball institutions tended to develop in parallel with but independent of those to the east. The Pacific convention was more of a free-standing affair than the state associations in the east, which mostly existed to appoint delegates to the national convention. It also seems comfortable with the idea of a formal championship, though I question empowering a committee to purchase the trophy bat "regardless of cost."
Query:
Was the is first ever meeting of this group?
Did it intend to represent base ball throughout California?
Had other states established state-wide base ball associations by 1871?
Year
1871
1871.10 Player Salaries Bump Up: Well-funded Mutuals Deplete the Atlantics
Tags:
Game:
Age of Players:
"The Mutuals will now have a nine in field of old Atlantic players, with but one exception."
"(The Mutuals) engaged Dick Pearse, who signed papers on the 3rd . . . at $2000, we believe. . . . Now all (of the Atlantic's fate) is left in the hands of the only veteran of the nine, viz: John Chapman."
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle, February 6, 1871.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 2/6/2021"
"150 years ago in baseball: The continued dismemberment of the Atlantics. There is not yet any reserve system nor multi-year contracts, leading to the perpetual threat of an off-season frenzy. The Mutuals are buyers, being bankrolled by William "Boss" Tweed. The Atlantics are the big losers. At this point it is obvious that they aren't going to do anything next season, giving their veteran players that much more reason to jump.
"White" is James White, not yet "Deacon." His conversion will come in a few years. He will have the knack for hardball salary negotiations on both sides of his Road to Damascus. This season he will end up staying in Cleveland. Sadly, I don't know what salary he will manage to extract from the Forest City club.
Speaking of salaries, if these numbers are real (not at all a given), they are impressive. Baseball salaries will be in the same range for decades to come.
Year
1871
1871.11 Pros' Leading Averages Reported In Buffalo Newspaper
Game:
Age of Players:
" BASE BALL. The Best Averages -- Names of Leading Players -- "
"All the leading professional clubs of the country have published their averages, and below we give the names of the players who occupy first, second, and third positions in the averages of first-base hits . . . ."
[For the Atlantic (Brooklyn), the Athletic (Philadelphia), Chicago, Cincinnati, Haymakers (Troy), Forest City (Cleveland) and other clubs, leading hitters' batting success per game was reflected in this format:]
"CINCINNATI
George Wright 4.27
Waterman 3.87
McVey 3.63"
Sources:
Buffalo Commercial, February 6, 1871.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 2/8/2021 (FB posting):
"150 years ago in baseball: batting averages. The idea of batting averages was borrowed from cricket, and at this point is not at all new to baseball. The details, however, have not yet taken their modern form.
The numerator mostly is the same. One might reasonably think that "First-Base Hits" means singles, but they actually are simply base hits, the later shortened form. The point of the "first-base" part is that the runner gets safely to at least first base, as contrasted with his hitting the ball but being put out before reaching first. Baseball vocabulary had not yet arrived at the contradiction of the batter hitting the ball without getting a hit. On the other hand, the concept of what was and was not an error, and how to account for it, was not yet fully developed.
It is the denominator that makes these averages look wacky. These are hits per game, not per at bat. Some scorers were starting to track plate appearances, but this was not yet universal. The problem with using games played is that not every player gets the same number of chances. There were, in theory, no substitutions at this time, so that wasn't the problem. In the modern game you typically figure that the top half will get about five plate appearances, and the bottom half about four. The high scores of the 1860s minimized this difference. Players saw more plate appearances, so the difference between the top and the bottom of the lineup wasn't as important. By the 1870s, however, scores are starting to drop to modern levels. The better scorers will soon start to use at bats as the denominator."
Protoball, 2/9/2021: "How were errors treated?"
Richard Hershberger, 2/9/2021: "Inconsistently. There were discussions of what were and were not errors and how this related to scoring base hits and earned runs, but not yet any consensus (stipulating that such a consensus exists even today). Probably the key is that these stats are from the clubs' own scorers. There was not yet a single official scorer. Each club had its own, resulting in two scores for the game. Since these season averages from from the individual clubs, I would assume homerism ran rampant."
See also 1871.4 for an earlier account of proper batting measures.
Query:
Have charts like this appeared before? Have writers been referring to such averages in plumbing the relative merits of batsmen?
Did each club send its data to interested news outlets?
Year
1871
1871.12 Pro Clubs to Meet in March, National Association Starts Its Fade
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"The appointed meeting of the Secretaries of the professional clubs, announced to take place in New York on the 17th of March, St. Patrick's Day, has been changed into a convention of the professionals, and the meeting will settle not only the dates of all the matches for the season, but also the championship question. The best thing they can do is to organize an association of professional clubs at once. . . .
"Mr. Chadwick resigned all connection to the National Association last October. . . . To the Excelsior club in this city [Brooklyn] is due the credit of inaugurating the movement for an amateur association . . . ."
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle, February 28, 1871.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 2/28/2021: This column "tacitly acknowledges that the old National Association is dead. Or perhaps it is a nail in the coffin to make sure it stays that way. The National Association met last December just as it had for years. It adopted rules revisions, elected officers, and so on. From a procedural perspective, it is chugging along as always. But it is in fact dead. The corpse will twitch a little bit, but there will never be any discussion of holding the convention next December."
"The discussion of the upcoming meeting of March 17 is portentous. It was originally called by Nick Young, secretary of the Olympics of Washington, so the professional clubs could coordinate their schedules. The idea wasn't to set up a detailed schedule, but so that a club going to, for example, Chicago could be confident that the Chicago Club wasn't in Boston at the time. The secretary of the Chicago Club has suggested upgrading the meeting to also set up a formal championship system for the professionals."
From 150 Years Ago in baseball FB posting
Query:
Did the March 17 date hold up? Was it held in NYC?
Was St. Patrick's Day an extra special day in the 1870s?
Was Chadwick's departure a matter of controversy? Why?
Year
1871
1871.14 Rival Assn of Amateur Players Forms: Includes Clubs from NY, Philly, Baltimore, Boston.
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"THE CONVENTION OF AMATEUR CLUBS IN BROOKLYN
A NATIONAL SSSOCIATION OF AMATEUR BASE BALL PLAYERS IS ESTABLISHED
CLUBS FROM NEW YORK, PHILADELPHIA, BALTIMORE AND BOSTON REPRESENTED
"Thursday, March 18, 1871 was an eventful day in the brief annals of the National game . . . there was a re-union of the amateur class of the fraternity . . ."
Participating clubs included Knickerbocker, Eagle, Gotham. Excelsior, Star, Olympic, Equity, Pastime and Harvard clubs."
Sources:
New York Clipper, March 25, 1871
Comment:
from Richard Hershberger, "150 Years Ago Today", 3/18/2021:
"[T]he formation of the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players. This is the long-talked-about splinter organization, spinning off from the old National Association, which is deemed to be thoroughly infested with professionalism cooties.
Spoiler alert: We won't be talking about the new NAABBP very much down the road. It will stumble along for several years, but will be essentially irrelevant the whole while. Why not? It isn't as if amateur baseball will ever go away. Professional baseball has never accounted for more than a tiny fraction of all baseball played. It just attracts nearly all the attention."
Note: for Richard's full commentary, see Supplemental Text, below.
Query:
Was this new NAABP destined to tinker with the rules of play?
Year
1871
1871.15 White Stockings Choose New Orleans for Extended Preseason Play
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"The White Stockings, of Chicago, arrived here yesterday on the mid-day train, and will remain here for four or five weeks. Their first game will be with the Lone Stars, at the Base Ball Park, next Sunday."
Sources:
New Orleans Republican, March 22, 1871
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, FB Posting, 3/21/2021:
"150 years ago in baseball: Spring Training. The Chicago White Stockings arrive today in New Orleans. The season began much later than it does nowadays. Spring Training today is entering the home stretch, while just starting in 1871. It also was far less consistent. Few clubs made trips to the South at this point. It will be decades before that is universal. These things were pretty much done on the fly, with the financial prospects weighing heavily in the decision whether to make a trip or just train at home."
The White Stockings stayed in New Orleans until April 17th, making their stay 4 weeks. See New Orleans Times-Democrat, April 17, 1871. [ba]
Year
1871
1871.16 Professionals Edge Away from NABBP; Modern Standings Begin to Take Shape
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"BASE BALL BOTHER. National Professional Association. The Championship Question Settled.
"A convention of delegates from the professional base ball clubs of the country was held at #840 Broadway last evening. At the time that the call for the convention was sent out its objects were stated to be the settlement of the manner of achieving the title of champion club of the country, and the arrangement of the routes of the club tours during the season. But the action of the amateur clubs in withdrawing from the National Association see 1871.14 . . . caused the scope of the Convention's duties to be enlarged, and . . . made necessary the reorganization of the National Association on a professional basis."
Sources:
New York Herald, March 18, 1871
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, FP posting of March 17, 2021:
"150 years ago today in baseball: The big day! Yesterday the amateurs met in Brooklyn and formed a new association. See 1871.14. Today we move across the East River, where the professionals form theirs. It wasn't originally supposed to be this way. The meeting was initially called simply to coordinate travel schedules. From there it expanded to arranging a championship system. With yesterday's event the meeting expanded yet further. The status of the old National Association of Base Ball Players is up in the air. Simpler for the professionals just to start fresh. . . . .
"Their championship system is quietly revolutionary. The old unofficial system followed the model of champion and challenger, like in boxing. The new system is not laid out explicitly here, but it is close to the modern system of every club playing a series against every other club.
This 'championship season' (which is what the official rules still call what the rest of us refer to as the 'regular season') is the great invention of the NAPBBP. This often is overlooked, as NAPBBP tends to carry the stench of failure today. So let us pause a moment and contemplate the glory that is the regular season.
...
Done? Excellent! This is not quite the regular season as we understand it today. It is a series of best-of-five series. If a club won the first three games of the series, there was no need to play the last two. This is why the win-loss records for 1871 are so scattered. Teams did not play the same number of games, but they weren't expected to. This will result in some wackiness in determining the championship. No spoilers! We will get to that in the Fall. Suffice it to say that for 1872 they will switch to every team playing the same number of games, at least in theory."
Year
1871
1871.17 Philadelphia Claims Best 1870 US Record -- Over the Red Stockings? Really?
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"BASE BALL MATTERS: Answers to Correspondents:
[to] K. S. M. The Mutuals of New York city won the national championship last year, but the Athletics of this city had the best record. . . ."
Sources:
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury April 9, 1871; See Hershberger commentary, below/.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, FB Posting, April 9. 2021:
"150 years ago in baseball: a bit of historical revisionism via homerism by the Philadelphia sporting press. Thank goodness that no longer plagues us! For the record, the 1870 Mutuals went 68-17-3 while the Athletics went 65-11-1. Presumably the claim to a better record was based on winning percentage, rather than absolute number of games won. This criterion was not at all established at the time. The problem with claiming the moral, if not nominal, championship this way is that the Cincinnati Club went 67-6-1. Those records include both professional and amateur games. Perhaps the writer was thinking of just professional games? The Athletics went 26-11-1, while the Cincinnatis went 27-6-1. So while there is an argument to be made that the A's had a better record than the Mutuals, this is not at all the same as the A's having the best record. So it goes."
Query:
Did the Mutuals themselves claim the best 1870 record, or just the NABBP Championship, or what?
Year
1871
1871.18 First Pro League Game Doesn't Feature Offense
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"THE NATIONAL GAME -- The First Dose of 1871 -- A Whole Nest of Goose Eggs -- 000000000 -- Where Are We Now?"
(Cleveland newspaper headline for the 2-0 loss in Fort Wayne to the Kekionga Club by the visiting Forest City Club of Cleveland)
" . . . The play throughout was nearly perfect as could be imagined . . . the difficult pitching of [Cleveland's] Mathews kept our score down to a continual whitewash"
Sources:
Cleveland Leader May 5, 1871.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, FB posting of 5/5/2021:
"This is remembered today as the first game of the first professional league. So it was, but this account only barely hints at this being a momentous occasion. This was the first game only by accident, earlier scheduled games being rained out. But more to the point, few thought of this game as the beginning. The season has been ramping up for several weeks now. Nowadays we think of those earlier games as mere spring training, preparing for the real season. At the time they thought of a game such as this as yet another game, but one that happened to be for the championship. [Note: "for the championship" then meant "in a regular season game."]
The most modern aspect of this account is that Bobby Mathews, the Kekionga pitcher, is given at least partial credit for the shut out. Earlier on, the fielding would have gotten all the credit."
Query:
Year
1871
1871.19 Chicago Club Expires A Month After Great Chicago Fire
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"BASE BALL. The Last of the Chicago Club.
At a recent meeting of the stockholders of the Chicago Base Ball Club, where it was by resolution declared that the stock of that club is canceled and surrendered, and a committee was appointed to wind up all the affairs of the club, the following resolutions of thanks and acknowledgement were unanimously adopted. . . "
Sources:
Chicago Tribune, November 26, 1871:
Comment:
From Richard Hershberger, Facebook posting of 11/25/2021:
"150 years ago in baseball: Wrapping up the affairs of the Chicago Club. It was gutted by the Great Chicago Fire and stumbled through the close of the season. Continuing as the city was rebuilding clearly was not in the cards. Say what you will about Chicago businessmen, they do appreciate the formalities. Rather than simply walking away they shut it down properly. Here we have the formal dissolution.
This relates to the trivia question, what is the oldest baseball club still in existence? If we don't count colleges, and if we insist that the club still play baseball, then the candidates are the Braves (by way of Milwaukee) or the Cubs. The Braves were founded in 1871 as the Boston Base Ball Association. The Chicago Club we see shutting down here was a year older. If we can tie the modern Cubs to it, then that is our answer.
The problem is that we see here the original organization formally dissolving. We will next spring see the formation of the organization that will, in 1874, field the professional team that came to be known as the Cubs. The only facts available to argue for continuity between the two is that some individuals were stockholders of both. This is very weak tea. It certainly isn't the standard we apply to other clubs. If we did, it would remove the Cubs' claim, as this standard would also connect the Phillies to the original Athletics, who were founded in 1859. But this would be absurd special pleading. So sorry, Cubs. You aren't the oldest club. You are, however, the oldest still in your original city. That isn't as sexy a first, but it is not nothing."
The Great Chicago Fire occurred October 8-10, 1871. 17,000 structures were destroyed, and 300 people were killed.
Year
1871
1871.20 Chadwick Agrees: The Parent of Base Ball is Two-Old-Cat . . . Not English Rounders, After All?
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Henry Chadwick
"We do not believe that cricket will ever be naturalized here, but that its rival is destined for evermore to be the national game. To those who would object to our explanation that it is fanciful, we can only say that we believe it violates none of the known laws of reasoning, and that it certainly answers the great end of accounting for the facts. To those other objectors, who would contend that our explanation supposes a gradual modification of the English into the American game, while it is a matter of common learning that the latter is of no foreign origin, but the lineal descent of that favorite of boyhood, 'Two-Old-Cat,' we would say that, fully agreeing with them as to the historical fact, we have always believed it to be so clear as not to need further evidence, and that for the purposes of this article the history of the matter is out of place. We have throughout spoken of cricket as changing' into base ball, not because we suppose these words represent the actual origin of the latter, but to bring more vividly before the mind the differences between the two. He would indeed be an unfaithful chronicler who should attempt to question the hoary antiquity of Two-Old-Cat, or the parental relation in which it stands to base ball."
Sources:
Henry Chadwick, 1871 Base Ball Manual
Comment:
Bill Hicklin, 3/9/2016:
"It's one of the commonplaces of the old origins debate that led to the Mills Commission that Henry Chadwick was foremost among those arguing that baseball evolved directly from rounders, and indeed he said so many times. In opposition stood those patriotic Americans such as Ward who claimed an indigenous heritage from the Old Cat games."
Query:
David Block, et al: Could Chadwick have believed that Two-Old-Cat was also the parent of British Rounders? The term was known over there before rounders was, no?
Page and pub site of the 1871 Manual?
Year
1871
1872.2 Pro Players Disparaged in Newspapers As Worthless, Dissipated, Buyable
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"The professional player, aside from his personal character, is not precisely a majestic object . . . . Not to put too fine a point upon it . . . is usually a worthless dissipated gladiator; not much above the professional pugilist in morality and respectability. . . . It is only necessary for the gambler who has large sums at stake to buy him, in order to make certain of winning his bets."
Sources:
Base Ball: The Professional Player, Titusville (Pa.) Herald March 12, 1872. Ascribed to the the New York Times of March 8, 1872.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger' FB commentary, 3/12/2022:
"150 years ago in baseball: A discussion of professional ball players. It is not complimentary. It would take decades for this attitude to disappear entirely. Note in particular the assumption that of course a professional will throw a game if you pay him enough."
Richard Hershberger, subsequent email to Protoball, 3/12/2022: "Titusville adapted this from the NY Times of March 8. Some other papers also picked it up. T t is hard to say just how widespread this] the attitude was, but it certainly [was] in the air. In Zane Grey's [1906]novel The Shortstop, when the protagonist tells his mother he has decided upon a career as a professional baseball player, she bursts into tears at that ruination of her son."
Query:
Any idea who might have written this little barb at the NYT? Was it widely quoted in the US?
Year
1872
1872.5 Chadwick Foresees Amateur Base Ball's "Revival"
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Henry Chadwick
"AN AMATEUR REVIVAL -- Now that the distinction between the two classes of the fraternity is marked beyond the possibility of mistake, each class having its own National Association and its own special rules and laws, there being no longer any just cause for amateurs retiring from base ball playing for fear of being classified as professional or hired ball tosser; not that it necessarily follows that to be a professional ball player is to occupy a degrading position, but that the majority prefer, for business reasons, to be participating in the game for recreative reasons. No ball player can now be regarded as a professional unless he be attached to a club nine which either pays its players a regular salary or a share of gate receipts. This appears to be the boundary line between the two classes . . ."
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle April 5, 1872.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball (FB posting, 4/4/2022)
"Chadwick on amateur clubs. He is optimistic that amateur baseball will be more popular than ever, since the existence of separate amateur and professional associations ensures that no one will mistake an amateur player as being a professional.
There is a lot of classic Chad here. He hopes for an amateur "revival," and so reports that it will happen. He quietly passes over the detail that there were separate associations last year, too. He defines professionals as members of any club that "either pays its players regular salaries or pays them by a share of gate receipts." Then in the next paragraph he adds a class of "quasi amateur organizations" without explaining what these are. This is Chad in his ideologically-motivated hand-waving mode.
In reality there is no need for a revival. Amateur baseball was doing just fine. Chad is right that there were far more amateur teams than professional. The same is true today. It could hardly be otherwise. But notice the three specific clubs he identifies: the Knickerbockers, Gothams, and Excelsiors. These are the kind of amateur clubs he likes, on the old fraternal club model. This model is, in 1872, irrelevant. Those three clubs are dinosaurs. The amateur club of this era is nine guys, with perhaps one or two substitutes, organized for the purpose of playing--and beating!--other, similarly organized clubs. These clubs are amateur or semi-professional or professional precisely to the extent that they can persuade people to pay to watch them play. Chadwick's idea of how baseball should be organized is a thing of the past. He will figure this out eventually, but we need to give him time to process."
Year
1872
1872.6 Umpiring Evolves As A Profession: Certification, Bipartisan Pay
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"Having pointed out the evil of indiscriminate selection of umpires, we will now suggest a remedy.
And this is the appointment of certain persons by the annual convention to act as umpires, and who will receive a certain sum -- say $10 and their traveling expenses -- for every game they umpire . . . .
The contending clubs can each pay a moiety of the expenses, and it will fall heavily n neither."
Sources:
New York Sunday Dispatch, May 19, 1872.
Comment:
From Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball, May 19, 2022.
"The umpire question. Umpire selection in the early days was very informal. Sometimes arrangements would be made ahead of time, but even for important matches it was not unknown for the two captains to pick a guy out from the crowd. It would usually be someone they both knew, so it wasn't totally random, but if he had not shown up, they would have picked someone else.
Here in 1872 this system is wearing thin. This is the professional era and the stakes are higher. In today's excerpt, we see a radical suggestion: pay the guy. This will start happening soon. It will help, but won't solve the problem entirely. There still is the matter of finding someone both captains agree upon. The next decade or so will see endless overly elaborate schemes to come up with an equitable system. The underlying problem is that even once everyone agrees the umpire needs to be paid, no one wants to pay enough for this to be a full-time job. Employing part-timers means they are using local guys, with all this entails. The bickering will be endless. Or at least it will be until they finally bite the bullet and go with a full-time umpire corps employed by the league. That won't be until the 1880s. Here in 1872, the NA doesn't even have a league structure to run an umpire corps, much less the operating funds.
The article here suggests $10 per game. This won't be enough to persuade capable men to put up with grief for two hours. The going rate will settle in at $15. That is roughly equivalent to $300 to $400 in today's money."
Query:
What is a good general history of umpiring?
Year
1872
1872.7 Junior Championship for Philadelphia, Using Pro Rules
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From published "Conditions of Entry" for the Junior Championship of 1872 in Philadelphia: A best-of-three knockout format, entry fee $1.00, using rules of the Professional Association, prize is a gold or silver ball.
Sources:
Philadelphia City Item August 8, 1872:
Comment:
Richard Hershberger commentary, 8/8/2022 FB posting:
"The City Item is sponsoring a championship among Philadelphia junior clubs. A few things jump out about this. First is that it is the second week of August and they are just now getting around to this. The second is that each team plays a best-of-three series with each other team, the third game played only if necessary. The NA has switched to every team playing a fixed number of games with every other team, but this system has not yet been internalized by the baseball community generally as How It Is Done. The games are explicitly to be played under the Professional Association rules. This is a bit odd, not only because these are amateur clubs, but because in 1872 the professional and amateur associations had the same playing rules. But using the professional rules is so important that it is stated twice, just to be sure. This is an early example of the amateur association's drive to irrelevance."
Year
1872
1872.8 Cleveland's NA Club Dissolves; League Financial Incentives to Blame?
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"THE FOREST CITY CLUB -
The Cleveland paper speaks as follows in regard to the Forest City Club of that city: 'The management of the Forest City Club have wound up the concern. The nine is to have paid off today, and the contracts with the players cancelled' . . . . Probably the national game has seen its best days in Cleveland.'"
<See full clip in image below.>
Sources:
Boston Globe, August 12, 1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger's comments in '150 Years Ago'. FB posting of 8/12/2022:
'The Cleveland Forest City Club is dead. Oddly enough, the Forest City team is not quite dead. It is still twitching, but this won't last.
The Forest City Club is not like the other defunct clubs of this season. It wasn't comically under capitalized, nor was it merely a regional semi-pro team with pretensions. It was a legit professional stock company baseball club. The team wasn't actually good, but it was better than its current 6-14 record suggests. Look at the roster and it is a perfectly plausible collection of players. They are playing below their ability, but also look at the complaint that there have been only three first-class games played in Cleveland. It actually was five, but the point stands. They have played the bulk of their games on the road. This can't help their win-loss record, but worse was what it did to their finances. Clubs typically retained two-thirds of the gate while at home, meaning that road games both incurred travel expenses and brought in less revenue.
One way to look at the NA was that its purpose was to force its members to travel. This broke down here for two reasons. First, there was not yet any central schedule. The clubs were to play a fixed number of games against each opponent, but the actual scheduling was left up to them. The second was that Cleveland was the westernmost club, as a secondary effect of the Great Chicago Fire the previous year. Stopping in Cleveland on the way to or from Chicago was one thing. Making an expensive trip just for Cleveland was another. Put these together and the eastern clubs simply didn't schedule games there. Presumably they would have eventually, had the club endured, but they kept putting it off. The result was that the club's finances collapsed, making the question moot.
At least mostly. The players are carrying on as a cooperative team, meaning they split their share of the game among themselves. This strategy rarely worked. Boston, in what looks to me like an act of charity, will shlep out there next week for two games, but these won't bring in enough to make it worth the players' time and the team will give up the ghost."
Query:
Do we know how Cleveland media covered this sad event?
Year
1872
1872.10 Unofficial Scoresheets Evolve, K's Not Reported Yet
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"Scoring is not yet regulated on the league level. Individual clubs and scorers are still experimenting."
-- Comment by Richard Hershberger in 8/24/2022 FB posting.
Sources:
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 25, 1872
Comment:
From Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago today in baseball: "Baltimore at Philadelphia where they beat the A's 12-8. . .
I am excerpting the box score because it is an interesting format. Notice how strike outs are only indirectly indicated. The reporter, Al Wright, is also the A's official scorer, so this is not merely some journalistic idiosyncrasy. Scoring is not yet regulated on the league level. Individual clubs and scorers are still experimenting."
Steve Colbert comments: "I have seen this format a couple of times while digging through box scores in the 1870 and 1871 seasons. When reviewing some of the play-by-play's, apparently missed 3rd strikes were recorded only as errors and not logged as strike outs anywhere that I can tell."
Query:
Is it noteworthy that only one walk occurred in this 12-8 game?
Year
1872
1872.11 In Rare Extramural Game, Knickerbockers Fade, Lose 26-17 in Base Ball Game with Cricketers
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"AMATEUR GAMES -- The Manhattan Cricket Club played baseball with the Knickerbockers on the 28th [August 1872] . . . . The game was close till the eight inning, when the cricketers got in a streak of batting and the Knicks had to field one short . . . "
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, September 1, 1872.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago today in baseball:
The Manhattan Cricket Club beats the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club 26-17. To be absolutely clear, they were playing baseball. Cricket and baseball clubs playing one another in one or both games was an established practice in this era. Generally the baseball team won at baseball and the cricket team won at cricket. When a team won at the other's game it usually was a case of ridiculously great disparity of athleticism. Imagine a modern MLB team, given a reasonable time to learn the rudiments, playing a rec league amateur cricket team. Or, taking it the other direction, an India Premier League team playing an American rec league baseball team.
This provides the explanation for the Knickerbockers' loss: They were really, really Not Good. Indeed, they never had been, except for a few years in the mid-1850s when their greater experience sufficed to make them respectable. In their defense, they weren't trying to be good. They were trying to combine exercise and socializing. They were generally successful at this. But on the rare occasions they played an outside game, the results could be ugly.
Query:
[] Do we recognize any Knickerbocker players in this 1872 line-up?
[] Was it common to call the club "The Knicks" in 1872?
Year
1872
1872.12 NA Clubs Struggle to Meet Payroll
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Sources:
Baltimore American September 7, 1872.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, "150 Years Ago Today," 9/8/2022:
"The officers of the Baltimore Club are working to raise funds to carry the club over the coming winter. This speaks volumes. The Baltimores were a good team. At this point their record is 29-13-1, putting them in second place behind Boston. The quality of the product on the field is not their problem. Yet they aren't breaking even, and have to scramble to raise funds to stay afloat.
I have had two great realizations about the early business of baseball. It dawned on me years ago that the later 1870s makes sense only in light of the Panic of 1873 and the depression that followed. But that is in the future. My more recent realization is that even apart from the general economy, they did not yet have a viable business model. Competition for players inevitably drove salaries up beyond the break-even point. The scramble to raise funds we see here is the rule, not the exception. This is why the churn rate was so high. Investors got tired of being tapped for more cash. Two or three years was about the limit for most clubs.
The creation of "organized baseball" was all about controlling costs, by which I mostly mean player salaries. This will take a while for them to figure out. The great breakthrough will be the reserve system, but that won't come until the 1879/1880 offseason."
See also Steve Colbert comment, in Supplemental Text (Below).
Year
1872
1872.13 Chadwick Criticizes Playing the National Pastime for Money
Age of Players:
Notables:
Henry Chadwick
"One of the most agreeable and interesting features of the present base ball season, was the organization of a grand base ball tournament by Mr Cammeyer. . . .[He] offered the very handsome sum of $4,000, to be played for by the Athletic, Boston, and Mutual clubs. . . .[Cammeyer] had some reason to doubt at first as to whether the Boston Red Stockings would take a hand in the affair, and the venerable Brooklyn organist [Henry Chadwick] of the the Boston Club had deprecated the playing of our national pastime for a purse of money . . .The $4,000 were divided . . . viz., $1,800 for the first, $1,200 for the second, and $1,000 for the third prize."
Sources:
J.W. Brodie, "The Base Ball Tournament", New York Dispatch, October 13, 1872:
Comment:
From Richard Hershberger, 10/13/2022:
"150 years ago in baseball: Reporter J. W. Brodie takes a potshot at Henry Chadwick. Recall that Chadwick was the dominant baseball reporter of the 1860s. Here in 1872 his influence is past its peak, but just barely. He is still a big deal: so much so that it is hard to get contrasting viewpoints, partly because Chadwick wrote for multiple papers, and partly because many other reporters were heavily influenced by him. Brodie is the notable exception, willing to call him out, though not quite willing to explicitly name him.
The issue here is the tournament that William Cammeyer is sponsoring, with $4,000 to be divided between the Red Stockings, Athletics, and Mutuals. Chadwick has not yet fully reconciled himself to the idea of professional baseball. It isn't clear why playing for prize money is any worse than playing for gate receipts, but Chad has been grumbling about it. Here Brodie mocks "the venerable Brooklyn organist."
Things will get worse for Chadwick before they get better. When the National League forms in 1876, he will be cut out. A lot of bad stuff you see about the early NL to this day is actually just modern writers taking Chad's complaints at face value. In the 1880s his colleagues will openly mock him as an old fogey. Then he will gradually slide into elder statesman territory. He won't have real influence, but people will usually be polite about it."
Year
1872
1872.14 "Homer" Used to Reference A Home Run in Baltimore Paper
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" . . . a 'homer' on a long hit to left field by Pike . . . "
Sources:
Baltimore Gazette, 10/18/1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 10/18/2022 FB posting : 150 years ago in baseball: "a truly epic turning point in baseball history, the earliest known use of "homer . . . The game was played yesterday, Mutuals at Baltimore, tying 7-7 in eight inning." (The great Paul Dickson, author of The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, commented-- "A remarkable find to be sure. Great work").
Year
1872
1872.15 Late-season Pro-league Proto-standings
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1872 League records format.
Sources:
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 27, 1872:
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, "150 years ago in baseball, 10/282022. "The not-quite final standings. The championship season runs through the end of the month, so we are pretty close. This is the standard format in the day, and I quite like it. It takes some getting used to, but it provides information absent from the modern format."
Note: Peter Morris' A Game of Inches, 2012 Edition, p. 477, gives an overview of the evolution of the box score, starting the what is seen as the first, the New York Herald account of the game between the NYBBC and a club from Brooklyn, played at Elysian Fields, Hoboken, in October 1845. He adds that Henry Chadwick with inventing it. "Chadwick is usually credited with being the inventor of the the box score. But the facts seem to suggest that, at most, Chadwick deserves credit, at most, with adding a few categories to it."
Query:
[] Are we seeing modern "standings" (perhaps with winning pct, games behind) any time soon? Why would they list teams alphabetically rather than by number of wins?
Richard Hershberger, 10/29/2022 -- "I'm not actually sure when we start to see the modern format. That passed by me without my consciously noting. Sometime in the 1880s, maybe?"
[] Is it likely that cricket already used box scores by 1845? Would that have influenced Chadwick and others v=covering base ball?
Year
1872
1872.16 British Base Ball Tour Is Planned
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[American base ball players] "propose to travel throughout England, playing against each other, or to play against any nine that will appear against them. They will also play cricket . . . "
Sources:
'Jackson's Oxford Journal', Oxfordshire, England, November 2, 1872:
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 11/2/2022: 150 years ago in baseball: "Talk of the Boston and Philadelphia teams visiting England. This idea has been floating around for several years now, only gradually coming together. It will eventually happen in 1874. We can take this item as early marketing, to get the idea out there."
Query:
Do we know more about Thomas "Tim" Hall's role in early Boston base ball?
Do we know why the named English gentlemen had come to the US beforehand?
Do we know the names of Boston and Philly players planning to go?
Year
1872
1872.17 Athletics Show Annual Expenses, Income for 1872
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The Philly Athletics released their 1872 income/expenses for about $26,000.
Sources:
Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 17, 1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 11/17/2022, 150 years ago in baseball: "The Athletic Club's financial statement for 1872. Professional baseball had not yet reached the point where it hid its books and claimed poverty. Here in 1872 the books were treated as a public matter, and the poverty was entirely genuine. This is an "inside baseball" discussion, but worth examining.
If you just look at the bottom line, the club came out just barely ahead for the year. It looks even better when you see that they paid out $3000 to retire debt. (For a debt of $5141? Perhaps there was some negotiated forgiveness. We are not told.) But look at the top line: Dues from members. The Athletics were not a stock company, but a club of the old fraternal model, which sponsored a baseball team. What is in it for the dues-paying members? They aren't meeting twice a week in the summer to take their exercise together. Those days are long past. They are essentially a booster club. The team won the pennant last year, so people are eager to associate themselves with it, and to secure premium seating. Spoiler alert: Boston will get this year's pennant.
The real question is can a club field a successful professional team based on gate receipts? There are a few odds and ends of additional revenue, but they are tiny. The answer we see here is "no." Take out the member dues, and even if we also take out the debt payment, the result is in the red. The largest expense by far is player salaries. (Harry Painter, in case you were wondering, is the "superintendent," i.e. the groundskeeper.) The challenge will be to lower this expense line. Another spoiler: Things will get worse before they get better. Baseball of the 1870s will be strewn with financial failures." ---
Stephen Dodson added: "This is fascinating. I was always outraged at the collusion to keep players' salaries down, but I never realized how tight the finances were. The other remedy would have been to charge more for admittance, but I guess they were already charging what the market would bear?"
Richard replied, in part: "The solution they found going into the 1880 season was the reserve system. This still exists in modified form, now via collective bargaining and for a limited portion of a player's career. Something like this was necessary. Even the more thoughtful players recognized this. When the Brotherhood formed after fifteen years after this excerpt, its position was to accept the reserve system. Selling or trading players without the player's consent was a different matter entirely. This was a line in the sand. In the excitement leading up to the Players' League war the distinction between the reserve and player sales was lost, but that was a matter of excited passions."
Query:
His anyone systematically tracked player salaries in he early pro years?
A: Baseball reference lists 13 players as being on the Athletics in 1871. Three of these played only 1 game. The standard roster of 10 players were paid an average of $1,500 apiece, per the article saying the players were paid $15,000 and change. [ba]
Year
1872
1872.18 Boston Pro Club Faces Insolvency on Way to Becoming Longest-Lived
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[A] Boston Headline, 12/5/1872"
"Crippled Financial Condition of the Boston Club Association ["a $4000 debt"] - A Meeting to Devise Measures -- Will the Champions be Sustained for Another Season?"
[B] "We see here where management is essentially passing the hat among the fans. This will come together in a unique solution. The organization running the team is the Boston Base Ball Association. The fans will be the Boston Base Ball Club ("club" reflecting its social nature), which will take over the block of outstanding BBBA stock, paying for the privilege. This will carry the Bostons over until better times. This is why the now-Atlanta Braves are the oldest team in baseball." -- Richard Hershberger
Sources:
[A] Boston Herald, December 5, 1872:
[B] FB posting by Richard Hershberger, 12/5/2022
Comment:
Richard Hershberger,"150 years ago in baseball: the financial condition of the Boston club," FB Posting, 12/5/2022;
"Last year they came in second, missing the pennant on a technicality. They won the pennant this year. They are the best team in baseball, and the best run organization. So their finances should be pretty good, right?
Not so much. The important thing to understand about the business of baseball in the 1870s is that they lacked a viable business model. They simply could not consistently bring in more revenue than they had expenses. This is why the churn rate of professional clubs was so high. They will only start to get an handle on this in the 1880s. Not coincidentally, the 1880 season will also see the first incarnation of the reserve clause. But that is in the future.
Boston has one advantage other clubs lack: the local popularity that comes with winning. We see here where management is essentially passing the hat among the fans. This will come together in a unique solution. The organization running the team is the Boston Base Ball Association. The fans will be the Boston Base Ball Club ("club" reflecting its social nature), which will take over the block of outstanding BBBA stock, paying for the privilege. This will carry the Bostons over until better times. This is why the now-Atlanta Braves are the oldest team in baseball."
"We think of top-level professional sports as being awash in cash. Whatever the truth of this might be today, it certainly was not true in the 19th century, or really into the era of large television rights contracts. This is not to let the owners off the hook. Many were terrible people. But this does not change the underlying reality that free market economics simply don't work for top-level professional athlete salaries."
Year
1872
1872.19 Chadwick on the Evils of Betting
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Henry Chadwick: "[S]uspicion is raised whenever either glaring errors or one-sided scores mark the playing of the game."
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle, December 20, 1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, FB posting, 150 Years Ago Today in Base Ball, 12/20/2022
"Chadwick denounces pool selling. This is a system, borrowed from horse racing, to centralize bets and stake-holding, making it harder for someone to forget he made that losing bet. It was introduced last season to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn. How is that going?
There is a lot of classic Chadwickiana here, ascribing all evils to whatever is on his mind at the moment. The premise is that with the betting centralized, there is more temptation to pay players to throw games. The logic is not entirely clear. Setting this up would be the actions of individual gamblers. Why would they care how much money other people had rising on the game? Especially since the arrangement would have to be made ahead of time, while the pools were still being sold.
Chad's best point is toward the bottom, that suspicion is raised "whenever either glaring errors or one-sided scores mark the playing of the game." Fair enough, though not actually new. Such suspicions are characteristic of the era. It is plausible that sanctioned betting pools exacerbated the problem. It is important, however, in understanding this era that the perception of game throwing is a different problem from actual game throwing. The first was widespread. The second is harder to say, but proven cases are notably rare. "
Year
1872
1873.1 Atlantic Club Business Model is Vulnerable
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While the writer thinks the Atlantic club is ready to make a run for the pennant, our Richard Hershberger notes that its business model, under which players are paid out of gate receipts, has a troubled future.
Sources:
Brooklyn Eagle, January 13, 1873
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball, FB posting on 1/13/2023
"The condition of the Atlantics. This doesn't quite add up. The team is a co-operative nine. In other words, rather than a fixed salary, the players are paid a share of the gate receipts. This was the business model adopted by clubs that were undercapitalized. The better players generally preferred a bit more certainty about their finances. This suggests the claim about the large number of members is so much eyewash. Compare it with the Athletics, who still maintain a fraternal club structure while also paying fixed salaries.
The sad truth is that the Atlantic Club is on its last leg. A co-op nine, with no upfront costs, can survive so long as there is a driving force keeping it going. In this case that driving force is Bob Ferguson. He was notably strong-willed. This was not always in a good way, but he will keep the Atlantics together through two not-good years. Then he will be hired away by the Hartford club, and the vestiges of the Atlantics will collapse shortly thereafter.
What happened? This is an interesting question. As recently as 1870 they were a top club: the first to beat the Red Stockings. My guess is that the underlying club structure was already threadbare at that point. With full professionalism, roster building followed a new model. The Atlantic club wasn't able to keep up with new, more energetic stock companies eager to hire away the best players and the cash to do it."
Year
1873
1873.11 Outfield Duties Evolve -- Red Stockings Credited
Game:
The old style of playing the outfield, in which all that was required of a player was to catch the ball whenever it came near to his position, has been superseded. . . . Now, ' headwork' is considered essential. . . ."
Sources:
New York Clipper, February 8, 1873
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 2/9/2023, 150 years ago in baseball : "advances in outfield play. This is another in the series of innovations Harry Wright made in Cincinnati, working their way into the general baseball consciousness.
Think of a Little League team. Not one of the teams you see on TV in Williamsport, but a little kid team coached by one of dads. The kids put in the outfield have figured out their spot and have a sense of the territory they are responsible for. So they go out to their spot, and if the ball comes into their territory, they do their best. If it goes into someone else's territory, they stand and watch the show.
Part of getting good is moving past this, learning where to go and make themselves useful even when the ball doesn't come to them. This stuff all had to be figured out. This was a large part of why the Red Stockings were so good. They were further along the road of figuring this stuff out, giving them a fielding advantage over those guys standing and watching the play. Here in 1873, the good teams have all got this figured out, in principle if not necessarily in detail, but it is still new enough that it is being explained here to the general baseball public."
Query:
[] Is there a reason that the writer did not credit the Red Stockings as innovators here?
[] If the Red Stockings exhibited these types of innovations in swings to the East in 1868-1869, why are they noted only 4 or 5 years later in New York?
[] Why would RFers want to hug the right field foul line? Were hitters trying to looking for cheap hits by hitting soft liners just beyond first base?
A: Perhaps to better track down errant throws to 1st base? [ba]
[] What is our best source on Red Stocking innovations and how they spread?
Year
1873
1873.12 Ladies BB Club Forms in Kansas
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"Some of the young ladies of our city have organized a base ball club,and will soon be ready, we understand, to challenge the Arkansas valley club for the belt."
Sources:
Wichita City Eagle February 13, 1873.
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, (FB posting, 2/13/2023): 150 years ago in baseball: "A female baseball club. Or at least so it is reported. It often is hard to be sure about such things. Female clubs definitely existed, but the serious ones tended to be discreet about it, rather than put up with jackass men gawking. Was there a political aspect to this? I'm glad you asked! Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women's rights activist, reportedly organized one. There also were very public female nines, where jackass men paying for the privilege of gawking was the whole point. These were invariably organized by men, typically shady operators, and were not serious baseball outfits. As for the club reported here, I know nothing else about it. The Arkansas Valleys were a local male club. I am skeptical of an intersex game taking place, but I'll keep an eye out for it."
Kansas had become a state in 1861. In 1870, Wichita's population numbered 689 souls.
Query:
Is there a good source for Elizabeth Cady Stanton's interest in 19C base ball?
Year
1873
1873.13 Ballpark Admission Fees To Be Set at Twenty-five Cents -- not higher -- for Pro Games
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"Manager (Nick) Young, of Washington, very wisely advocates the adoption of the twenty-five cent tariff of admission to professional contests this season, and the half-dozen professional clubs of the country had better adopt is advice. They will find it difficult to collect large audiences even at twenty-five cents this season . . . As for fifty cents, that is not a sum that will not be longer countenanced."
Sources:
New York Sunday Mercury, February 16, 1873.
Comment:
[A] From Richard Hershberger, 150 years ago in baseball (2/16/2023 FB posting): "The discussion over the price of admission. This discussion has been going on since 1866, when some clubs were delighted to discover that spectators were willing to pay the princely sum of 25 cents to see a game. This raised the question, might not they be willing to pay even more? Experiments ran all the way up to one dollar, but that clearly was overreach. The discussion settled into 25 versus 50 cents. It will go on, on these terms, into the 1890s. This seems curious from the modern perspective, but this was an era of essentially zero inflation. Inflation as a fact of life is really a post-WWII thing.
Speaking of inflation, what does this cost of admission translate to today [2023]? This is a bit tricky. First off, the basic admission is for standing room. Admission to the grandstand typically was another 25 cents. Various auxiliary bleacher sections will be added in future years, but here in 1873 things are still pretty basic. So if we assume the desire to sit down, we are really looking at 50 versus 75 cents. The next problem is that inflation calculators aren't really meaningful across widely separated eras. Labor was cheap, so even middle class households hired "help." Food was expensive, this being before the Green Revolution in agriculture. Housing was cheap, but you got what you paid for. We spend far more for transportation nowadays, with the ability (leading often to the necessity) to go vastly longer distances in relative comfort. Cell phone plans in the 1873s were very cheap, but the service was terrible. And so on. So simply punching this into an inflation calculator doesn't tell us as much as one might think. So taking this with a huge grain of salt, use a multiplier of x25. This is too low, in terms of daily life, since we have more disposable income today, but it gives a very rough idea. So that 50 cents to get in and get a seat translates conservatively to twelve dollars or so. I leave as an exercise for the student to compare this with prices today, but with the admonition to include the cheap seats in your analysis, not just the field level seats behind home plate, and to consider the physical characteristics of that seat (possibly with a cup holder, the greatest addition to ball parks within my lifetime), the sightlines, and the proximity and nature of restroom facilities."
[B] From John Thorn, email of 2/17/2023: "BTW, the National League's stand of 1876 (a 50-cent admission) nearly killed it in the cradle, but was vital to establishing it, in the longer run, as a professional entertainment."
Query:
[] Do we know how often 50-cent admissions were charged prior to 1873?
[] Was Young's recommendation in fact smoothly adopted for the 1873 season?
Year
1873
1874.1 Firsts recorded African-American club in Louisville
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The Louisville Courier Journal, Sept. 16, 1874 has the first record of an African-American team in Louisville, the Globe.
Sources:
The Louisville Courier Journal, Sept. 16, 1874
Year
1874
1875.1 Convention of "colored" clubs in New Orleans
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The New Orleans Times, Aug. 8, 1875 reports that the Athletic BBC of that city calls of a convention of the "colored" cubs of that city to form a colored club association.
Prof. John Blassingame writes that there were 13 "colored" clubs in New Orleans in 1875.
Sources:
The New Orleans Times, Aug. 8, 1875
Year
1875
1870s.2 Debra Shattuck lists early female base ball
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The Appendix to Debra Shattuck's "Bloomer Girls. Women Baseball Pioneers" lists first mentions of women's baseball in various towns and cities. For major cities:
1865--Harrisburg
1868--Boston, Brooklyn
1869--Cincinnati
1870--Detroit
1871--Evansville, Pittsburgh
1872--Oakland
1873--Wichita
1875--Honolulu
1876--Philadelphia, St.Louis, Providence, Erie
1878--Rochester, Syracuse
1879--New York City, New Orleans
1884--Denver
1886--San Francisco
1887--Chicago
1888--Los Angeles
1889--San Antonio
Sources:
Debra Shattuck's "Bloomer Girls. Women Baseball Pioneers"
Decade
1875s
1875.2 First female baseball team outside the US?
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The website of the famous Punahou school in Honolulu says that starting in 1872, "girls" athletics were popular. In 1875, two girls teams played each other.
"Punahou Nines beat Royal School Nines, two teams of female baseball players"
Is this the first all-female baseball game outside the U.S.? [Hawaii was an independent nation at this time]
Sources:
Punahou school website.
Year
1875
1876.1 MLB Is Established
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Notables:
William Hulbert
On February 2, 1876 Major League Baseball took shape.
Sources:
John Thorn, History Awakens: February 2, 1876 and the Founding of the National League: An Amazing New Discovery.
Comment:
John Thorn's comment: "[T]he story of how a player-based professional organization (the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 1871–1875) gave way to one that was club-based (the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, 1876 to date) did not take place all on one day; it had commenced earlier, with considerable stealth.
A flummoxed Henry Chadwick termed this revolutionary idea — which is the very genesis of all of today’s professional sports leagues — a “coup d’état,” and he was right."
Year
1876