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Baseball in the Nineteenth Century

From Gentleman’s Sport to Professional Play
 

The story about the invention of the American game of "base ball" relates that the game was first played in 1839, in Cooperstown, New York, between the boys of Otsego Academy and a team from Green’s Select School. It was a game of town ball, the rules of which were so loose that every hit was fair and boys sometimes ran headlong into each other. A young Otsego player, Abner Doubleday, reportedly sat down right there and then and drew up a set of the rules that became the game of base ball. In truth, Doubleday was at West Point that day, not in Cooperstown. He distinguished himself as a soldier and fired one of the first shots at Fort Sumter, but never claimed to have anything to do with baseball and may never have even seen a game. The story was spread by a sporting goods manufacturer who wanted to establish baseball as a truly American game.

Baseball is most closely related to two British games: cricket, a proper English game with umpires and innings, and rounders, a stick-and-ball game played mostly by children which arrived in New England with earliest colonists. American ingenuity soon produced many variations - and even more names - including "old cat," "one old cat," with one base, "two old cat," with two bases, "three old cat," with (you guessed it) three bases, "goal ball," ‘town ball," "barn ball," "sting ball," " soak ball," derived from the term"soak,"meaning to be hit by the ball while running bases, " stick ball," "burn ball," "round ball," "base," and "Base Ball." One version of the game or another was played by Revolutionary war soldiers, slave children in the south and boys of all ages in fields and city streets across the country. One story has it that Lewis and Clark tried to teach the Nez Perce Indians "the game of base" on their return journey.

Town ball was the most popular form of the game. Under its rules, the infield was square, there were no foul lines and no fixed positions on the field. The team consisted of from eight to fifteen men, although room would be made for up to fifty players on a side. The "feeder’s" job was to toss the ball to the "striker," who was allowed to demand that the ball arrive either high or low and then wait until he got what he demanded. A single out retired the side and a runner was out if the ball was caught on the fly or if he was ‘soaked."

The belief that baseball was a small-town game, steeped in America’s rural tradition was only partly true. Most of the young men who would play the game in the 1840s and 1850s, in amateur teams and leagues, first played in the small towns of their youth before coming to the country’s four largest cities around mid-century. The game of bat and ball, in all its variety, took the first halting step towards the game as we know it in 1845, when twenty-eight young men formed the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. They were grown men, successful in prosperous, middle-class occupations and enjoyed the camaraderie the game provided. Two team members, Alexander Joy Cartwright, a shipping clerk, and Daniel Lucas "Doc" Adams, a physician from New Hampshire, helped draw up a new set of rules that changed baseball forever. The infield became diamond-shaped. First and third bases were forty-two paces apart. Pitchers were to throw the ball underhanded, keeping the wrist and elbow straight. The umpire sat at a table along the third base line, sometimes dressed in tails and a tall black hat. Unless the play was so close that it was disputed, the umpire did not interfere. When a dispute did arise, the umpire was called upon to decide the merits of each side’s argument. He could even request the opinions of nearby spectators when ruling on fly balls. The umpire called no strikes or balls, but the batter got three missed swings before he was out. Most important, the runner was to be tagged or thrown out, not thrown at.

With land on which to play ball becoming more and more scarce in Manhattan, the club rented a grassy picnic grove overlooking the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey known as Elysian Fields. There, they played their first match ( a prearranged game between two clubs) under their new rules and lost 23-1 to another team of young gentlemen, the New York Base Ball Club.

Base ball in New York spread quickly. Within a decade, there were teams forming in all areas of the city. Brooklyn especially became known as the ‘City of Baseball Clubs." In December 1856, the newspaper, The New York Mercury, declared the game " the National Pastime," even though it was not nearly the case. The popularity of the game did, however, inspire dance tunes in the 1850s.

In 1857, the Knickerbockers and fifteen other teams banded together to form the National Association of Base Ball Players. The League changed and codified some of the rules. There would now be only nine men on a side, bases would be 90 feet apart, the umpire was given the power to call strikes and no one was allowed to catch the ball in his cap. More important, baseball was to remain an amateur game: no player was ever to be paid.

By 1856, there were nearly fifty baseball clubs in and around Manhattan. Within two years, there were special trains running out to the Fashion Race Course on Long Island, where, for the first time, spectators were charged fifty cents per person to watch the game. By 1861, there were at least 200 junior and senior teams playing in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Westchester and northern New Jersey. Other urban regions were sprouting baseball leagues of their own, playing townball, but the New York game set the style of baseball to come. Regardless of baseball’s pastoral image and the fact that rural folks did play ball games of various kinds, early baseball was an urban phenomenon. Before the Civil War, no farmers were known to have formed clubs.

Alexander Joy Cartwright left New York and set off the California for the gold rush in 1849, taking his bat, ball and rule book with him. He did his best to spread base ball from the East Coast to the West Coast and on to Hawaii, where he made his fortune as a merchant. By 1860, the New York game spread to Maine and had become established all the way to Oregon and California.

The race to establish leagues across the country was halted by the start of Civil War. But playing the game did not stop because of war. Baseball was a portable game, and soldiers in both armies sought a break from the tensions of battle on the baseball field. Lincoln and his son, Tad, reportedly came to watch games played behind the White House. George Putnam, a Union soldier stationed in Texas remembered a game played between the lines. "Suddenly, " he recalled, "there came a scattering fire of which the three outfielders caught the brunt; the center field was hit and was captured, the left and right field managed to get back into our lines. The attack...was repelled without serious difficulty, but we had lost not only our center field, but...the only baseball in Alexandria, Texas."

Baseball continued to grow in popularity behind the lines as well - and spawned its own stars and heroes to a generation of young men and boys. Nothing spread the sport like the 1860 tour of the Brooklyn Excelsiors. News of the team’s triumphs over clubs in Albany, Troy Buffalo, Rochester and Newburgh was carried over telegraph lines across the nation. Albert Spalding, later a famous player and promoter who was just starting his career in Illinois, recalled that these matches inspired thousands of young men to hope that they could attain such greatness for their cities. The Excelsiors continued their tour to Baltimore and Philadelphia, spreading the popularity of the sport even further.

The first real star of the game was James Creighton, who played for the Brooklyn Niagras. Creighton invented the " speedball," delivered by somehow hiding the fact that he snapped his wrist during the pitch, something that was against the rules at the time. Since it was still considered the job of the pitcher to help the batter, Creighton’s speedball and the slowball he also developed flummoxed batters and brought criticism from some. His pitching technique soon became so famous that small town teams named themselves after him. He was famed as a batter as well, which led to his demise in 1862 at the age of 21 when the force of his swing ( leading to a home run) ruptured his bladder, causing his death a few days later. A year later, Ned Cuthbert, playing for the Philadelphia Keystones, stole the first base ever, and pointed out to the umpire that there was no rule against doing so. Back in Brooklyn, a young boy, "Candy" Cummings, practiced the curve ball, much to the scorn of friends. A few years later, he delivered those curve balls in a game between the Brooklyn Excelsiors and the Cambridge University team. His ‘secret’ curve ball caused many a batter to throw down his bat in disgust and stalk away from the plate. Soon, other pitchers learned the skill. And, when the bunt was first tried, conservatives called for a return to an earlier, allegedly purer form of baseball. They’d had enough of fast balls, curve balls, stolen bases and other fancy tricks.

When the war ended, soldiers brought the game home with them. Small town newspapers clamored for the establishment of local teams, declaring the healthfulness of the game in an era when young men "are confined to workshops and stores." Playing the game was also credited with "driving away the blues."

By the late 1860s, the rule that baseball remain an amateur sport was losing support. Talented amateur players had always been enticed to move from team to team with under-the-table payments or offers of employment. Gambling became a regular feature, too. Wagers were placed on the first matches played by the Knickerbockers in the 1840s, and continued as the leagues grew, leading to a major scandal in 1877.

The first truly professional team was the Cincinnati Red Stockings, formed in 1869. Not that they were the first team of paid players, just the first team that publicly announced that players were paid. Before the Red Stockings, the rival club in Cincinnati, the Buckeyes, had been paying their players steady wages. Financing for the Red Stockings came from a group of Ohio investors. The professional manager was Harry Wright, who saw the commercial potential of the game clearly. It’s popularity throughout the country convinced Wright that people who happily paid "seventy-five cents to one dollar" to see theatrical performances would pay to see a baseball game, more popular by far than theatricals. But, he wanted to assure that patrons got their money’s worth, so he drilled the team, insisted they be businesslike on the field, dressed them in knickers to increase their running speed and admonished them on diet, drink, tobacco and clean living.

For the first time ever, players openly received salaries. Wright’s brother George, was paid the most at $1,400 a season, more than Harry received as manager. Only one team member actually came from Cincinnati. Most players were young New Yorkers from varying professions including hat making, insurance sales, bookkeeping and piano making, who played on successful amateur teams. The Red Stockings had a winning first season - 65 wins and no losses - and made a profit of $1.39. In September, they journeyed across the country on the newly completed transcontinental railroad and played a series of games in California. During the trip, nearly 200,000 fans attended the games. Next season, they won 27 straight games, then lost in overtime to the Brooklyn Atlantics. Cincinnati was devastated, attendance at games plummeted, and Wright went to Boston.

Two years later, on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1871, professional baseball was officially recognized when the old National Association of Base Ball Players split between those who wanted to keep the game amateur and those who wanted to professionalize the sport. The new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was born that evening. Nine teams joined the League- the Boston Red Stockings (moved from Cincinnati along with manager Harry Wright), Chicago White Stockings, Philadelphia Athletics, New York Mutuals, Washington Olympics, Troy ( New York) Haymakers, Fort Wayne (Indiana) Kekiongas, Cleveland Forest Citys and the Rockford (Illinois) Forest Citys.

Despite the popularity of professional games, the depression of 1873 cut into attendance. Good players moved from team to team, looking for steady work and better pay. Smaller franchises went out of business. Fans complained of drunkenness at games and players were accused of staging games just for gamblers. By 1876, the National Association was in trouble. William Hulbert, coal magnate and owner of the Chicago White Stockings, seized the opportunity to step in. In secrecy, he quickly lured five of the best players on Association teams to Chicago. Knowing he would receive the wrath of the Association, he then formed a new league, the National League of Professional Baseball Players, with seven other teams. There were eight teams, one each from Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Hartford, New York, Philadelphia and Louisville, all towns with a potential 75,000 customers.

To counter some of the accusations voiced regarding the National Association, the new league tightened the rules for players, including forbidding players to drink, barring gambling, and playing no games on Sundays. No beer was served at ball parks. More importantly, power was vested in the owners, not the players. Contracts for the best five players on each team required that each play only for his current employer, "reserving" his services forever. The "reserve clause" became a labor issue later in the century. Times were tough, though, and at first players demurred. But the message was clear, players were now employees and baseball was a business.

Still, the league staggered from season to season, as one club after another was expelled for failure to complete its season. The league had originally excluded small-time clubs, but had to accept teams from smaller cities just to have someone for the big teams to play. At one time or another, the league accepted teams from Syracuse, Troy, Providence, Worcester, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Buffalo. Even successful clubs in Boston and Chicago were not making money. And, despite claims that baseball was the national game, at least until the early twentieth century, professional baseball was frowned upon by proper Victorians. The game depended on patronage from ethnic groups and workingmen, both of whom had less discretionary income to spend on games, especially in times of financial downturn.

Eleven years later, in 1882, owners of teams from other big cities formed the American Base Ball Association, called the "Beer Ball League" by supporters of the National League. Games cost only a quarter, teams played on Sundays and ballparks sold alcoholic beverages. The league attracted bigger, more boisterous crowds, mostly immigrants and working class men whose only day off was Sunday. Middle-class, native-born fans remained loyal to the National League. The Association disbanded in 1891. The Union Association, formed in 1884, joined the American Association in challenging the National League for major league status, but did not survive. By the end of the nineteenth century, the National League controlled professional baseball in the U.S.

Barnstorming
Starting around 1880, twelve or so barnstorming teams also toured the nations. These teams were either aggregates of professional players from nationally known teams looking to increase their income in the off-season or regular outfits of their own. One such team was the Hop Bitters from Rochester, New York. Owned by the maker of a patent medicine known as Hop Bitters (advertised as the Invalid’s Friend & Hope), the team rarely lost a game, due, the owner said, to a dose of medicine for each player before the game began.

The First " World Series"
The first game to be advertised as " the world’s championship" was played in 1886 between the Chicago White Stockings and the St. Louis Browns. The series started in Chicago, where, in the first game, the White Stockings shut out the Browns 6-0. The next day, the Browns turned the tables and shut out the White Stockings 12-0. Chicago took the final game there, but once the series moved to St. Louis, the Browns won the remaining three games to claim the championship.

The Game and How it was Played
The game in the 1860s and 1870s more closely resembled a modern softball game played by men not thoroughly familiar with its rules. The ball was oversized. It was delivered underhand to the bat. Occasionally, the ball was so full of rubber that it bounced way over a man’s head when it hit the outfield. But sometimes it was so mushy that a hitter could hardly get it out of the infield. Bats were hardly uniform in size, some thin as a broomstick, others longer than a man’s leg. Most infielders played with a foot on the base (see below for illustration of field) they were covering, moving away only to scoop up a ground ball coming their way. The first baseman would sometimes stand in foul territory, better positioned to catch a fair-foul bunt. In the event of a foul fly, the shortstop might run and crouch by the catcher to be ready to grab the ball should it bounce out of the other man’s hand, which it often did. It was considered a special accomplishment to catch a ball on the fly - fielders wore no gloves at the time. Catchers sometimes wore a regular leather glove with the fingers cut off. Scores often went over one hundred. When the Red Stockings played hometown rivals the Buckeyes, the final score was Red Stockings 103, Buckeyes, 8. The Buckeyes disbanded after that game.

With only one umpire to watch the game, players tried all kinds of tricks. Sometimes, one player would distract the umpire so that a teammate could catch the ball in his cap, though such a move was blatantly illegal. Players might also take advantage of careless wording in the rules. One rule stated that a player could not be tagged out after a fly ball until the ball was in the pitcher’s hands, meaning that the player catching the fly had to throw the ball to the pitcher before fair play could resume. What they didn’t count on was pitchers like Al Spalding, who left the pitcher’s point to field a fly ball, then tagged the runner out. The rules also stated that the ball must be pitched from "below the belt." What the rule makers didn’t contend with were the pitchers who took to wearing their belts just below their armpits. And, nearly every team carried a "clubhouse lawyer" who knew enough about the written rules to find dozens of ways around them.

Teams carried few substitutes at the time. In fact, some teams only had ten or twelve on the roster. When Indianapolis played 114 games in the 1876 season, they had only one pitcher and one catcher, both of whom played every game.

Scandals and Heroes
Four years into the depression, in 1877, the country was plagued with strikes - first on railroads, then in coal mines, lumber camps, stockyards and mills. Violence erupted in major cities, where rail yards were destroyed. Even baseball was disrupted when the National League owners canceled their meeting in Chicago because many owners were afraid to board the trains that would take them there.

It was also the summer of baseball’s first major scandal. After a winning early season, the Louisville Grays surprisingly lost seven games in a row. Players became clumsy, bobbling balls, swinging wide and running only at a trot around the bases. Some were seen wearing expensive diamond stick pins. Newspaper editorials speculated on the team’s sudden reverses. Investigations soon revealed that gamblers had paid off four team members, including Jim "Terror" Devlin, one of the best pitchers in the league. Devlin confessed when confronted, and all four players were banned from baseball forever for their deeds, even though they claimed they took the money because the owner was not paying them their salaries. Devlin tried for five years to be reinstated, ended up as a Philadelphia policeman, and died of consumption in 1883. One newspaper claimed his death was "the fruits of crookedness."

Baseball had its heroes, too, those whose playing skills, and in some cases, flamboyant lifestyles, made them the role models for boys across the country.

Albert Goodwill Spalding, Adrian Constantine "Cap" Anson and Michael J. "King" Kelley were three such heroes. Spalding earned his reputation as a pitcher, the best pitcher of the 1870s. He was the first professional pitcher to garner more than 200 wins. A writer for the New York Star described his pitching form:

"On receiving the ball he raises it in both hands until it is on a level with his left eye. Striking an attitude he gazes at it two or three minutes in a contemplative way, and then turns it around once or twice to be sure that it is not an orange or coconut. Assured that he had the genuine article... And after a scowl at the shortstop, and a glace at home plate, [he] finally delivers the ball with the precision and rapidity of a cannon shot."

Spalding first played professionally for the Boston Red Stockings, but in 1876 he was lured away by Hulbert, who offered him a $500 raise and a quarter of the gate to play for the Chicago White Stockings. The Boston fans mourned the loss and felt betrayed. Only a year later, Spalding left pitching entirely to become a full-time promoter, of baseball and of himself. In 1882, after the death of Hulbert, Spalding took over the White Stockings. He was compared with Commodore Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie regarding his influence on baseball. Besides managing the White Stockings, Spalding, with $800 of borrowed money, opened a sporting goods manufacture, and was the first to introduce safety equipment, including gloves and catcher’s masks, though at first they were a hard sell. Spalding’s name appeared on "official" baseball guides he published, on bats and balls. He boasted that "Americans are evoluting into a fresh-air people," mostly due to his line of sporting goods.

In 1888, he took the White Stockings and a team of all stars on a world-wide tour, in hopes of spreading baseball (and a market for his equipment) around the globe. Though most countries welcomed the players, none took to the game like Americans did. Spalding lost money on the tour. But baseball was spreading on its own, to places like Cuba, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, brought there by American sailors.

By all accounts, the century’s greatest star was "Cap" Anson, who played for twenty-seven years. He started playing professionally in 1871 for the Philadelphia Athletics, and during his time with the team, occupied every position except pitcher. He joined Spalding’s White Stockings in 1876, eventually becoming first baseman and playing manager. He was the first player to accumulate 3,000 hits, batted over.300 for twenty consecutive seasons and once hit five home runs in two days in an era when even one was a rarity. Chicago fans loved him, but as manager, his players did not. He imposed bed checks, levied fines for beer drinking and hired Pinkerton detectives to follow players he suspected of backsliding. He was known for his loud, bellowing voice used regularly to intimidate players and umpires alike.

It was one of Anson’s players who became the most popular player of the era. "King" Kelley began is baseball career playing for the Paterson, New Jersey Keystones as a teenager. It was acknowledged that he could hit harder, throw farther and run faster than anyone on the team. He first played professionally for the Cincinnati Reds of the National League. Anson enticed him to the White Stockings in 1879. He was admired for his ability to hit and field, but he was best known for stealing bases - he once took six in a game. In 1887, the second year stolen bases were tallied, he stole a total of 84 during the season, inspiring the popular song, " Slide, Kelley, Slide."

Besides Kelley’s obvious talent for the game, some of his notoriety arose from his use of hijinks on the field. He occasionally skipped second base on the way to third if the umpire wasn’t looking. When covering home base as catcher, he tried to confused the runner by covering the base with his mask. Once, at twilight in the top of the ninth inning with two outs and Chicago ahead by one run, Kelley was playing outfield and is said to have raced back for a high ball, leaped into the air to catch it, then started for the bench as the umpire called the batter out. Both teams headed to the locker room. When Anson asked him for the ball, Kelley reportedly answered, "What ball? It went a mile over me head."

"King" Kelley lived like he played, without regard for rules. He was famous for his drinking habits and when asked if he drank while playing, he answered that it depended on the length of the game. Spalding and Anson put Pinkertons on his trail, then accused him of being in a saloon at 3 a.m., drinking lemonade. Kelley was indignant, responding that he never drank lemonade at that hour of the day. His carousing was blamed for the loss to the St. Louis Maroons in 1886, and there were also scandals involving women. That winter, he was sold to Boston for the princely sum of $10,000. Chicago fans were heartbroken, but Boston welcomed him and presented the star with a house and a carriage drawn by two white horses to bring him to games. He was paid $2,000 a season, but in an unprecedented move, he was also granted $3,000 for "use of his picture." Off season, he earned even more telling baseball stories in vaudeville houses and recited the famous poem, " Casey at the Bat," first printed in 1888, for audiences that saw him as the embodiment of the poem’s hero.

His profligate habits caught up with him. He put on weight, his drinking got worse, his playing suffered and he ultimately ended his career in 1893, playing for the New York Giants. So famous were his antics by that year that he was the topic of a derogatory cartoon showing him sleeping off a drunk, with the distainful captain looking on.

Baseball had become the national game, complete with heros and villains. Social commentators heralded baseball as the game to bring health and vitality to America’s youth. Games were played on school lots, vacant fields, at family picnics, wherever a bat, ball and eighteen players could be found. Girls seldom played, but they were enthusiastic spectators, although there were no doubt tomboys who relished in the sport. Baseball cards, first packaged with tobacco products in 1886 by the Allen & Ginter Company in Virginia, brought baseball’s heroes into homes of boys who would never have a chance to see them in person.

African-Americans in Baseball
Black Americans formed their own teams, both amateur and professional, though they faced prejudice from their white counterparts. On rare occasions, especially talented black players made it onto white teams, but that was not to last.

The all-black Philadelphia Pythians applied for membership in the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1867 and were rejected. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the Association, " declared itself against the admission of any clubs composed of colored men, and any white club having colored members." The Pythians continued to play and in 1869, became the first all-black team to play an exhibition game against a white team, the City Items, winning by a score of 27-17.

The best known professional club was the Cuban Giants, formed by a group of waiters from a Long Island, New York hotel, who began a barnstorming tour against both white and black teams in 1885. To counter white prejudice, they reportedly communicated on the field in a kind of gibberish to fool the crowd into thinking they were speaking Spanish.

Regardless of the opposition to integrated play, more than fifty blacks played with whites in organized baseball in the 1870s and 1880s. A number of fine black players distinguished themselves. Bud Fowler was one. He was the first black to join the white professional team in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1872, but went no further. " My skin was against me," he claimed.

Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy were the first black player to make it to the major leagues. They joined the Toledo, Ohio team of the American Association in 1884, and immediately faced prejudice. Fleet Walker played as catcher. The team’s Irish pitcher ignored his signals, refusing to take orders from a black man . Cap Anson tried to get Walker ejected from a game, refusing to take field as long as Walker was playing. Walker was ultimately let go by the Toledo team, for an injury to his hand, but returned to organized ball and playing on a team from Newark, New Jersey in the International League, which had teams in New Jersey, New York and Canada.

But even in the International League, things were not easy for blacks. Black players were heckled and threatened by fans, ridiculed, ignored and worse by teammates and hounded in the press. By 1887, the end of black players in organized baseball was clear. Most of the members of the St. Louis Browns refused to play a game against an all-black team that summer. Cap Anson, by then the most powerful man in baseball, made it clear that neither he nor the White Stockings would ever play a team that included black players. An umpire for the International League stated clearly that he would always rule against a team that included blacks. Finally, major league owners tacitly agreed not to sign any more black players. Clubs stopped recruiting black players and soon they disappeared altogether from organized white baseball.

Women Play Ball
Women’s attendance as spectators at baseball games was thought to bring decorum and respectability to the sport. But there were women who felt they had every right to play the game, too. Vassar College, in support of exercise for women, formed recreational teams in the 1860s, and soon other colleges followed suit. The teams were disbanded, though, when letters from disapproving mothers flooded the colleges. Women at Smith College tried again in 1880, only to meet the same disapproval as their sisters nearly twenty years earlier.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurial showmen began putting women’s teams together as novelty acts for barnstorming tours around the country. The first team to do so was the Springfield ( Illinois) Blondes and Brunettes. The team folded after four games, their entry into the sport called, " a revolting exhibition of impropriety." Philadelphia promoters fielded two teams in 1883 - the Red Stockings and the Blue Stockings. Over 500 women spectators, drawn by free admission, showed up to see the one match in Camden, New Jersey. After that game, women were admitted for the same price as children - 15 cents.

By the 1890s, womens’ teams, sometimes described as "bloomer girls," played across the country. One Reading, Pennsylvania men’s team even fielded a woman pitcher to boost attendance. Even though her pitched only part of the ninth inning, the local paper commented, " For a woman, she is a success."

Contemporary photographs show women in full Victorian dress running the bases at picnics and social gatherings, the kind of recreation shared among friends and family. The sport had taken hold in America, and, regardless of professional teams or social convention, was played for fun by anyone willing to swing the bat and run the bases.

Indiana Teams:
Fort Wayne: National Association, 1871 ( They did not last the season, but won the opener against Cleveland 2-0.)

Indianapolis: National League, 1878, (also 1887-89); American Association 1884

Addtitional Reading:
 

Helyar, John. Lords of the Realm: The Real History of Baseball. New York, Villard Books, 1994.

Rader, Benjamin G. Baseball: A History of America’s Game. Chicago: University of Urbana Press, 1992.

Smith, Robert. Illustrated History of Baseball. New York, Madison Square Press, 1973.

Sullivan, Dean A., editor and compiler. Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908. Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

The Baseball Encyclopedia: The Complete and Official Record of Major League Baseball. New York, Macmillan Publsihers, 1976.

Turkin, Hy and S. C. Thompson. The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball. New York, A. S. Banres and Company, Inc, 1956.

Tygiel, Jules. Past Time: Baseball as History. New York, Oxford University Press, 2000.

Wallace, Joseph, editor. The Baseball Anthology: 125 Years of Stories, Poems, Articles, Photographs, Drawings, Interviews, Cartoons and other Memorabilia. New York, Hary N. Abrams, 1994.

Ward, Geoffrey C. and Ken Burns. Baseball: An Illustrated History. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.