1870 TOP EVENTS
Horse Racing: The Gallant Galeas
Let's take a brief moment to discuss a horse that hasn't been mentioned yet, but which had a dramatic impact on the sport. His name was Launcelot and he was foaled in 1850. What makes him remarkable is not his six victories in the seven races he ran but what he did as a stud. Launcelot was bred by Kentucky legend James Warwick - his sire, Cambridge, and grandsire Slapdash were both champions and considered among the top horses of their respective eras. Launcelot was a willful and sometimes nasty horse. But after his racing career, he sired no less than 16 yearly top earners, a staggering total that has never been equaled. Nine of the first fifteen winners of the Tillman Stakes, first run in 1864 were won by Launcelot's offspring (today the Tillman is considered the fourth best three-year old event in the U.S., just behind the Triple Crown races). Launcelot also sired the 1868 Knickerbocker winning horse Fleetwood, and he would repeat the honor in 1870 with Galeas. By the time Fleetwood had been foaled, Launcelot had been purchased by Edwin Williams, generally considered the top judge of horseflesh of his era (the results certainly support this assessment).
Galeas, whose name came from Arthurian legend (as with his sire Launcelot), was sold by Edwin Williams to fellow Kentuckian John Blessington early in 1870. Williams had elected not to race Galeas as a two-year old, so he remained unproven. Therefore, one of the first things Blessington did was enter his new colt in the Tillman (which he won) and followed that by entering the Knickerbocker where he'd face another colt sired by Launcelot (Clove) in a seven-horse field that included three fillies.
Blessington also set the stage for history by having an African-American jockey ride Galeas in both the Tillman and the Knickerbocker. Solomon "Sol" Jackson had been born a slave on the horse farm of Blessington's uncle, who taught Jackson how to train and ride racehorses. After emancipation, Jackson went to work for Blessington, a "new thinker" who found Jackson to be "unequaled in his understanding of horses" and a fine jockey as well. After Galeas won the Knickerbocker by half a length, Jackson's name was in the history books and he'd continue to make history by later training and, after that, owning several winning entries in another of the eventual Triple Crown races (the Continental Derby).
Code:
1870 Knickerbocker Stakes
June 4, 1870
Knickerbocker Racetrack, Westchester Cty, NY
Track: Dirt, Fast; Distance: 12 furlongs (1 1/2 miles)
Time: 2:50 1/2
Finish Horse Wt Jockey Owner
1 Galeas 112 Sol Jackson John J. Blessington
2 Buster 110 James Scantling Andrew Woolcott
3 Cressida (f) 107 Thad Mosely William J. Colson
4 Velocista (f) 107 Tom Gilbert Brutus Anderson
5 Mystic 110 Ben Hartung Francis H. Cabell
6 Clove 110 Josiah Webb Francis H. Cabell
7 Gaia (f) 107 Daniel Masters Edwin Williams
Purse: $3,500
College "Football" memberships swells to three
A year after the inaugural college football (or soccer, depending on your opinion) game, a third squad joined the fray. The Henry Hudson University of New York played Dickson College. Dickson defeated both Henry Hudson and Garden State, to essentially win the championship, although no one termed it as such at the time. Dickson was the only school to play two opponents - Henry Hudson and Garden State did not play each other. At the time, none of the schools' teams had nicknames. The Dickson squad wore maroon uniforms and would eventually (and unsurprisingly) be named the 'Maroons' while Garden State wore bright red (hence 'Redbirds') and Henry Hudson wore blue. They would eventually be named the 'Explorers' though few called them anything but the "Henry Hudson football squad" for many years ('Blues' was attempted on occasion by a sportswriter or two, but it never stuck).
Frankford finally faces Cincinnati and "settles their hash"
The Monarch Club of Cincinnati had a winning streak of 92 (or 93, depending on the source) games when they traveled to eastern Pennsylvania to finally face the Fortitude Club of Frankford (the famous "Fortitude Nine"). The Fortitudes ended that streak with a thrilling (and controversial) 10-9 win when 20-year-old second-sacker Roy Frazer (who would go on to become the first batting champion in the Century League), drilled a shot into the left-field corner. The Frankford grounds had no outfield wall, and nearly a thousand frenzied fans were packed into that corner. Rumor has it that one of the fans interfered with Monarch left fielder Ted Hoover by tripping him. No one disputes that Hoover fell, the question to this day is whether he was tripped or fell of his own accord. By the time Hoover had risen, recovered the baseball and thrown it back to the infield, Frazer had circled the bases and crossed the plate to give the victory to Frankford.
Monarch owner James Tice was furious. Hoover never publicly claimed that he had been tripped - the story was propagated (some say) at the instigation of Tice himself as an excuse for his team's loss. Another story, also possibly apocryphal, states that Hoover, on his death bed in 1922, admitted that he had slipped and fallen, and was not tripped. One of the fans in attendance that day in Philadelphia (of which Frankford was a borough, having been annexed to the city in 1854) was Jefferson Edgerton, a sporting goods manufacturer whose baseballs were used in the game (they used only two, the first one lost in the crowd on a foul ball and not returned - the crowd that day was estimated at over 20,000). Edgerton took offense at Tice's "shameful derogatory comments about Philadelphians" and began investing in the Frankford club (generally via providing bats and baseballs at the start). He would eventually purchase the entire club, lock, stock and barrel when his old Union Army buddy William Whitney launched the Century League in 1876; he'd rename the team the Philadelphia Centennial Club (later the Keystone Club) and the rest, as they say, is history. Referring to that game later, Edgerton noted that "the Fortitudes settled Tice's hash, but good."
In other base ball news, two clubs who would both decide not to join the Century League in '76 made a bit of history of their own in '70. The Cleveland Flatlanders (run by John Q. Miller) and Henry Pulver's Buffalo Athletic Club, met in Cleveland. The Buffalo nine won by a score of 11-0, the first known shutout in professional base ball history. The Buffalo victory sparked a short-lived practice (but not short enough in the minds of Clevelanders) as newspapermen started referring to shutouts as "being Clevelanded." Both Miller and Pulver would come to regret not taking Whitney up on his offer in 1876 as both clubs were lost to history while Whitney's organization became FABL and is going strong a century and a half later.