1871 TOP EVENTS
Baseball: The Players Co-Operative
In January of 1871 a group of base ball players gather in New York to discuss forming a "co-operative" of professional clubs, run by the players themselves (with Cincinnati's James Tice as presiding officer). This co-op would organize games of and between their own clubs, touring the "nation" (which, in their terms, generally meant everything east of the Mississippi and excluding the states of the former Confederacy). Though nominally the clubs would have their own grounds, the general idea as espoused by Tice was to tour and bring the game to "the smaller corners of our fine Republic" as he put it.
Ultimately ten clubs agree to take part, though it is not long before the arrangement begins to fray at the edges. Players fail to show up, some change clubs at their own whim, and many clubs do not bother to appear at the agreed time and place, due to expenses (and in many cases, the fact that they are not particularly competitive).
Meanwhile, in Chicago, William W. Whitney has begun (in his carefully meticulous manner) to speak informally with wealthy friends and business partners about a professional base ball organization of his own. Key to his plan is Philadelphia's Jefferson Edgerton, who would be relied upon to supply the balls and other equipment for the still theoretical organization. As he watches the chaotic Players' Co-Op bumble its way through the summer and early autumn of '71, Whitney becomes more convinced that a strong, centralized organization of clubs, run by men with business backgrounds, is the future of the sport.
College Football: No show
For the first, and only, time since the (somewhat debatable) founding of the sport two years earlier, no "collegiate football" contests are conducted anywhere.
Horse Racing: Jack Sprat
As mentioned earlier, Launcelot was the sire of many of the top race horses of the 1870s and 80s and a fine example of that can be found in 1871 Knickerbocker champion Jack Sprat.
Jack Sprat was foaled in 1868 on the Kentucky stud farm of Edwin Williams. The colt was sold for $325 during the next year's yearling sale to Brutus Anderson of New York, as Anderson continued to seek a champion. In Jack Sprat, he had finally found one.
Training the horse himself (as was his wont), and teaming up with jockey Tom Gilbert (who had become Anderson's go-to rider), Anderson entered Jack Sprat in the 1870 Sophomore Stakes, a race for two-year-olds at the Knickerbocker Racing Track, where he emerged victorious. Encouraged by Gilbert and (surprisingly) Frank Cabell to enter the colt in several other stakes races. In all Jack Sprat competed in four races as a two-year-old, winning three of them and finishing second in the other. At this point, Anderson knew he might have found the horse that would deliver him the Knickerbocker.
Jack Sprat won the 1871 Knickerbocker in the best time yet seen, 2:35 1/2, winning by four lengths on what observers noted was the fastest track in the short five-year history of the event. Overall Jack Sprat won nine of ten races as a three-year-old. The combined winnings produced by his colt staked Brutus Anderson to a nice tidy sum of nearly $60,000, enabling him to invest in his previously teetering-on-the-brink-of-financial-ruin horse farm and propelling Anderson into the upper echelon of horse breeders and trainers.
Code:
1871 Knickerbocker Stakes
June 10, 1871
Knickerbocker Racetrack, Westchester Cty, NY
Track: Dirt, Fast; Distance: 12 furlongs (1 1/2 miles)
Time: 2:35 1/2
Finish Horse Wt Jockey Owner
1 Jack Sprat 110 Tom Gilbert Brutus Anderson
2 Candella 110 Sol Jackson John J. Blessington
3 Longshanks 110 Ben Hartung Francis H. Cabell
4 Esmerelda (f) 107 Josiah Webb Andrew Woolcott
5 Juniper Rose (f) 107 Thad Mosely William J. Colson
6 Chieftain 110 James Scantling Charles Bigsby
7 Jerome's Luck 110 Daniel Masters Edwin Williams
Purse: $3,850