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The third announcement was the most important of all: the one detailing the seven clubs that would join the Five Founders, as well as the one that missed out.

• THE CHAMPION: Orange BBC – 3x NYC champs; 2x cup champs; 528-412 (.562) record – It was presumed that Orange was content as a club fielding highly competitive teams while celebrating its Dutch roots. After all, their two cup wins came in just three playoff appearances while every other NBBO champion had at least five. Their team had finished 5th or 6th in New York City just as often as they’d finished 1st, and they were the only NBBO champs who didn’t express any interest in turning the “Pentagon” into a “Hexagon” the previous autumn.

However, Orange’s actions during the winter of 1869-70 changed everybody’s thinking about the club, and when they opened the season as Writers’ Pool favorites to take home the cup for the third time the Five Founders realized that this was a far more serious club than they’d taken them for. Indeed, Orange was a professional-grade organization.

• THE DRAW: Excelsior BBC – 4x Brooklyn champs; 502-438 (.534) record – Aside from Nassau Co. back in the inaugural season Excelsior was the only club to take the Brooklyn pennant other than Kings Co. More importantly, Excelsior employed the sport’s brightest star: Jim Creighton, a man who had increased attendance wherever his team went and had done things that no other baseball player would dare even dream of.

Creighton’s talent drew a sharp line in Excelsior’s history. Before Creighton turned 20 Excelsior’s finishes in Brooklyn were 6th, 8th, 8th, & 8th. After that, Excelsior placed top-three in Brooklyn each of the next nine seasons while sporting a 405-255 record (.614), a mark better than Brooklyn rivals Kings Co. over the same period of time.

• THE OLD HAND: Gotham BBC – 2x NYC champs; 518-422 (.551) record – Gotham was the oldest club in the sport, with its founding occurring in 1837. Like Knickerbocker it took some time for Gotham to find its way in formally organized baseball, but they won NYC twice in the first half of the 60’s and finished in the top half of a very tough New York City Championship in each of the past ten seasons.

Gotham’s Red House facilities and their venue at the St. George Cricket Ground were unquestionably first class, and adding that to team’s history meant the decision to invite them to the pro ranks was as much out of respect as it was their results on the ball field.

• THE UPSTATE UPSTART: Flour City BBC – 3x Upstate champs; 520-420 (.553) record – Upstate NY was infamously tough, with six of the eight teams having taken the pennant at one time or another. Flour City had won it three times, but for them the most important thing going in their favor was that they were 55-15 the previous season, the second-best record in NBBO history, and had started 1870 with a 21-9 record in such a tough region.

F.C.’s record of 76-24 over the previous hundred games meant the Five Founders had to extend them an offer. They had the sport’s best pitcher outside of Jim Creighton in the crafty James Goodman, a budding superstar in Reginald Roper, and a five-star Greenhorn roaming the outfield in Fred Bartholomew.

• THE RIVAL: Massachusetts Bay BC – 4x Coastal runners-up; 525-415 (.559) record – Massachusetts Bay had never won the Coastal Championship, but that wasn’t due to lack of trying. They had finished 2nd no less than four times, and M.B. had ended a season within five games of 1st eight times. Everyone knew this was a well-run club.

However, what punched M.B.’s ticket into the pro ranks was the fact main rivals Shamrock insisted that they receive an invitation to join the new league so the rivalry could continue. Not surprisingly, what the second-most successful club in NBBO history says goes, and with Boston’s second club starting 1870 with a 22-8 record they were going pro.

• THE BIG FISH: Niagara BBC – 2x Upstate champs; 509-431 (.541) record – Niagara, the NBBO team representing Upstate New York’s biggest city of Buffalo, had taken the Upstate pennant twice, but other big clubs found their results puzzling. Niagara’s finishes in the 60’s: 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, 3rd, 4th, 3rd, 5th, 1st, & 5th. There was little consistency, but to be fair to Niagara they did finish 5th with a 35-35 record in 1869.

What earned Niagara an invitation to the professional ranks were the facts that they were based in Buffalo, clearly had first-class facilities at the Greater New York Sporting Grounds, and were comfortably over .500 through 13+ years in a region that was notoriously tough.

• THE TOP END TALENT: American BC – 1x Coastal champs; 480-460 (.511) record – For much of American’s history in the NBBO they struggled, finishing below .500 in five of their first eight seasons and last in 1858. However, the club started to figure it all out in the middle of the decade, going from 3rd in 1865 to 2nd in ’66, and after another 2nd-place finish in ’67 they went 48-22 and knocked Shamrock off their perch in 1868.

American didn’t have the cumulative record or postseason pedigree of any other club invited to the professional ranks, but they did have one thing in abundance: talent. Their senior roster could boast of having top-five players at five different positions: C Howard LeBoeuf (#3/48), 1B William Busby (#5), 2B Peter Boyce (#2), 3B Werner Verstegen (#3), and 2x NEL Batsman of the Year & 2x MVP CF Willie Davis (#2). A team with that level of talent at the top of its roster could be a competitive professional outfit, so long as the other places were filled out logically.

• THE ODD TEAM OUT: Quaker State BC – 1x Coastal runners-up; 460-480 (.489) record – Quaker St. was a club slowly on the rise. After consecutive 7th-place finishes from 1863-65 came three 4th-place finishes from 66-68, and then a 3rd-place finish in 1869. They had started 1870 with a 19-11 record and an outstanding offense featuring two of the sport’s best players: 1B Cormack Alexander & 3B William Dickerson.

Unfortunately, Quaker St. remained a club that had punched below its weight throughout its NBBO history, still with zero postseason appearances to their name and a slightly under .500 cumulative record in spite of their hot start to the season. The team’s venue, the Philadelphia Cricket Grounds, certainly held enough people to host a pro team, but the Five Founders wanted to see more. The worry was that Quaker St. had the potential to become a last-place punching bag given their history, but perhaps with another five years of solid results they could turn professional.

Once finalized, the initial roster of clubs to form the APBL was a group of twelve that had numerous things in common:

• They were clubs with winning histories.
• They were clubs with first-class facilities.
• They were well-run, profitable clubs.
• They were experts at identifying & recruiting the most talented players.

These were twelve organizations truly worthy of being the first to take up the mantle of making baseball a professional sport.