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Chadwick Sports Newsletter

November 1871

Base Ball Year in Review

Many loyal readers will recall that this year brought the first season of open professional base ball, as the new National Association of Professional Baseball Players was established. Of course, the Cincinnati Red Stockings played as an openly professional club in 1869 and 1870, and those in the know say that many leading clubs around the nation have in truth been professional for several seasons. However, the previous method of professional baseball typically involved some out-of-town diamond star being invited to come to a new town to join the team, and meanwhile being offered a professional position by a local enthusiast that did not greatly tax the player’s abilities. Now with the advent of the professional game, there is no need for such subterfuge, and base ball men can simply be hired to ply their true trades.

The new National Association set its membership fee at the laughably low level of ten dollars, in order to encourage the nation’s leading clubs to join. In the end, nine clubs were willing to join the new organization to compete for national supremacy, and those clubs represented a mixture of organizational styles.

First of all, the now-defunct Cincinnati Red Stockings, run by the estimable Harry Wright, were invited to bring the club to Boston to represent the city as its professional club. Wright accepted the offer, and he and his brother George, together with Cal McVey and Charlie Gould, headed to New England. However, there was a competing offer from the Olympic club based in Washington, D.C. Olympic was a club organized in the style of the traditional gentlemen’s sporting clubs, and it was something of a surprise to see them offering contracts that were competitive with what the civic leaders of Boston made available. However, this offer lured many of Harry Wright’s better players from Cincinnati, including Doug Allison, Andy Leonard, Fred Waterman, and Asa Brainard. These two clubs would form the backbone of the new Association.

There were other leading clubs that came out of the gentlemen’s clubs and their traditions, most notably Mutual in New York City and Athletic in Philadelphia. Each of these clubs was recently the top amateur club in its city, though in both cases the clubs were likely amateur in name only. As the leading clubs from two of America’s leading cities, they were quick to join the new association, and mostly kept the same players they had been winning with for years.

The fifth club to join the Association was something of a hybrid, and probably was closer to the former Cincinnati club in its organization. The city of Chicago lacked the traditional athletic clubs of the eastern cities, but did have several strong western boys who could play the game of base ball as well as anyone. They supplemented this core by hiring many top eastern players, and the result was something much like Cincinnati had been – a large western city with aspirations that spent top dollar to lure established talent. If they had done so two years prior, when there were no other openly professional teams, without a doubt Chicago would have been dominant. As it was, they were simply one of several contenders.

Two other western cities with fewer resources than Chicago followed the same model in luring talent – the Forest City club of Cleveland and Kekionga of Fort Wayne. However, their fortunes seemed less bright due to the difficulty of attracting top talent to lesser cities offering smaller salaries.

Finally, there were two entrants to the Association from smaller cities that were probably among the best clubs in the nation in the late 1860s – the clubs from Troy, New York and Rockford, Illinois. In both cases, the cities had been more aggressive than most in bringing in amateur players from other cities and giving them easy work so they could play base ball for the local team. This proved a very successful strategy in the days of amateur ball, but it was far less certain how it would fare in an era when even the largest cities were openly professional.

With these nine cities – Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Troy and Rockford – the first season of top flight professional base ball would begin.

From the season’s start it was clear that two clubs were better than the others: Harry Wright’s transplanted Red Stocking club in Boston, and Mutual, the reigning powerhouse club in New York City. Boston was led by Harry Wright’s younger brother George, who hit a league-leading .394 while also being one of the best defensive shortstops in the league. Several other players – including catcher Cal McVey, outfielder Sam Jackson, second baseman Ross Barnes, and Harry Wright himself in center field – were solid contributors, but it was George Wright who was the team’s make-or-break player.

In New York, the team was built upon good defense rather than great hitting, and thus defensive standouts Bob Ferguson – popularly known as “Death to Flying Things” – at third base, Dave Eggler at center field, and the well-traveled Dickey Pearce at shortstop were the club’s leaders.

As the season wound down, it became apparent that there might be some controversy about who the champion would be. The original plan was for each team to play all other teams in a best three out of five series, and the club with the most wins would be champions. However, it quickly became apparent that some of the clubs that were less successful, such as Fort Wayne (8-11) and Rockford (7-18) were not going to fulfill their obligations under the schedule. This meant that Boston and New York would not play the same number of games. So the question was: should the champion be the club with the most wins, or the club with the best percentage?

After some discussion, in August a compromise was reached. The announcement was that the National Association champion would be the club whose number of wins minus losses was the greatest. This tended to favor a club that played more games, but it did prevent situations where a blatantly worse team won by virtue of simply continuing to play until it had enough victories.

This ended up being the compromise that decided the title. Boston finished the season with 22 wins and 8 losses. Mutual played three more games, and finished with 23 wins and 10 losses. Mutual had the most wins, but Boston was 14 victories over .500 while Mutual was merely 13 ahead. In a controversial finish that was not accepted as final in New York, Boston was awarded the National Association’s first title.

Overall standings:

Boston 22-8
Mutual 23-10
Chicago 14-14
Athletic 14-14
Cleveland 14-15
Olympic 14-16
Kekionga 8-11
Troy 9-19
Rockford 7-18