The Figment Universe - More Fake Sports than you can shake a stick at!

[legendsport]

I'm not sure anyone outside my FABL peeps really wants this, but since I'm doing it, I might as well share it with the world (or at least the little corner of it that visits this board anyway...).

As you're no doubt aware from looking at the numerous threads with the acronym 'FABL' or word 'Figment' in their titles, I run an OOTP league called the Figment Baseball League. I've also been writing a dynasty thread on one large family that permeates the baseball league in various capacities. What I've also been doing all along is running other sports in various ways, generating history with an eye towards eventually being able to have online leagues in the same universe as FABL (which stands for Federally Aligned Baseball Leagues, if you were wondering). FABL just wrapped up its 1934 season and is about to start 1935, so I am currently catching my other sports up to 1935.

These sports include hockey (the main league is the North American Hockey Confederation or NAHC), football (American Football Association, AFA), basketball (pro league name TBD), boxing, golf, auto racing, horse racing and tennis. I also plan on doing some Olympic track & field stuff too (mostly in support of the Barrell brothers story). I also have college leagues for football and basketball.

I'm guessing if you're reading this, you're likely familiar with the work of Tiger Fan, who is the master of the multi-sport dynasty thread. He's a member of Figment baseball and likely will be a member of the other universe leagues when I get them spun up. I mention him because his work is the primary inspiration for what I want this thread to become and I wanted to give him some well-deserved props.

So... a little more background for anyone still reading. The universe contains fictional leagues, fictional teams and fictional players. Most are based on real-life leagues - FABL for example, has two leagues (we call them Associations: the Federal and Continental instead of AL & NL) with eight teams apiece, and mirrors the rules and structure of MLB. The AFA will take its rules and basic structure (generally speaking) from the NFL (which had a very interesting and chaotic first couple of decades, much like baseball did in the 19th century). The NAHC by the time the online league starts will have dealt with several rival leagues, much like the NHL did in its early years and its rules and playing style will be based on NHL rules of the same time. Basketball will be the same, although in the time period Figment currently sits within (the 30s) there was no NBA and wouldn't be for another decade-plus. There were pro leagues though - the American Basketball League and the National Basketball League (the latter would eventually merge with the Basketball Associatio of America to form the NBA). Regardless the basketball league (this is true already for the college game) will feature the same play style and rules as the actual pro & college games did in the 20s & 30s. That means low-scoring, low-shooting percentages, etc. Because these sports will all exist within the same universe, there will be crossover among players, owners, and others. The Barrells already have a role in the football and hockey leagues and will likely be involved in others as well. But they're not the only ones - as was the case historically, many players who were pros in baseball (or football, or hockey, etc) participated professionally in others as well. 11 of the men who played in the proto-NFL in 1920 also played Major League Baseball and a score more played in the minors. So that's an area that will be fun to explore.

The simulations I'm using... this is a bit more complicated. Honestly, as everyone knows there is nothing like the masterpiece that is OOTP for any of the other sports. Sure, FHM is working towards that goal, and hopefully will get there, but it's nowhere near as customizable in its current state as the baseball game was in its 7th iteration let alone now. I'm also a programmer, so I am able to do my own stuff - not anything I'd want to put out in the public (I'm more interested in results than dealing with user interfaces and bells & whistles that customers would want, so don't expect to see any of these games that are mentioned here & there below).

HOCKEY: While FHM is likely the hockey engine I will be using for the online league (I'm considering another game engine as well), I've actually used a system of my own devising to run the early years of the NAHC and its competitors.

FOOTBALL: Similarly, football has no sim that can handle the way the game was played before the mid-50s or so. We're talking ironman football, with no platooning and the 11 players going the whole game on both sides of the ball and special teams. Again, I've been using a system of my own devising and might try using Action!PC Football for the mid-30s through 1950-ish era before switching to Draft Day Sports Football which does an okay job with the 50s and a better job after the mid-60s. The college game I will continue to use my own system until the postwar era when I will switch to either the old Bowl Bound game from Grey Dog or Draft Day Sports College Football, pending developments with the latter game.

BASKETBALL: This has slightly better news. The game is old and no longer updated, but Fastbreak Pro Basketball allows you to edit the playing style and shooting percentages to somewhat accurately mirror the pre-shot clock, low shooting percentages of the set shot era. So I will use that for my pro league. The Fastbreak College game does not have a similar setting, so I will probably continue to use my own system for the college side until the postwar era.

BOXING: For boxing I have been using the similarly aged Title Bout game formerly sold by OOTP. I have also been considering doing my own thing. I have a tendency to be overly ambitious sometimes - while I can do something of my own, time is not always available for me to do so and I have to be wary of overextending myself (I do have a full-time programming job and a wife & kids to consider).

GOLF: For golf, I have used Quick Play Golf (which Tiger Fan also uses) as it makes it easy to create seasons and play tournaments. I might move to Draft Day Sports Golf down the road... we'll see.

AUTO RACING: For auto racing I am again using the same game as Tiger Fan: Tom Mink's Indy 500 game.

HORSE RACING: For horse racing I have devised my own game based on a tabletop system with fictional horses based on actual thoroughbreds.

TENNIS: For tennis, I am still working on deciding what to use, but leaning towards an old Lance Haffner game - the same is true for my Olympic track & field events.

SOCCER: I would love to include soccer in this. Probably English football. The engine is a question mark though. Again, I could do something of my own, but time... time is always the problem. This is high on my "want to do it" list, though, so it may end up getting in there somehow.

As you can see, that's a pretty long list, worthy of Tiger Fan himself. I'm currently writing up my recaps for pro football, having just finished the college football entries. I've been posting them on my website (legendsport.com) and they're not all published there yet (baseball and hockey are mostly there, college and pro football are there only up to the early 20s as I don't want to post spoilers for my Barrell brothers story). Regardless, what's there will appear here, in a slightly modified format more suited for this board.

Eventually my goal is to have a database-driven website that will allow users to access the stats and history of all this stuff, cross-linked so if a guy played baseball and football you can look at one and click a link to see the other sport(s). That's down the road though. For now, it'll mostly be narrative though I will post stats and such too, much like Tiger Fan has done in his excellent multisport threads.

I'm hoping you'll enjoy this as much as I will doing it. I should be posting something soon to get this officially started. Thanks for reading!

[Sizeman21]

I have always loved multi sport stories and have always wanted to try my hand at one. I will be following your thread LegendSport.

[Tiger Fan]

Thank you for the compliments and can’t wait to read more of the Barrell’s exploits as well as participate and follow along with the rest of this great universe

[Sevsdast]

Interested to see which cities will be relevant for sporting in 2021 in this universe!

[legendsport]

Some notes on how I've structured the Figment Universe.

• Most institutions (colleges/universities being the most notable example) are fictional, but have in many cases been inspired in some way by a real-life school (it's hard to come up with hundreds of fake schools, let me tell you).
• I have done the same thing with "events" - like the Triple Crown of Horse Racing. There is a Triple Crown (with that name) in the Figment Universe. The three events are the Knickerbocker Stakes, the Chesapeake Derby and the Continental Derby.
• Sticking with horse racing - as that is the biggest part of the early years of this universe - the horses are fictional, but in some cases I've cadged some elements of real life stories to weave into the narrative.
• Real world events do have an impact on things. The World Wars, the Influenza Pandemic, the Depression, etc. all will play a role.
• This thing has a cast of thousands (heck just the baseball league has that), but there is some crossover (maybe more than could be considered realistic) because in many cases I like these characters and the more they're involved in, the more interesting it is (and I hope you'll find the same to be true).

Now, to give a brief, initial taste of the Figment Universe, we'll start way back in 1867, before William Whitney organized the disparate groups of increasingly professional base ball clubs into a unified "league" - and we'll start with the "Sport of Kings" - horse racing.

Westchester County, New York: June 19, 1867

The Knickerbocker Racing Track was still fairly new when it hosted the first event of what would become one of the crown jewels of American sport. The Knickerbocker Racetrack, as it was popularly known, had been built on land acquired at a bargain basement price (some said by virtue of dangling the previous owner off Coogan's Bluff in Manhattan). Whether that story is apocryphal or not is debatable - certainly the purchaser was capable of that sort of thing. His name was Charles Bigsby and he would eventually be imprisoned for his many nefarious deeds. A well-connected and well-heeled criminal, Mr. Bigsby's family eventually made the transition to legitimate business, but that was after Charles had left the scene.

Bigsby built the Racetrack in 1866 (a decade before he built a bicycle racing park in Manhattan that would eventually become the famous Bigsby Oval baseball stadium). The next year, he decided he needed a big event - he was knee deep in bookmaking and few things brought out the bettors like horse racing. With the help of a more legitimate partner (Jacob Knickerbocker, whose name adorned the track and would also be the name of the event itself), the Knickerbocker Stakes was born with the initial running - a modest four horse event - to occur on June 19, 1867.

The day of the race was overcast and the dirt track was "heavy" which meant slow. The four horses entered in the race included two owned by Bigsby crony Francis Cabell, one of them a filly (the other three were colts); the other horses were owned by James Davidson (a moneyed Manhattanite whose son would eventually battle Bigsby's brother for the hearts & minds of New York baseball fans) and a small, jovial fellow named Brutus Anderson, who would also ride his entry in the race. The other three horses had professional jockeys.

The filly, Augusta, was a local product (as was her stablemate, the colt Thunderer), raised at Cabell's farm near Throgg's Neck. But Augusta's sire and dam were both imported British horses who had been successful racers in their native land. Thunderer was of American stock, but well-formed and fast.

Few gave either Augusta or DeWitt (Anderson's horse) a chance. The betting favored Davidson's Umbria. The race was 12 furlongs (a mile and a half) and no one figured the filly or DeWitt would have the staying power for that distance.

In a surprise, Augusta won the race, beating Umbria by a head to become the first winner of the Knickerbocker Stakes. She carried three pounds less than her competition. Also, being lighter, some felt she may have handled the sloppy track better than her heavier competition. Others just figured she tapped into her innate talent. Whatever the reason, she ran the race of her life and won in just over three minutes.

Cabell was thrilled, Bigsby less so - he had bet heavily on Thunderer. Cabell's purse for winning was $1,800. At the time no one could have imagined that the race would become an annual event watched by millions and the final leg of the sport's most prestigious triumvirate of races.

The story did not have a particularly happy ending for Augusta. She raced for another year before retiring to life as a broodmare. She was the dam of another quality racehorse (we'll hear more about him later). She died in a tragic accident in 1876 when a hunter, trespassing on Cabell's land in Westchester County, mistakenly shot her.

1867 Knickerbocker Stakes
June 19, 1867
Knickerbock Racetrack, Westchester Cty, NY

Track: Dirt, condition: heavy
Distance: 12 furlongs (1 1/2 miles)

1. Augusta (F), 3:02, jockey Ben Hartung, trainer Aldolphus Faust, owner Francis H. Cabell
2. Umbria, 3:03, jockey Robert Morton, trainer Daniel Linton, owner James B. Davidson
3. Thunderer, 3:08, jockey Tom Gilbert, trainer Aldophus Faust, owner Francis H. Cabell
4. DeWitt, 3:11, jockey Brutus Anderson, trainer Brutus Anderson, owner Brutus Anderson

Note: I won't always have writeups as detailed as this one. But for bigger events, such as this first running of a Triple Crown event, there will sometimes be a slightly bigger writeup.

[legendsport]

1868 TOP EVENTS

Where the result of the inaugural running of the Knickerbocker Stakes in 1867 resulted in a surprise victory by the lightly-regarded Augusta, the second running produced a result much more in line with expectations. The field, officially limited to three-year-olds (although all four entries the previous year had been three-year-olds, the race wasn't limited by rule - that was no longer the case), grew to six horses for the second running. Frank Cabell, who owned Augusta, had one entry in the race, Grenadier, a full sibling of Thunderer who had run the previous year and the colt would be carrying the jockey who rode Augusta into history, Ben Hartung.

But it wasn't going to be two-for-two for Cabell. The winning horse came from the racing hotbed of Kentucky. Edwin Williams had been breeding fine race horses for nearly a decade when he brought his best, a colt named Fleetwood, east to compete in Jacob Knickerbocker and Charles Bigsby's race. Bigsby himself had an entry. Though he personally had little to no knowledge of horseflesh, Bigsby had money and bought a two-year-old colt the previous year. The colt, Catapult, shared a sire with Augusta and was considered a promising sprinter, though it was unknown how he'd handle the 12 furlong length of the Knickerbocker.

The field was rounded out by two colts and James Donaldson's Mae, like Augusta a filly racing against colts. Donaldson's 67 entry, Umbria, had finished second to Augusta and he sought to duplicate the surprise of the chestnut filly with one of his own. The other colts were Cleatus, another entry by Brutus Anderson, whose talent and eye for a good horse were hindered by his lack of funds when compared to the other owners; and Magenta, a fine-looking horse owned by Andrew Woolcott, a Connecticut breeder who was making his first foray into racing.

The race was not particularly thrilling. Fleetwood had dominated a one-mile race in Secaucus, NJ, the month before and was not bothered by the significantly longer distance in Westchester. He ran at the front the entire way and easily won by over a length over Grenadier. The filly Mae finished third, with Catapult, Cleatus and Magenta rounding out the field. Edwin Williams took the silver trophy and $2,500 back to Kentucky - and he also came away with an idea for a stakes race of his own...

1868 Knickerbocker Stakes
June 10, 1868
Knickerbocker Racetrack, Westchester Cty, NY
Track: Dirt, Fast; Distance: 12 furlongs (1 1/2 miles)
Time: 3:01

Finish  Horse        Wt   Jockey            Owner	
1       Fleetwood   110   Daniel Masters    Edwin Williams
2       Grenadier   110   Ben Hartung       Francis H. Cabell
3       Mae(f)      107   Robert Morton     James B. Davidson
4       Catapult    110   Tom Gilbert       Charles Bigsby
5       Cleatus     110   Brutus Anderson   Brutus Anderson
6       Magenta     110   James Scantling   Andrew Woolcott

Purse: $2,500

In other news, the popularity of base ball continued to rise. Several clubs, professional in all but name, were prominent on the barnstorming scene, one of which, the Frankford Fortitude Nine, considered the best of the bunch, would eventually become the Philadelphia Centennials (today's Keystones). The Fortitudes featured Canadian-born outfielder Al O'Malley, one of the first stars of the game. James Tice's Cincinnati Monarchs were self-proclaimed 'Champions of the West" but refused a challenge from Frankford for a true championship contest.

In boxing, there were several prominent bare-knucklers who staked a claim to the title of "American Champion" but the sport was still considered dangerous and disreputable. Despite this, spectators for boxing events were never in short supply and the betting on the sport was rampant.

IMAGE: A painting of Fleetwood, winner of the 1868 Knickerbocker Stakes.

[legendsport]

1869 TOP EVENTS

Horse Racing: Third Time's the Charm for Donaldson

After finishing second in the first two runnings of the Knickerbocker Stakes, owner James B. Donaldson, trainer Daniel Linton and jockey Robert Morton hit the jackpot with Socrates, a chestnut colt whose sire, Finnigan, was a champion racer in the late 1850s and whose dam, Rose of the North, had been English-born and bred and purchased by Donaldson in 1865, for the express purpose of being a broodmare for Finnigan: Socrates was their first foal and would turn out to be the only one to win a stakes race.

The field grew again in '69 - the first race two years prior had featured four horses and the sophomore effort had seen six competitors. The field in 1869 featured eight of the best three-year-olds in America. Competing against Finnigan was Olympus, another sibling of Thunderer (as Grendier had been the year before) for Frank Cabell. Cabell also entered a second horse, this one a filly. Cabell preferred to keep his breeding lines distinct - much like Thunderer-Grenadier-Olympus, Julia Major, an 1866-foaled filly, was a full sister of 1867 Knickerbocker winner Augusta (and like Augusta shared a Imperial Roman-inspired name). A second filly was in the field for the first time as Julia Major was joined by Andrew Woolcott's Tessa.

Four colts rounded out the field. Brutus Anderson was back with another entry and this time had decided to hire a jockey. Anderson's horse Captain Morgan was ridden by Tom Gilbert, a good jockey who had raced for Charles Bigsby the year before (and soon discovered he really disliked the boisterous and arrogant Bigsby). Edwin Williams also returned bringing Greenhorn, who was not as celebrated as Fleetwood had been, but looked the part. Bigsby himself entered a second horse, this one named Horatio. The final entry came from Brooklyn, where William Colson entered a black colt named Anthracite.

It had rained the day before the race and much like it had been two years prior, the track was heavy and slow. Socrates was the favorite with heavy betting going his way - he had run in Secaucus the month before, an event that was now becoming the de facto warm-up race (both Captain Morgan and Anthracite had also run in that race, and 1868 winner Fleetwood had won it before winning the Knickerbocker). Socrates had looked great in that race. Trainer Delbert Edgar had noted, however, that the colt was favoring a leg afterwards. Though he was running well by the time the Knickerbocker started, Edgar later noted his concern at this development.

Socrates won fairly easily, though some witnesses claimed he pulled up at the end. Jockey Morton was mum on it afterwards and Donaldson would say nothing as well. Edgar noted the "possible" injury at Secaucus but said that Socrates seemed "hale and hearty" before, and during, the race. Nevertheless, the horse would never race again. Eventually it became a trend that the foals of Rose of the North would be born with weak forelegs and none of her other foals would be successful racers. Regardless of his future (he was put out to stud in 1871), Socrates won by a length in 3:03 1/2, followed by Anthracite, with Julia Major finishing third (another strong showing for a Cabell filly).

1869 Knickerbocker Stakes
June 12, 1869
Knickerbocker Racetrack, Westchester Cty, NY
Track: Dirt, Fast; Distance: 12 furlongs (1 1/2 miles)
Time: 3:03 1/2

Finish  Horse            Wt   Jockey            Owner	
1       Socrates        110   Robert Morton     James B. Davidson
2       Anthracite      110   Thad Mosely       William J. Colson
3       Julia Major (f) 107   Ben Hartung       Francis H. Cabell
4       Greenhorn       110   Daniel Masters    Edwin Williams
5       Captain Morgan  110   Tom Gilbert       Brutus Anderson
6       Olympus         110   Josiah Webb       Francis H. Cabell
7       Tessa (f)       107   James Scantling   Andrew Woolcott
8       Horatio         110   Dooley O'Brien    Charles W. Bigsby

Purse: $3,250

First college football - or was it soccer? - game

Two sports claim the same event as the "first" contest of their game on American soil. The event was on a muddy field in Newark, NJ on November 6, 1869. It was a football game between host Garden State University and visiting Dickson College (of Watkins Glen, NY). Though many college football historians name this the first game of American football, it really resembled soccer much more closely than what we now think of as American Football. The ball was round and the rules prohibited carrying or throwing it - the only way to advance it was by, yep, kicking it with your foot. So the game, won by Garden State 7-3 (it was played to ten total goals), is viewed as both the first college (American) football game and the debut of soccer on American soil. Either way, it's worth noting.

Tice's Monarchs become openly professional

James Tice would go on to become a big name in the early days of baseball. In 1869 he was generally considered a braggart (actually, that characterization would never really change), but he did openly admit for the first time that his base ball club, the Monarch Club of Cincinnati, was professional. "Of course I pay my boys," he told a newspaper reporter. "And they earn every cent!" The Monarchs were a good club (apparently paying your players attracted the best practitioners), though they still refused to play the (nearly equally professional) Frankford Fortitude Nine. Both clubs claimed to be the "world champions" for 1869.

[mjj55409]

The budding emergence of base ball. Love it.

[legendsport]

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).

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.

[legendsport]

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.

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