{"id":15872,"date":"2019-03-27T01:04:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T01:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=15872"},"modified":"2019-03-28T06:42:00","modified_gmt":"2019-03-28T06:42:00","slug":"how-the-1869-cincinnati-red-stockings-turned-baseball-into-a-national-sensation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/how-the-1869-cincinnati-red-stockings-turned-baseball-into-a-national-sensation\/","title":{"rendered":"How the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings turned baseball into a national sensation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Wyss<\/a>, University of Connecticut<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This Major League Baseball season, fans may notice a patch<\/a> on the players\u2019 uniforms that reads \u201cMLB 150.\u201d<\/p>\n

The logo commemorates the Cincinnati Red Stockings<\/a>, who, in 1869, became the first professional baseball team \u2013 and went on to win an unprecedented 81 straight games.<\/p>\n

As the league\u2019s first openly salaried club, the Red Stockings made professionalism \u2013 which had been previously frowned upon \u2013 acceptable to the American public.<\/p>\n

But the winning streak was just as pivotal. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis did not just make the city famous,\u201d John Thorn, Major League Baseball\u2019s official historian, said in an interview for this article. \u201cIt made baseball famous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pay to play?<\/h2>\n

In the years after the Civil War, baseball\u2019s popularity exploded, and thousands of American communities fielded teams. Initially most players were gentry \u2013 lawyers, bankers and merchants whose wealth allowed them to train and play as a hobby. The National Association of Base Ball Players<\/a> banned the practice of paying players.<\/p>\n

At the time, the concept of amateurism was especially popular among fans. Inspired by classical ideas of sportsmanship, its proponents argued<\/a> that playing sport for a reason other than for the love of the game was immoral, even corrupt. <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, some of the major clubs in the East and Midwest began disregarding the rule prohibiting professionalism and secretly hired talented young working-class players to get an edge. <\/p>\n

After the 1868 season, the national association reversed its position and sanctified the practice of paying players. The move recognized the reality that some players were already getting paid, and that was unlikely to change because professionals clearly helped teams win.<\/p>\n

Yet the taint of professionalism restrained virtually every club from paying an entire roster of players.<\/p>\n

The Cincinnati Red Stockings, however, became the exception. <\/p>\n

The Cincinnati experiment<\/h2>\n

In the years after the Civil War, Cincinnati was a young, growing, grimy city<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The city had experienced an influx of German and Irish immigrants who toiled in the multiplying slaughterhouses. The stench of hog flesh wafted through the streets, while the black fumes of steamboats, locomotives and factories lingered over the skyline. <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, money was pouring into the coffers of the city\u2019s gentry. And with prosperity, the city sought respectability; it wanted to be as significant as the big cities that ran along the Atlantic seaboard \u2013 New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Men slaughter hogs on an assembly line in a Cincinnati meat packing plant.<\/span>
\n Library of Congress<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cincinnati\u2019s main club, the Red Stockings, was run by an ambitious young lawyer named Aaron Champion<\/a>. Prior to the 1869 season, he budgeted US$10,000 for his payroll and hired Harry Wright<\/a> to captain and manage the squad. Wright was lauded later in his career as a \u201cbaseball Edison<\/a>\u201d for his ability to find talent. But the best player on the team was his 22-year-old brother, George, who played shortstop. George Wright<\/a> would end up finishing the 1869 season with a .633 batting average and 49 home runs. <\/p>\n

Only one player hailed from Cincinnati; the rest had been recruited from other teams around the nation. Wright had hoped to attract the top player in the country for each position. He didn\u2019t quite get the best of the best, but the team was loaded with stars.<\/p>\n

As the season began, the Red Stockings and their new salaries attracted little press attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefits of professionalism were not immediately recognized,\u201d Greg Rhodes, a co-author of \u201cBaseball Revolutionaries: How the 1869 Red Stockings Rocked the Country and Made Baseball Famous<\/a>,\u201d told me. \u201cSo the Cincinnati experiment wasn\u2019t seen as all that radical.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Red Stockings opened the season by winning 45 to 9. They kept winning and winning and winning \u2013 huge blowouts. <\/p>\n

At first only the Cincinnati sports writers had caught on that something special was going on. Then, in June, the team took its first road trip east. Playing in hostile territory against what were considered the best teams in baseball, they were also performing before the most influential sports writers.<\/p>\n

The pivotal victory was a tight 4-to-2 win against what had been considered by many the best team in baseball, the powerful New York Mutuals<\/a>, in a game played with Tammany Hall \u201cboss\u201d William Tweed<\/a> watching from the stands. <\/p>\n

Now the national press was paying attention. The Red Stockings continued to win, and, by the conclusion of the road trip in Washington, they were puffing stogies at the White House with their host, President Ulysses Grant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The players chugged home in a boozy, satisfied revel and were met by 4,000 joyous fans at Cincinnati\u2019s Union Station.<\/p>\n

American idols<\/h2>\n

The Red Stockings had become a sensation. They were profiled in magazines<\/a> and serenaded in sheet music<\/a>. Ticket prices doubled to 50 cents. They drew such huge crowds that during a game played outside of Chicago, an overloaded bleacher collapsed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Aaron Chapman\u2019s squad averaged 42 runs a game in the 1869 season.<\/span>
\n From the collection of Greg Rhodes<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Most scores were ridiculously lopsided; during the 1869 season the team averaged 42 runs a game. Once they even scored 103. The most controversial contest<\/a> was in August against the Haymakers of Troy, New York. The game was rife with rumors of $17,000 bets, and bookmakers bribing umpires and players. The game ended suspiciously at 17 to 17, when the Haymakers left the field in the sixth inning, incensed by an umpire\u2019s call. The Red Stockings were declared the winners.<\/p>\n

The season climaxed with a road trip west on the new transcontinental railroad<\/a>, which had just opened in May. The players, armed with rifles, shot out windows at bison, antelope and even prairie dogs and slept in wooden Coleman cars lighted with whale oil. More than 2,000 excited baseball fans greeted the team in San Francisco, where admission to games was one dollar in gold.<\/a> <\/p>\n

Cincinnati ended its season with an undefeated record: 57 wins, 0 losses. The nation\u2019s most prominent sports writer of the day, Henry Chadwick<\/a>, declared them \u201cchampion club of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite fears that others clubs would outbid Cincinnati for their players, every Red Stockings player demonstrated his loyalty by signing contracts to return for the 1870 season.<\/p>\n

The demise begins<\/h2>\n

The winning streak continued into the next season \u2013 up until a June 14, 1870, game<\/a> against the Brooklyn Atlantics.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n An error by second baseman Charles Sweasy ended the Red Sockings\u2019 historic streak.<\/span>
\n From the collection of John Thorn<\/span>, Author provided<\/span><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After nine innings, the teams were tied at 5. Under the era\u2019s rules, the game could have been declared a draw, leaving the streak intact. Instead Harry Wright opted to continue, and the Red Stockings ended up losing in extra innings after an error by the second baseman, Charlie Sweasy.<\/p>\n

The 81-game win streak had ended.<\/p>\n

The Red Stockings did not return in 1871. Ticket sales had fallen after their first loss, and other teams began to outbid the Red Stockings for their star players. Ultimately the cost of retaining all of its players was more than the Cincinnati club could afford.<\/p>\n

Yet the team had made its mark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made baseball from something of a provincial fare to a national game,\u201d Thorn explained.<\/p>\n

A few years later, in 1876, the National League was founded<\/a> and still exists today. The Cincinnati Reds<\/a> were a charter member. And not surprisingly, some of the biggest 150-year celebrations<\/a> of the first professional baseball team are occurring in the town they once called Porkopolis.\"The<\/p>\n

Robert Wyss<\/a>, Professor of Journalism, University of Connecticut<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Wyss, University of Connecticut This Major League Baseball season, fans may notice a patch on the players\u2019 uniforms that reads \u201cMLB 150.\u201d The logo commemorates the Cincinnati Red Stockings, who, in 1869, became the first professional baseball team \u2013 and went on to win an unprecedented 81 straight games. As the league\u2019s first openly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":15867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[5798,6082,179,6081,502,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15873,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15872\/revisions\/15873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}