The List : Class of 1880 2/2 : Jim Creighton

James Creighton, Jr (1841-1862), Builder

Eligble: 1871

Contributions: Until the end of the 19th century, the game's best players were compared unfavourably to Creighton. The best pitcher of the 1860s, Creighton was also a star hitter. He was likely the first to make pitching competitive, instead of simply serving the batter, the first national superstar produced by baseball, and considered by some the first professional player.

Some of the best advice you can get about choosing a career or making money is that, if you want to make it - really make it - you have to be the first, or you have to be the best. Jim Creighton did it all. He was the first, he was the best, he was the first to really make it, and he might have been the first to make money at it. This is the story of baseball's first superstar and 'The Man that Saved Baseball,' Jim Creighton.

Creighton was born in Manhattan in 1841, and by the time he was a teenager, Creighton was already a well-known cricketer and baseball player, especially as a batsman. Junior teams throughout the city vied for his services, but Creighton and some of his choice friends started their own junior club, the Young America, in 1857. They played a few competitive games, but disbanded in 1858 when Creighton's mother passed away and he moved with his father to Brooklyn. He joined a new club, the Niagara, and baseball historians have speculated that he may already have been supporting his father through his baseball playing at age 17.

This is as good a time as any to tackle one of the Creighton myths. He is often labeled the first professional player - to play for money - and indeed he may have been receiving payments as early as 1858, 11 years before the Cincinnati Red Stockings became baseball's first all-pro team. However, by 1858 'revolving' or team jumping had been commonplace for over a decade among New York's best ballplayers, and it has been well established that such revolving was often the result of 'emoluments, ' salaries disguised as gifts or do-nothing posts at unrelated businesses or clubs. Such emoluments lured our old friend Louis Wadsworth back to the Knickerbockers in 1854. Baseball operated under the veneer of enforced amateurism until 1871, but by the time of Creighton's move to Brooklyn, pay for play was a common occurrence. Creighton was almost certainly not baseball's first pro.

Creighton was a star for the Niagara in 1858 and '59, playing second base beside his friend and fellow standout, shortstop George Flanley. Partway through the 1859 season the Niagara were losing badly to the Star Club, one of the top teams in the city. The starting pitcher, Shields, was pulled for Creighton, and something special happened. The game was witnessed by Peter O'Brien, captain of the city's best team, the Atlantic. "When Creighton got to work, something new was seen in base ball -- a low, swift delivery, the ball rising from the ground past the shoulder to the catcher. The Stars soon saw that they would not be able to cope with such pitching." The Stars managed to salvage the game, but immediately invited Creighton and Flanley to join their club. The pair were soon poached by the Excelsior club, the #2 club in Brooklyn, eager to overtake the Atlantic.

By 1860 Creighton was a phenomenon in baseball, still just 18 years old. He threw harder than any other pitcher, with exceptional command, and he employed a 'snapping' of the wrist to add motion to his delivery that was technically illegal but undetectable by the umpires. He could make the ball rise or fade, and implemented a prototypical changeup dubbed a 'dew-drop' to throw off timing. Being able to induce poor contact or even miss bats made Creighton a formidable defensive weapon in an era where pitchers were supposed to be serving the ball to the batter. At the time, the goal of baseball was to showcase fielding, so putting the ball in play was prioritized. Pitchers were to deliver underhand, with an unbent elbow, in a fashion similar to softball pitching or bowling. Creighton's success can be attributed to his ability to hide an illegal delivery. An English national cricket team once toured America when Creighton was at the height of his powers, and played several games against American clubs, including games against Creighton, one of the country's best cricketers. They also watched one of his baseball games, and English cricketer John Lillywhite had this to say: "Why, that man is not bowling, he is throwing underhand. It is the best disguised underhand throwing I ever saw, and might readily be taken for a fair delivery."

In 1860 the Excelsior toured the US and Canada with their new star attraction, dismantling clubs wherever they went. They drew crowds in the thousands (remember baseball had, just 15 years ealier, been developed as a hobbyist exercise) and spectators marveled at how much better they were than their local amateur clubs. On 8 November he threw baseball's first shutout - this in an era of pitching underhand to the batter, gloveless fielders, and games where teams could score more than 100 runs. It's not likely that no baseball game had ever resulted in a team scoring 0 points, but the fact that the papers recorded it means it may have been the first shutout at that level of competition.

For the next two years, Creighton was the best player in the world, and while his pitching lives largely in anecdote, statistics exist of his batting exploits. He hit home runs when nobody else could. He didn't strike out once in 1860. In 1862 he somehow only made four outs.

The revolving didn't ever really stop. In 1861 Creighton and Asa Brainard (another talented young starting pitcher) quit the Excelsiors to join the Atlantic, only to be lured back weeks later. Both men also maintained their cricketing careers on the side - it should be noted that cricket in the United States was openly professional and around 1860 was of similar popularity to baseball. Which sport would win America's heart was far from a decided matter, and the war of popularity the two sports fought has been the matter of some study ever since.

Jim Creighton was probably baseball's best player for a period of several years (though John Thorn believes the best player of the early 1860s by reputation may have been Excelsiors catcher Joseph B Leggett), but it was not his life but his death which has made him legend.

On October 14, 1862, Jim Creighton had a fantastic day at the plate. Starting in the field, Creighton hit four doubles in four trips to the plate over the first five innings. In the fifth, he came in to relieve Brainard (likely in more of a time share than a modern 'relief' appearance), and in the bottom half of the inning something special happened. Creighton crushed a rare home run, and remarked to old friend George Flanley after returning to the dugout, 'I must have snapped my belt.' George said, 'I guess not,' and indeed the belt was intact, but after four days of agonized hemorrhaging at his home, Creighton passed away, diagnosed with a ruptured bladder. Modern physicians have retro-diagnosed him with a ruptured inguinal hernia, which you shouldn't google, but the cause of death is almost irrelevant: baseball's biggest star had died in the act of hitting a home run. He was 21.

The event was widely mourned. His Excelsiors draped the clubhouse in black and eulogized: "He was very modest, and never severe in his criticisms of the play of others. He did not care to talk about his own playing, was gentlemanly in his deportment, and very correct in his habits, and to sum up all, was a model player in our National Game... His death was a loss not only to his club but to the whole base ball community, which needed such as he as a standard of honorable play and ability."

This biographical note, and others like it, are a crucial part of the Creighton story. He is remembered as a pure champion of baseball, a talent like no other, but also a man of integrity and honor, which is laughable considering that he played for money when it was against the rules, made a name by pitching in an illegal manner, and switched teams as soon as it suited him. In any regard, in life, Creighton was the star baseball needed to continue gaining popularity, and even propel it past cricket in the national consciousness. In death, he would become its greatest hero until Babe Ruth. John Thorn calls him a martyr, and he seems to fill the role - baseball players and writers commemorated their great hero for generations after - Old Hoss Radbourn and Tim Keefe were both compared negatively to the great 'amateur', and even The Simpsons' Mr. Burns had Jim Creighton on his all-time baseball team.

Creighton was crucial to baseball history. At once a pioneer of technique, an accomplished hero in his own day and a martyr of the game today, Creighton helped push the game into the national spotlight, and into the realm of professionalism. Few men from his century helped the game evolve as Creighton did, in his time and even from beyond the grave.