Class of 1885, 2/2: Charles DeBost

Charles S De Bost (1826-1894), Builder
Eligible: 1876
Contributions: The best catcher, and perhaps the best player of the 1850s. Captain and leader of the Knickerbocker Club for many years, DeBost starred in the 1858 Fashion Course All-Star games. Flamboyant on the field, was famous for his on-field clowning as well as his skill behind the plate.

We had a splendid catcher in the person Charles S. Debost, who would be a credit to the position even today, I am sure. He was a good batter also, and a famous player in his day.

-- William R Wheaton, 1887

It is hard to identify who the best players were before professional-level statistics began in 1871, so we rely largely on anecdote. We know that George Wright was probably the best player in baseball immediately before that year, and we know that Jim Creighton and Joseph Leggett were probably the best ten years before that. We know that Doc Adams was highly regarded in the mid-1840s, and the names of the best players of the 1830s, and our entries here have sought to reflect their stature in the game during its infancy. Charles DeBost was perhaps the best player of his generation, and deserves to hold a place among the game's immortals.

While we don't have enough information to give him a batting average, we do have a fair amount of information on DeBost, a lot of it from John Thorn, William J Ryzek, and their entry in Base Ball Founders: The Clubs, Players, and Cities of the Northeast that Established the Game. 

DeBost was born August 4, 1826, and, orphaned at a young age, was raised along with his siblings by their grandparents in Southampton, Long Island. Trained as a cloakmaker, we know that DeBost was, by 19, already regarded as one of the best ballplayers in the city - he was invited to join the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, an honour generally reserved for the best ballplayers around, and typically for lawyers, clerks, and doctors - that the Knicks deigned to invite a Long Island cloakmaker's apprentice to play with them indicates his level of skill. He also served as their catcher, one of the premier defensive positions at a time when the game was an exercise in defense.

DeBost played his first game with the Knicks on October 31, 1845, long before the game became an intersquad sport in 1846. His play was brilliant -The Spirit of the Times noted: "Debost, as behind man, has no equal." I should note that his name is reported as spelled several different ways, and Ive tried to remain true to source material where possible. His official name was De Bost, he is generally written as 'DeBost', but spelling gets as diverse as 'Deborst'.

1862 Knicks, DeBost bottom left

DeBost stayed with the club until 1847, when he resigned from the club, though he returned in 1850 and stayed with the Knicks until he retired from the sport in 1859. His playing was always highly praised. Even at the turn of the century, those who saw him remembered him as the best catcher of all time. In 1858 the clubs of New York assembled something of an All-Star team to compete against the best of Brooklyn in a three-game series at the Fashion Race Course (thenceforth known as the Fashion Course Games), and DeBost was one of only three players to take part in all three games. He apparently acquitted himself well, being presented with the game balls for both games the New York side won (the game ball was the prize for the winning club, and was typically presented to the captain or the game's best player).

DeBost was hailed as the best catcher of the 1850s by most sources. William Ryzek claims that the Knicks would typically cancel any game DeBost could not attend.

But he was also one of the game's great entertainers. "This gentleman's appearance is generally the signal for some demonstration of applause or hilarity." While many appreciated his on-field antics, including the crowds that flocked to see him clown his opponents, the nascent baseball purists were not so kind: "We think that the Knickerbockers were defeated, through the foolishness, fancy airs and smart capers of De Bost," wrote the Atlas. "Like a clown in a circus, he evidently plays for the applause of the audience at his 'monkey shines,' instead of trying to win the game. This is reprehensible, especially when playing against a Brooklyn club, where the reputation of the New Yorkers as players is at stake. But so long as the spectators applaud his tom-foolery, just so long will he exert the part of a clown." When DeBost complained to the publication they ran an apology, but added: "We still fail to discover the extreme grace and refinement displayed, when a player in a match attempts to catch a ball with that portion of his body that is usually covered by his coat tail."

While some baseball men may not have appreciated his clowning, his baseball fellows loved him. He served through most of the '50s as an officer of the Knicks, and he was invited back to the old-timers' celebration in 1875, where he reportedly played in his trademark spirited fashion. He died in 1894, aged 68, and was buried in Brooklyn's Greenwood Cemetary alongside many of baseball's early pioneers, but his legacy lives on in the two game balls from those 1858 Fashion Course games - his son Charles submitted them for consideration to the Mills Commission in 1907, and in 1909 they were declared the oldest baseballs in existence. They ended up in the Hall of Fame when it was founded in the 1930s but if you're wondering how much they might be worth, know that the third game ball was sold in 2005 for half a million dollars, the most valuable piece of baseball memorabilia of all time.

The 1858 Fashion Course ball presented to DeBost and auctioned in 2005

Previous: 1885 1/2 Tommy Bond
1880s Overview
Next: 1886 1/2 Lip Pike

Class of 1885, 1/2: Tommy Bond

Thomas Henry Bond (1856-1941), Player
Eligible: 1885
Contributions: A control artist, Bond led the league three times in BB/9, finishing top ten in the league eight times. He was also a dominant power pitcher, leading baseball in strikeouts from 1874 to 1879 by a wide margin (614 to second-place 408). His resultant lifetime 5.04 lifetime K/BB would stand for 123 years, finally surpassed by Chris Sale in 2017. Baseball's best pitcher from the time of Spalding in the late National Association era until the early 1880s, retired with highest WAR of all time.

Tommy Bond was the successor in a long line of tricksters. Before the leagues became more established, the greatest pitcher in the land was the trickiest man in the box. Creighton hid an underhanded throwing, Spalding was a master of "headwork" - adjusting arc and speed, and Candy Cummings invented a whole new trick pitch, the curveball. Like his predecessors (including his mentor, Cummings) Bond pushed the rules to their limit, hiding a submarine-style low-sidearm action that was technically illegal to deliver the ball with previously-unseen accuracy and speed. Along the way he would carve a reputation as the best pitcher in the world.

Thomas Henry Bond was born in Granard, Ireland, in April 1856. Immigration records show the family settling into Brooklyn in 1862. Undoubtedly, Bond grew up playing ball on the neighbourhood streets and sandlots, but he first appears on a roster, the semi-pro Washington Nine, in 1873, aged 17. He would also play for one of the city's top semi-pro teams, the Brooklyn Athletics, that season. Bond appears to have been highly sought-after for the unprecedented velocity he could achieve with his nearly-sidearm (and thus nearly-illegal) delivery, and he had been invited to try out for the professional Brooklyn Atlantics of the National Association in 1872, but they couldn't find a catcher able to handle his velocity (remember the pitcher was only 45 feet away and there were no gloves yet).

After spending 1873 as a semi-pro, Bond debuted as a professional in 1874, still just 18, with the Brooklyn Atlantics, managed by NA veteran and amateur legend Bob Ferguson. Bond was the team's starting pitcher, which in 1874 meant he threw 497 of the team's 506 innings (Ferguson gave him one game off in June). Bond threw well, putting up a 2.03 ERA, good for a ERA+ of 101. He ranked as one of the better pitchers in the league by K/9 (4th) and BB/9 (1st), making a name for himself as the game's top control pitcher outside of possibly Al Spalding. As a result, Bond led his league in K/BB for the first of four times - as a teenager. The brightest moment of his rookie campaign came late in the year - on 20 October he held the New York Mutuals hitless for 8 2/3 innings, when Joe Start doubled. There wasn't even a word for what he'd lost yet - it would have been baseball's first no-hitter.

Before the 1875 season Ferguson signed on to manage and play for the Hartford Dark Blues. Ferguson asked his young pitcher to join him, and Bond obliged. Because the season would expand from 56 to 82 games, Hartford also signed Candy Cummings, possible inventor of the curveball, serial contract jumper, and in 1875 on the shortlist for #2 pitcher in the world outside of Spalding (George Zetlein and Dick McBride being the other two contenders). Cummings, aside from being the master of his tricky curveball, was also one of the game's best control artists, and was assigned the job of mentoring Bond. Bond played right field for most of the first half of the season, until Cummings began to wear down, at which point the two shared pitching duties. The rest did both men well - Cummings had a return to form and Bond broke out as a star, posting an ERA of 1.41 (167+) in 352 innings.

The 1876 Hartford Dark Blues

Bond took advantage of the opportunity, and when the Dark Blues fled the dissolving NA for William Hulbert's fledgling National League in 1876, Bond was Hartford's premier pitcher. He and Cummings had similar ability to control the ball, but Bond's largely-illegal underhanded throwing made him able to miss bats at an unprecedented rate (he was striking out almost two men a game). Bond threw another 408 innings while Cummings threw just 216. He put up a 1.68 ERA (143+) and led the league with a 1.96 FIP. His 6.77 K/BB was not only the first of three times he would lead the NL in K/BB, it set a record that would stand until 1880.

Bond's career took a turn partway through the 1876 season. In August he accused his manager, Ferguson, of throwing a match against Boston. Ferguson went to Hartford's president, Morgan Bulkely (then president of the NL as well), who demanded proof which Bond was unable to supply. Accused of defamation, he was suspended, and though Bond issued a public retraction Candy Cummings pitched the game's final 20 games. Boston took advantage of the situation and swooped in to sign the disgraced ace for the 1877 season.

At 20 years of age, Bond was established as the best pitcher in baseball, but his career record stood at just 72-61 as he played for second-class ballclubs. In joining Boston, Bond would have a crack at playing alongside some of the game's best: Jim ORourke, Deacon White, George Wright, and the legendary manager Harry Wright. The team went 42-18 and won the NL Pennant, Bond's first taste of success. He did his part, leading the league with 40 wins, a 2.11 ERA, and a 4.72 K/BB over 521 innings.

Bond kept up his success. Over the next two years he threw another 1088 innings for Boston, going 83-38 with a 2.01 ERA (122+). In two seasons, he put up 28.2 WAR, and he led Boston to the 1878 Pennant, his second.

This was essentially the height of power for Bond. Going into the 1880 season everything seemed to be going right. He turned 24 on April 2, and since 1874 he had been baseball's dominant pitcher. He was its best power pitcher and its best finesse pitcher, he had led the world (NA and NL) in WAR since 1874 and in all of baseball history (going back to 1871) was second only to Al Spalding. Bond had studied under the legendary Candy Cummings, won pennants, and led the league in every imaginable statistic along the way. But he'd also been throwing at the highest levels since he was a schoolboy, and at unimaginable volume: Before that 24th birthday he'd thrown nearly 3000 innings as a professional, and averaged 536 innings during his first three years in Boston. Nobody knew it yet, but Bond's arm was already shot.

Signs of shopwear were already present. Bond struggled early in the season and blamed it on his new catcher, rookie Phil Powers. Manager Harry Wright recognized the signs of fatigue and had young outfielder (and fellow Irishman) Curry Foley throw 238 innings, limiting Bond to *just* 493. His 49 complete games were the fewest since he split the 68-game 1876 schedule with Candy Cummings. He went 26-29 and his 2.67 ERA was good for just a 84 ERA+. Within six months of being regaled as the pitcher of his era, Bond was done.

Boston brought him back for the 1881 season to see what he had, but by then the NL had moved the pitcher's box back from 45 feet to 50, accommodating faster pitchers like Bond had once been. With nothing left, the greater distance proved too great a challenge, and after a 19-hit shellacking from Detroit Bond retired with a 0-3 record. The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune crowed that "the fifty-foot rule has shelved Tommy Bond as a pitcher." Bond joined his brother in business in New York that summer, but returned to Boston, where the renowned Irish pitcher enjoyed great fame, by the fall.

The following March, 1882, Harvard's baseball team invited the local legend to work out with them, perhaps to hand down some sage wisdom to the young players. We don't know how much coaching Bond did that spring, but we do know that some of the baseball team's youth seemed to rub off on the veteran hurler. Tinkering with a new delivery, Bond, now 26, felt 'new life' in his arm, and was offered a contract by the NL's nearby Worcester Ruby Legs. Unfortunately, Bond still had nothing - he threw just 12 innings across two starts, walking seven men as his famous control dissolved at 50 feet. He insisted on sticking around the club, getting into six games as an outfielder, a role he sporadically filled during his career, despite his career .238 batting average. He even managed seven games, though he retired once again in June. Bond was connected to other clubs, but nothing came of it, though he did appear for the semi-pro Memphis Eckfords later in 1882. His retirement looked permanent. He stayed away from baseball in 1883, though he made a few appearances as an umpire in the Boston area following the abrupt resignation of umpire WE Furlong

In 1884  Bond was approached by Boston baseball heroes Harry Wright and Tim Murnane to join Boston's new Union Association club. By this time, baseball had removed most of the stern restrictions on deliveries, and pitchers were throwing much as they are today, and Bond found new speed and accuracy with a shoulder-level delivery. Now 28 years old Bond threw 189 decent innings for Boston, putting up a 3.00 ERA that was good for a 101 ERA+ and a 9.14 K/BB that was reminiscent of the younger Bond and one of the best in the fledgling major league. He also made his way into the outfield several times and ended up hitting an impressive .296 with eight doubles, in 162 ABs, one of the better hitters in the league.

Bond had a falling out with Boston in July and left the team, catching on with the Indianapolis Hoosiers of the American Association. He put up a 5.65 ERA in five games with his new team and retired for a third and final time, moving back to Boston for good. He spent the 1880s as a substitute umpire for several leagues and college circuits, even going 3-0 in sporadic appearances for a Brockton independent league team in 1886. He fathered three children with his wife Louise, whom he had met in his earlier Boston days and worked for her family business until taking a job with the Boston Assessor's office, which he worked for 35 years.

Louise passed away in 1933, and in 1936 Bond appeared publicly on a baseball diamond for the last time, still able to play catch with his old teammates at an old-timers game. Bond was 80. He would pass away in 1941 at his daughter's house in Boston, and was buried at Forest Hills.

Bond was a dreamer, and I would struggle to find another person who fought so hard to stay in a game that passed him by. By age 25 baseball was done with him, but Bond came back year after year with new mechanics, renewed optimism, under new rules, at a new position. He tried hitting, managing, even umpiring, jumping teams, leagues, even levels of professionalism. Anything to stay in the game. I'm reminded of the great essay by Bart Giamatti, The Green Fields of the Mind:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer ... and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

Tommy Bond was the best in the world at the most popular sport in his country for a number of years. He was truly great. Though he played at the very beginning of professional baseball, only 31 other pitchers have posted a higher JAWS score, and he still ranks 58th in bWAR. It must have crushed him to show up one day and not have anything left. Even when his arm was spent he kept coming back, willing himself into the game. "Hope springs eternal", Pope wrote, and baseball has always had a particular affiliation with that sentiment, and Tommy Bond embodied that as much as anybody to ever pick up a baseball.

Previous: 1884 2/2 Abraham Tucker
1880s Overview
Next: 1885 2/2 Charles DeBost

Class of 1884, 2/2: Abraham Tucker

Abraham W Tucker (1793-1868), Builder
Eligible: 1871
Contributions: Founding member of the Gotham/New York Base Ball Club in 1837, instrumental to the prototypical game's growth in popularity among the sporting class. Father to William H Tucker, who helped co-write the Knickerbocker rules in 1845. Influential enough to the game that the Knicks named him an honorary member upon their founding in 1846.

Famed baseball writer and statistician Henry Chadwick grew up in New York in the 1840s and began covering the nascent sport of baseball for the local papers in the 1850s. He later watched over the growing professional game like a careful grandfather, and throughout his time observing the game, he developed his own theories about its genesis and lineage, and maintained his own careful history of the sport. While the later stages of his life was hallmarked by his failure to promote his own (more accurate) history of baseball (that it was the descendant of English bat and ball games) against the fantasies of Al Spalding and AG Mills in the early 20th century, when he died in 1908 he left his invaluable trove of records to his great rival, Al Spalding.

In 1911 Spalding published America's National Game, drawing from his own recollections (he was a star from baseball's amateur era in the late 1860s) as well as Chadwick's papers, and this served as the first great attempt at telling the story of baseball's inception. In this work he mentions 11 men who founded the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club and, as such, he considered the fathers of the sport, "gentlemen who... should be honoured and remembered as the founders of the national game by the million baseball players of the present day". Of these men, six (Cartwright, Adams, Wheaton, Curry, Lee, and William H Tucker) have been previously covered in these electronic pages. Others, like Dr. Ransom and James Fisher had no reported impact on the development of baseball, and will not be covered here, but there is one more name I'd like to draw upon: William H Tucker's father, Abraham Tucker.

If possible, we know less about the life of Abraham Tucker than we do his fellow 1846 honorary Knick, Col. James Lee. We know that he was born in 1793 and lived most of his life in New York City, with his profession listed in 1822 as the proprietor of a 'segarstore' on Bowery street. His son and previous Hall inductee, William H Tucker would eventually help him run the store and remained his partner until Abraham's death in 1868. That's most of what we know about him.

Abraham is important for reasons we don't really know, but what we do know is that in 1846, after the Knickerbocker formed, they decided to honour two of the city's legendary old ballplayers with honourary membership: James Lee, and Abraham Tucker. Both men had been playing ball since perhaps as early as 1812 on public grounds that would become Madison Square, and both men we already known ballplayers at the forming of the Gotham Club in 1837, the first team to codify the rules of the game that became the sport we know today.

This is a weird entry because we basically have to take other people's word for this one. Tucker is notable for his membership in the Gotham and whatever status he achieved in the game was enough for him to be recognized by baseball's first real organized body in 1846. One imagines he could have been a great player, organizer, rulemaker, or some other champion of the game. Perhaps he is notable for fathering one of the games first rule writers. In any case, the Knicks and two of the early game's most prolific historians and great primary sources, Al Spalding and Henry Chadwick, all considered Abraham Tucker to be one of the game's great influencers.

Previous: 1884, 1/2: George Zettlein
1880s Overview
Next: 1885, 1/2: Tommy Bond

Class of 1883, 2/2: Frank Pidgeon

Francis Pidgeon (1825-1884), Builder
Eligible: 1875
Contribution: Founder of the Brooklyn Eckford, one of the top New York teams of the amateur era, one of the top pitchers of the 1850s, participated in the Fashion Course Games of 1858. Fought viciously against professionalism until his retirement from the game.

One of the great characters from the Roman Republic is Cato the Younger, a skilled orator and politician who fought tooth and nail against Caesar in the Roman Senate, who led the opposition to Caesar's Triumvirate, who was immune to bribes and rooted out corruption, and who killed himself in 46 BC when it was clear Caesar was going to instill himself as dictator. In many ways, Frank Pidgeon was the Cato of baseball. A star of the early sport, Pidgeon pushed back fiercely against the encroaching professionalism of the game until he walked away at the height of his popularity in protest. Like Cato, Pidgeon would be a tragic figure of the game's history.

Pidgeon, 1858

Pidgeon was born on 11 February, 1825 in New York City. As a young man he worked in shipbuilding until leaving New York, as with many young professionals in the city, as a Miner '49er before returning the following summer to marry Mary Orr, who would bear him six children. Pidgeon would continue his career in shipbuilding after returning to New York. In 1851 he also submitted a patent for an improvement to the thimble-making process.

Going to California in 1849 was a popular endeavour for young professional men in New York at the time, and so was playing baseball. Like many young men, Pidgeon met in the parks of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey for rigorous exercise in the form of recreational baseball. In 1855 Pidgeon organized a group of Brooklyn shipbuilders and mechanics to form the Eckford Base Ball Club, named for Scottish-American shipbuilding magnate Henry Eckford. He served as it's first president. Because the men worked long hours at the docks, it was rare for them to meet more than once per week, and no other organized club agreed to meet them for competitive play.

In 1856, after challenging every club in the area, the Union of Morrisania and the Baltics agreed that the winner of one of their matches would play the Eckford. This is not to suggest a kind of championship bracketing, but that Eckford was a kind of aperitif for the winner, easy competition for extra play after the real match. Union, one of the better teams in New York in the mid-1850s, won their game against the Baltic, but were upset by Eckford, 22-8. Demanding a rematch against the lucky underdog Eckford, Union lost again a month later, 22-6. The fledgling baseball press began covering the Eckford as legitimate competition. They were a regular competitor in 1857, and after expanding their membership to include volunteer firemen in 1858, went 5-1, one of the best teams in the city.

For his part, Pidgeon was one of the game's premier players at least until the rise of Jim Creighton in 1860, and likely until his 1863 retirement. Famous for his 'headwork', Pidgeon excelled at changing speeds and arcs, throwing off batters when overhand deliveries were illegal and pitching tools were limited to pitching 'fairly to the bat'. He was also a talented batter and skilled fielder, playing a number of infield and outfield positions well. Pidgeon was selected to participate in the 1858 Fashion Course games, a three-game All-Star series pitting the best of Brooklyn against the best of New York. Pidgeon played game one at shortstop (a loss) and pitched games two and three, suggesting his status as the best pitcher in Brooklyn. He beat New York 29-8 in Game 2 (throwing 290 pitches) and threw 436 pitches in a Game 3 loss.

Eckford lost championship series to the Atlantic Club in 1859 and 1860, wasn't competitive as Pidgeon sat out the 1861 season, and finally took the NABBP championship title from the Atlantic in 1862. Pidgeon suffered a leg injury during a game in 1863 and not only retired from the sport, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life. Eckford would go on to be undefeated Association champions for 1863. Following the season, Pidgeon moved his family to Saugerties, NY, and opened a successful contracting business, becoming fabulously wealthy by 1870, building a mansion in Saugerties and maintaining properties all over New York state. He filed another patent, for a steam-driven plough, and took up painting.

Eckford ball club in 1858, Pidgeon centre

While Pidgeon played just eight seasons of competitive baseball, his influence on the sport extends far beyond the field of play. As Eckford's founder, he regularly served as club president or secretary through 1863, and served on the Eckford delegation to the very first meeting of New York area clubs, what would become the NABBP, in 1857, where he chaired a motion and led a committee to meet with city officials to secure a plot of ground for baseball play in Central Park.

In 1859 he authored the rule barring professionalism from baseball. Often ignored or creatively skirted, the rule banned any player for playing for compensation of any kind. Papers at the time argued for professionalism, claiming that compensation would even the playing field between rich and poor men - everyone could afford to play ball if there was money in it, not just the doctors and lawyers that could afford a day off work. Pidgeon responded that only men who could afford to play would ensure that games included honorable men who would respect the game, and that young men should be building their careers, not focusing on playing baseball: "a man who does not pay his obligations and has it in his power to do so is a knave and not fit to be trusted in the game of ball or anywhere else". Pidgeon didn't just see professionalism as a moral wrong, he also saw professionalism as a threat to the parity of the young game. Teams of skilled labours like his Eckford could not possibly keep pace with the wealthy clubs if they could snatch all the good players by paying them more. Reports throughout the early 1860s tied Pidgeon to a move to the Atlantic, his chief rival, and while it is not clear whether he was ever approached, he denied the rumors and remained loyal to his Eckford.

Pidgeon would continue fighting for amateurism after his 1863 retirement, and by the end of the decade was the last great champion of the cause. In 1870 he made his last stand to the NABBP. Baseball had been clandestinely professional for several years, and following the openly-professional and widely successful 1869-70 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the clubs of the Association wanted to turn fully professional for the 1871 season. At the convention in the fall of 1870 a number of all-amateur clubs, including our old heroes, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, tabled a motion to ban player emoluments, in any shape of form, once and for all. The motion was championed by Pidgeon, who stumped for votes on behalf of the motion and spoke in its defence at the convention. In what historian William Ryzek called 'amateurism's last stand,' 17 of the 26 present clubs voted to turn professional, with ten of them breaking away to form the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which began professional play, as planned, in 1871. The original Association added 'amateur' to it's title (becoming the NAABBP) and lasted just four more years.

Pidgeon stepped away from baseball after it turned professional. His construction company was very successful and, due to his underbidding, won many government contracts and employed many people. The downside to his lowballing was that he had to run a tight ship and had maintain a shoestring budget. In 1881, the practice of underbidding caught up to him. An investigation into Brooklyn city finances meant that payment to Pidgeon's company was withheld, and since Pidgeon had so much overhead and a suppressed cash flow, creditors came after his assets and he had to close his doors. During the 1870s his son Frank jr. had broken off from Pidgeon's company, and Frank Sr. found employment with Jr's company for several years. In 1884, while walking on the Hudson River Line train tracks, Pidgeon was struck and killed by a train. Contemporary reports claimed he was unable to get off the tracks due to his old baseball injury, but with his baseball and business careers in shambles, and some reports claiming that he was facing the train and ignorant of warnings, rumors of suicide have pervaded.

In a way, Pidgeon was the last gunslinger of the amateur era, and he went out on his shield defending amateurism in the game. He was also a key organiser of Brooklyn baseball, and perhaps the game's best pitcher from 1855-60. The ignominy of his retreat from baseball was mirrored by the tragedy of the last few years of his life, and Pidgeon cuts a rather romantic figure as one of the last heroes of the early days of baseball in New York.

Previous: 1882 2/2 William Hulbert

1880s Overview

Next: 1884 Abraham Tucker

Class of 1883, 1/2: Dick McBride

John Dickson "Dick" McBride (1847-1916), Player
Eligible: 1877
Contributions: A teenage phenom in the early 1860s and a hero at the height of the amateur era, McBride's dominance lasted well into the professional game. By the time he turned professional he was already one of the best pitchers of all time, and retired in 1876 second only to Al Spalding himself in fWAR (25.0). Probably the best pitcher outside of Spalding from the Civil War (in which McBride served) through the death of the National Association (1875).

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Dick McBride was born in Philadelphia, 1847, and so is one of the first members of this hall to have grown up in a world where the New York game was already established as the dominant form of baseball. He also came of age during the 1860s, a time when baseball assumed importance over cricket in Philadelphia and the northeast, and when the rivalry between the two Philly clubs (the Athletic and the Olympic) drove interest in the new game. As such, McBride is a titan of the early history of baseball in Philadelphia.

We don't know much of his very early life, but we do know that as a boy he was already an accomplished cricketer with the Chippewa Club, and that the Athletic lured him away to their new baseball club in either their 1860 inception or 1861, at the ripe age of 15 (some sources say he was 16 at the time). He was initially a talented utility man and fielder, but assumed pitching duties in 1863 when ace Tom Pratt (one of the finest pitchers of the 1860s) left the club for Brooklyn. The Athletics of the early 1860s had the reputation of a rough-and-tumble group. They typically sported heavy facial hair. They had a reputation for hyper-competitiveness, and would walk off the field late in a game they were losing. They were known to pick fights on and off the field. For his part, McBride, according to William Ryczek, "...was the blowtorch... He was a bit of a hothead with a sarcastic streak, who sometimes lost his temper on the field."

When McBride took over pitching duties in 1863 he became a star, and the Athletic became one of the dominant clubs of the 1860s. We know that Philadelphia clubs had some competitive showings against many other clubs of the era, including the best teams from New York, although the Brooklyn Atlantic club was always the best team of the time. We also know that in 1864, while serving the Union army, McBride was allowed a three-day furlough to play for Philadelphia in a series of games against Brooklyn clubs. Allegedly, Brooklyn scheduled the games when most of Philadelphia's best players were fighting in the war, and while McBride was allowed to return, to Brooklyn's dismay, most Philly players were not, and Brooklyn won all three games.

Not much is known of McBride's war record, though I believe he was a private in the 1st Regiment of the Pennsylvania Light Infantry (14th Reserves) based on the records I can find. He wouldn't have turned 18 until June 1865, after the end of the war, and we know he was playing baseball in 1863. My best guess is that he probably served from early 1864 until his regiment was discharged in July 1865. I do not mean to diminish his service record but I don't think he saw too much action, and was back playing baseball that summer.

Again, specifics are hard to come by, but with McBride as their starting pitcher the Athletics went 178-11 from 1864-1868, the second best record of the amateur era (after the Brooklyn Atlantic). By the late 1860s McBride was the team's most veteran player and was also the club's manager, a post he would hold well after they went pro. By the time the National Association turned officially professional, and the Athletic Club with them, McBride was established as one of the best pitchers in baseball, and certainly one of the hardest throwers. He was also a steady workhorse. In 1870, the last year of amateur play, the Athletics had McBride throw 625 innings.

Though he had ten years of experience at the highest competitive levels, he was 24 in 1871, the first year of professional play. He actually struggled for the first time in his life, putting up a 4.58 ERA (90 ERA+) in 222 innings. Ryczek writes that he pitched injured much of the year (the A's did strangely let other pitchers throw 27 innings over the season). Still, he was dependable and the mighty Athletics offense carried them to a 21-7 record and the inaugural NA pennant. As he still served as the A's manager, he is still the first manager to win a professional league pennant.

1872 saw a return to form for McBride, as he went 30-14 with a 2.85 ERA (123+), finishing in the top-five in IP, K/9, and BB/9. He won several duels with the legendary Al Spalding and the Red Stockings, though Boston would pull away and win the NA's second pennant. He continued pitching brilliantly over the next few years, posting a league-best 1.64 ERA in 1874 and winning 44 games in 1875. McBride was the toast of baseball in 1874, and was one of the main features of the Athletics-Red Stockings rivalry that Al Spalding and Harry Wright took on an international tour in July of that year. McBride was shelled in two games in London and, when a trip to Paris failed to materialize, McBride and some teammates simply left the tour to visit France without permission.

By 1875 the years and countless innings had added up - from 1871-75 he averaged 410 innings, including a pro-career-high 538 in '75, and generally pitched at least 500 per year for most of the 1860s, starting as a boy. When the Athletics folded and the National Association collapsed following the 1875 season McBride's longtime nemesis Harry Wright hired him to pitch in relief of a very young and inexperienced set of pitchers for his Boston club. Joe Bordon and Jack Manning, both 22, pitched well enough, though McBride started just four games, lost all four, and retired early in the season.

McBride never led the league in anything aside from his 1874 ERA, and didn't leave a lasting legacy in the sport, but it's a result of a few factors: He split his career between the amateur and National Association eras, and was never really the best pitcher of either as a result. There was a Candy Cummings or an Al Spalding, a Jim Creighton or a Tommy Bond. Still, his longevity is astounding - he was playing at the heights of the game from its earliest days outside of the New York area until after William Hulbert founded the National League. He was one of the best players in baseball when Spalding threw his first competitive pitch, and lasted in pro ball almost as long as Spalding did.

Consider that when the NA was founded in 1871 McBride had already pitched for nearly a decade, a full career, and had served in the Civil War, and yet had enough in the tank that in the entire history of the Association, only Spalding put up more wins, and barely beat McBride in fWAR (25.4 to 24.9 - old George Zettlein came third at 22.0). He threw hard, didn't walk anybody, and was tough to hit hard. Simply, he was a star for almost 15 years, and the fact that he has gone unrecognised does not change that. He was also a successful manager, with a record of 161-84 (.657), to say nothing of Philadelphia's stellar record through the 1860s, for which he was also manager. McBride won the NA's first pennant, and despite pitching every day as well continued managing the club until late in the 1875 season, when he was relieved for budding legend Cap Anson. In fact, by the time of his dismissal in 1875 he was probably organized baseball's winningest manager outside of Harry Wright.

McBride basically disappears from the history books after 1876. He died in Philadelphia in 1916, aged 70.

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Class of 1882, 2/2: William Hulbert

William A Hulbert (1832-1882), Builder
Eligible: 1882
Contributions: Broke from the NABBP in 1876 to found the National League. Enforced professionalism and fair play, credited with saving the young sport. President of the Chicago White Stockings until his death, one of baseball's first dynasties.

Who is the greatest Hall of Fame snub? Is it Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens? Pete Rose? Curt Schilling? Bobby Grich? For 60 years, there was only one acceptable option. In 1937, the second year of the Hall's existence, the induction committee selected for induction Ban Johnson, who founded the AL in 1901, and Morgan Bulkely, who briefly served as a puppet president of the NL in 1876. He also happened to be the first president of the NL. Satisfied that they had recognized the two most important executives in baseball history, the election committee did not revisit their selections, anointing such heroes of the sport as Tom Yawkey as the 20th century wound on. By the 1990s a debate had ignited about one of the more deserving candidates: the actual most important figure in NL history, the then-unrecognized William Hulbert. He was inducted in 1995, but we won't wait 60 years to let him in our hall.

William Ambrose Hulbert was born in the farming town of Burlington Flats, NY, in 1832, and his family moved to Chicago shortly after. He would spend much of the rest of his life there, and often professed his love for the town: "I would rather be a lamppost in Chicago than a millionaire in another city". After quickly drinking his way out of Beloit College in Wisconsin, he returned to Chicago and married Jennie Murray in 1860, and the two had a son four years later.

Hulbert could be affectionately coined an 'alcoholic', though he straightened up after his family was driven to the brink of bankruptcy and he did a stint in a Boston drying out facility. He assumed control of his family's grocery business, which he expanded into real estate, commodities trading ultimately coal mining. A lifelong fan of baseball, Hulbert bought shares in the Chicago White Stockings when they went professional for the inaugural season of National Association professional play in 1871. Led by star pitcher George Zettlein, the team fared well until their season ended when the Great Chicago Fire burned down their home, Lake Park. They did not take the field in 1872 or '73, and when they returned to play in 1874, Hulbert had become an officer of the club. He would assume the club presidency in 1875.

Outwardly, Hulbert's White Stockings operated quietly, posting a middling record in a quiet midwestern city. Behind closed doors, however, 1875 was the year that Hulbert conspired to change baseball history. There are two events cited as the reason Hulbert founded the National League, and while we don't know which was the driving force behind his decision, we know that both are true. The first is the Hulbert's snubbing in the Davy Force case:

In 1874 Force was a star infielder for Chicago, one of the best fielders in baseball who would finish 1874 with a career .346 batting average and 132 OPS+. The problem with Force was his reputation as a 'revolver', a player who showed little loyalty and jumped to the highest-paying club - moreover, Force would sign multiple contracts and leverage his suitors against each other. In the midst of 1874 Hulbert tried to get ahead of Force and sign him to a contract for 1875, which was against league rules at the time (teams had to wait until the offseason to sign players for the following season). In December, well aware of the rules, Force signed a contract with the Philadelphia Athletics. When Hulbert appealed to the Association judiciary committee, they had the Philadelphia contract annulled, but, according to legend, when a Philadelphia man was appointed to the committee, they reversed their decision and awarded Force to Philadelphia.

The second factor was Hulbert's jealousy. After watching players like Force revolve away from Chicago, and having to watch Boston maintain a dynasty, an opportunity fell into Hulbert's lap: a letter in July 1875 from Boston's Al Spalding, the sport's best player, offering his services as manager for the 1876 season. Hulbert raced to Boston to meet with Spalding, and returned with a contract securing his services for 1876 - as well as contracts with the rest of Boston's Big Four - Cal McVey, Ross Barnes, and Deacon White. With thoughts of a dynasty in his head, he reached out to the rest of the league's stars, and secured the services of Philadelphia's Adrian 'Cap' Anson and John Peters as well. He signed versatile veteran infielder Ezra Sutton, but he later reneged.

Hulbert was a large man, towering (for the time) at over six feet tall and, by all accounts, a force of personality, and it showed in the following events. Incensed at the injustice of the Davy Force, and afraid of association sanctions following his theft of all the association's talent for 1876, Hulbert clandestinely began sending feelers for his master plan: a new league. Hulbert had long derided, with many others, the lack of discipline in the Association. Gambling and drinking were the norm among players, and they often played inebriated, used foul language, and even played on Sundays, all of which Hulbert found not just morally atrocious (remember that he was a religiously-reformed alcoholic), but bad business in a sport that should have been reaching out to a wider family demographic. Moreover, teams had a habit of quitting the league partway through the season, especially once their home dates were played out.

Hulbert's new league would clamp down on all of this behaviour. No drinking. No gambling. No Sunday games, enforced professionalism, enforced contracts, and honored schedules. Hulbert's league would be the professional antithesis to the 'wild west' of Association play.

Rumors of Hulbert's league were a leading news story during 1875. The baseball world was concerned that Hulbert would launch his league in the midst of 1875 but all his new players finished out their contracts in Boston and Philadelphia, and the NA season concluded as planned. As the season wound down Hulbert visited the presidents of the NA's best western teams: Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville and convinced them to join his National League. On February 2, 1876, he hosted the rest of the major clubs from the east: Philadelphia, Boston, Newark, and the New York Mutual, at the Grand Central hotel in Manhattan. He promised them a league with integrity, limited to cities of at least 100,000 inhabitants (later set at 75,000), where contracts would be respected, territories would be enforced, and playing schedules would be honored. The eight clubs agreed to begin play in 1876, and drew straws to elect an inaugural president. Morgan Bulkely, who served a single year, showed little interest in the league and carried out no initiatives or league business, was elected the first league president, and would go into the Hall of Fame 50 years later, despite essentially no impact on baseball history. Another theory states that Hulbert maneuvered to have Bulkely, the most respected businessman in the room, elected president to give the league credibility while the inexperienced baseball man could be largely controlled by the domineering Hulbert.

Hulbert's star-studded 1876 club went a staggering 52-14 en route to the National League's inaugural pennant, and while his club would slow in pace as Spalding, Ross, and others aged and retired, Hulbert only grew in power within the world of baseball. He slowly relinquished power over his White Stockings to his protege, Spalding, but he assumed the presidency following the 1876 season and reigned over the league with an iron fist. When New York and Philadelphia, the league's two biggest markets, failed to play out their road schedules, Hulbert expelled them. He also instituted a policy of centralised scheduling: the NL produced teams' schedules instead of the teams themselves, a practise that has endured in professional sport until today. He was also the first to hire umpires to work for the league, eliminating a serious point of bias within officiating.

The NL was innovative in other ways, too. Hulbert made a clear distinction that there were no more 'clubs' - the 'teams' were players playing ball for a salary, employees of the team owners. This gave the teams, owners, and ultimately the league significant power over the players, and Hulbert was not hesitant to wield this power.

In 1877 he banned four Louisville Grays, including star pitcher Jim Devlin, for conspiring to throw the NL pennant. The move not only provided precedent for how dirty players should be handled for the rest of baseball history, the resulting scandal saw Louisville, St. Louis, and Hartford fold. Down to just three clubs, Hulbert extended the NL into smaller markets like Indianapolis, Syracure, Milwaukee, and Providence, then in 1879 to Troy, Buffalo, and Cleveland, then Worchester and Detroit in 1880.

In 1879 news broke that the three highest-paid Cincinnati Red Stockings made more money than the rest of the team combined, and the team threatened to fold. Hulbert responded by implementing the first reserve rule, eliminating the free agent market and strongly suppressing players' wages. Cincinnati would continue to be a thorn in Hulbert's side. While the league had a understood practice of disallowing Sunday baseball and serving alcohol at the parks, there was no official rule, and Cincinnati did both. At the end of the 1881 season, Hulbert had had enough. He put the rule in the rulebooks then made it retroactive to the 1881 season and banned Cincinnati from his league when they refused to apologise to him. Cincinnati would go on to form the influential American Association, but that's a story for another day.

Expelling Cincinnati would be Hulbert's final significant act in baseball - he died in April of 1882, leaving the White Stockings to Al Spalding. At the time, he was hailed as a hero to baseball, providing (and holding together) a new league as the NA suffered from moral ills. The Chicago Tribune  wrote: "There is not in America a player, club, officer or patron of the game who will not feel that the loss is irreparable," while his old nemesis Henry Chadwick gushed about his "invaluable service rendered ... in elevating [baseball's] moral tone, and in extirpating the evils which at one time threatened to ruin it." As time passed, however, Hulbert passed from the popular history of the sport, and by 1937 he was a footnote of history. In 1965 a third-grader from Barrington, IL wrote a letter to the Chicago American writer Warren Brown asking how to get his great-great-uncle recognised by the baseball establishment. It took just another thirty years for Hulbert, unanimously voted at the time of his death by NL executives as the founder of the league, to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Ulimately, Hulbert's time as a baseball influencer was brief, chiefly from 1875-1882, but the single act he undertook, so incised at the Davy Force issue that he quit the NA to form the NL, shaped the course of baseball history in an obvious way; the NL would thrive from 1876 until today, a pillar fof baseball history and tradition in more than just name: the NL symbolised the shift toward professionalism, propriety, and the idea of baseball as the idyllic American sport. And it was the brainchild of William A Hulbert.

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