Monday, 19 June 2023
The List
Here is The List, a compilation of names intended to serve as a more egalitarian and apolitical response to the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. For a more comprehensive introduction to the concept and rules of eligibility, please see here, but suffice to say that the List was set up as a counterfactual - what if, starting with the founding of the professional National Association in 1871, the world of baseball awarded some kind of meritous achievement accolade to one person in two categories : professional players, and builders (and then added a third category with the rise to prominence of the Negro Leagues recognizing professional players outside of the recognized Major Leagues). Without further ado, here's the list :
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.
Wednesday, 14 June 2023
The List: Class of 1880, 1/2: Cal McVey
Calvin Alexander McVey (1849-1946), Player
Eligible: 1880
Contributions: Pro baseball's first recognizable slugger, McVey hit .346 lifetime with a 152 career OPS+.
In an era of downplayed offensive ability, offensive stars are hard to find. Rarer were men who were consistently valuable hitters - often a guy could hit .400 then disappear back to his local semi-pro league and from the history books altogether. Much rarer still is a man who could wield a valuable bat, year-in and year-out, and the first player to really be that guy is baseball's first consistent power hitter, Cal McVey. More than that, McVey was a baseball pioneer, a phenom who straddled the gap between the amateur era and the professional sport, and who was on-hand to watch it all unfold.
Calvin McVey was born in Lee County, Iowa, in 1849, the son of Caroline and William McVey. They had come west to start and lose a succession of farms in Iowa and Missouri. After giving up farming William had been a tax collector and by the time of Calvin's birth was a piano tuner. By the mid-1860s the family was living in Indianapolis.
As a young boy Calvin was a gifted athlete, known regionally as a talented gymnast and boxer. His first love, as an athlete, was baseball, though at the time of his growing up baseball was a game, a hobby for boys and young men - the professional game was still developing. His athleticism would be a hallmark of his career, and he would become known for celebratory handstands and backflips later in his career.
In 1867 McVey was working as a piano maker in Indianapolis and playing amateur ball with two clubs, the Actives and the Westerns, a semi-pro outfit known as one of the best in the western United States. When the Washington Nationals stopped in Indianapolis as part of their worldbeating national tour (see the Al Spalding entry) they took on the Westerns in a highly-anticipated matchup of championship clubs. While the Nationals won (as they always did on their tour), the 16-year-old McVey put on a strong showing and impressed not just the Nationals, but their attached reporter and scorekeeper, Henry Chadwick, who spread the word of the talented young man to his readers nationally.
In the spring of 1869, largely in response to the success of the '67 Nationals, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, led by baseball legend Harry Wright, went openly pro. Wright and the Reds recruited heavily from the east coast (Bill James notes that most pro baseball players at the time came from Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Brooklyn), but he saved one spot for a young man he had heard about from Indianapolis. When William McVey signed for his 17-year-old son, Calvin became the youngest player in professional baseball, and the first pro ballplayer born west of the Mississippi.
Athletic and handsome, thick in chest and shoulder, McVey was a hit immediately and, the papers reported, "a favourite of the ladies." Fleet of foot and with a strong throwing arm, McVey was a talented right fielder, but as one paper wrote: "His strength is with the ash in his hands."
The 1869 season was a wild ride for the young man. After defeating all of their midwest opposition, the Reds took off for a tour of the east. Much to the surprise of the baseball establishment, the east had no answer for the hayseeds from Cincinnati and the Reds went undefeated. After they destroyed the Nationals in Washington, the Reds were invited to the White House, and 18-year-old McVey shook hands with Civil War hero and sitting president Ulysses S Grant. Still searching for a challenge, the club headed west. On the coach to Omaha, Reds shortstop George Wright, younger brother to Harry and unanimous pick for the best player in baseball history to that point sat up front with the driver, and asked McVey to sit with him. McVey, who did not drink, was friendly with the teetotaling Charlie Gould and the Wright brothers, who were otherwise surrounded by the drunks and gamblers of the baseball fraternity. The Reds were the first ballclub to use the transcontinental railroad, travelling to San Francisco, where they beat all of their competition again.
They would not lose, famously, until June of 1870, in extra-innings against the Brooklyn Atlantic. Shortly thereafter the club fell apart, as it was not making money and Harry Wright fell out with much of the team over their drinking and lack of discipline. Club president AB Champion resigned and the board of directors voted to return the club to amateur status. The following season a splinter group of National Association clubs founded the game's first professional league, the NAPBBP. Harry Wright was hired to manage the Boston club, and he brought three of his old teammates with him - Gould, brother George, and McVey. They were three of the best players in baseball, and McVey might already have been baseball's best hitter, but it is no coincidence that the four men composed the sober, disciplined core of the otherwise rowdy Reds clubs. Harry Wright showed throughout his career an ability to recognize talent and reward discipline, as he would soon show with Al Spalding.
McVey, now 21, served as the team's starting catcher in 1871 and hit .431, finishing second in hitting and second in OPS at .995. He slumped to .321 the following season, but the Boston Red Stockings won the NA pennant both years.
In 1873 the Baltimore Canaries lured McVey to their club by promising him a managerial role. At 23 he was the youngest skipper in baseball, though he gave up the spot partway through the season to focus on playing full-time. He hit .380 and played every position but pitcher.
McVey was back in Boston for 1874-75 and the two years constituted his peak. He hit .357 and slugged .500, both best in baseball over that span. He was worth 69.4 batting runs in that period, far outpacing the league - second was Lip Pike at 53.2. McVey won his third pennant with Boston in 1874.
In 1876 McVey followed Al Spalding to William Hulbert's Chicago White Stockings, founding yet another super team. He kept hitting but began losing some of his power. In two seasons with Chicago McVey hit .357, but had been eclipsed by younger stars like teammate Cap Anson. He threw 151.1 innings over the two years, putting up a respectable 3.33 ERA, largely in relief or emergency starting.
McVey jumped clubs once more in 1878, returning to Cincinnati to play for the rebooted Red Stockings NL franchise. He could still hit, putting up a 135 OPS+ over two years in Cincinnati, and he managed '78 and shared '79 managing duties with old Boston teammate Deacon White. The club finished second in '78 but 5th in '79.
By 1880, with a young family and more money than he ever expected to make in baseball, McVey turned away from the spotlight and the major leagues. Perhaps he saw his skills slowly eroding, or a lack of managerial future, but he remembered California fondly after the 1869 trip, and he uprooted his family and moved to Oakland. He was joined by his parents, who were sharing a house with Calvin at the time of the 1880 census. William took up farming again, to questionable success.
McVey tried playing semi-pro ball in California, but his first team, Bay City, jumped leagues and then folded within weeks. He joined another team, the Californias, for several months, and ended the season with the San Fransisco Knickerbockers, a successor to the club started in the early 1850s by some of the gold-rushing original Knicks.
McVey kept playing independent ball throughout the 1880s, and we have records of him playing as late as 1886, though no records of his statistics survive. He was still known as a ballplayer, though - when he registered to vote in 1896 he was recorded as having 'fair complexion with brown hair and blue eyes,' with distinguishing characteristics: 'baseball marks on fingers.'
The McVeys moved about southern California and the Bay Area in the 1890s, often ending up back in San Francisco. By 1901 he was working as a special policeman by day and a watchman by night. He lost his home and his wife was seriously injured in the 1906 earthquake, and McVey was reduced to living alone in a small shack and panhandling. He was unemployed as late as 1908, but by 1913 had caught on with a mining outfit in Nevada until he was crippled in a 30-foot fall. An old Cincinnati teammate, Doug Allison, petitioned the NL for financial relief for the old hero, but little was raised and McVey remained mired in poverty.
The spirited, athletic teenage phenomenon had seemingly long disappeared, leaving a broken, poverty-stricken old man in his stead, but McVey had one final moment of glory - riding through the streets of Cincinnati before the 1919 World Series as part of a celebration of 50 years since that legendary 1869 Reds team. He passed away in 1926, and drew just one vote in the inaugural Hall of Fame veterans committee election ten years later.
While he has been largely forgotten by baseball history, and even by the 1930s was hardly considered a legend of the game, McVey was a closely-watched superstar by 16, was the game's most feared hitter from 1869-1875, and was tabbed again and again by kingmakers like Al Spalding, Henry Chadwick, and Harry Wright as one of the best in the game. Calvin McVey is an unsung hero of baseball history and one of the very best of his time.
Eligible: 1880
Contributions: Pro baseball's first recognizable slugger, McVey hit .346 lifetime with a 152 career OPS+.
In an era of downplayed offensive ability, offensive stars are hard to find. Rarer were men who were consistently valuable hitters - often a guy could hit .400 then disappear back to his local semi-pro league and from the history books altogether. Much rarer still is a man who could wield a valuable bat, year-in and year-out, and the first player to really be that guy is baseball's first consistent power hitter, Cal McVey. More than that, McVey was a baseball pioneer, a phenom who straddled the gap between the amateur era and the professional sport, and who was on-hand to watch it all unfold.
As a young boy Calvin was a gifted athlete, known regionally as a talented gymnast and boxer. His first love, as an athlete, was baseball, though at the time of his growing up baseball was a game, a hobby for boys and young men - the professional game was still developing. His athleticism would be a hallmark of his career, and he would become known for celebratory handstands and backflips later in his career.
In 1867 McVey was working as a piano maker in Indianapolis and playing amateur ball with two clubs, the Actives and the Westerns, a semi-pro outfit known as one of the best in the western United States. When the Washington Nationals stopped in Indianapolis as part of their worldbeating national tour (see the Al Spalding entry) they took on the Westerns in a highly-anticipated matchup of championship clubs. While the Nationals won (as they always did on their tour), the 16-year-old McVey put on a strong showing and impressed not just the Nationals, but their attached reporter and scorekeeper, Henry Chadwick, who spread the word of the talented young man to his readers nationally.
In the spring of 1869, largely in response to the success of the '67 Nationals, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, led by baseball legend Harry Wright, went openly pro. Wright and the Reds recruited heavily from the east coast (Bill James notes that most pro baseball players at the time came from Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Brooklyn), but he saved one spot for a young man he had heard about from Indianapolis. When William McVey signed for his 17-year-old son, Calvin became the youngest player in professional baseball, and the first pro ballplayer born west of the Mississippi.
Athletic and handsome, thick in chest and shoulder, McVey was a hit immediately and, the papers reported, "a favourite of the ladies." Fleet of foot and with a strong throwing arm, McVey was a talented right fielder, but as one paper wrote: "His strength is with the ash in his hands."
The 1869 season was a wild ride for the young man. After defeating all of their midwest opposition, the Reds took off for a tour of the east. Much to the surprise of the baseball establishment, the east had no answer for the hayseeds from Cincinnati and the Reds went undefeated. After they destroyed the Nationals in Washington, the Reds were invited to the White House, and 18-year-old McVey shook hands with Civil War hero and sitting president Ulysses S Grant. Still searching for a challenge, the club headed west. On the coach to Omaha, Reds shortstop George Wright, younger brother to Harry and unanimous pick for the best player in baseball history to that point sat up front with the driver, and asked McVey to sit with him. McVey, who did not drink, was friendly with the teetotaling Charlie Gould and the Wright brothers, who were otherwise surrounded by the drunks and gamblers of the baseball fraternity. The Reds were the first ballclub to use the transcontinental railroad, travelling to San Francisco, where they beat all of their competition again.
They would not lose, famously, until June of 1870, in extra-innings against the Brooklyn Atlantic. Shortly thereafter the club fell apart, as it was not making money and Harry Wright fell out with much of the team over their drinking and lack of discipline. Club president AB Champion resigned and the board of directors voted to return the club to amateur status. The following season a splinter group of National Association clubs founded the game's first professional league, the NAPBBP. Harry Wright was hired to manage the Boston club, and he brought three of his old teammates with him - Gould, brother George, and McVey. They were three of the best players in baseball, and McVey might already have been baseball's best hitter, but it is no coincidence that the four men composed the sober, disciplined core of the otherwise rowdy Reds clubs. Harry Wright showed throughout his career an ability to recognize talent and reward discipline, as he would soon show with Al Spalding.
McVey, now 21, served as the team's starting catcher in 1871 and hit .431, finishing second in hitting and second in OPS at .995. He slumped to .321 the following season, but the Boston Red Stockings won the NA pennant both years.
In 1873 the Baltimore Canaries lured McVey to their club by promising him a managerial role. At 23 he was the youngest skipper in baseball, though he gave up the spot partway through the season to focus on playing full-time. He hit .380 and played every position but pitcher.
McVey was back in Boston for 1874-75 and the two years constituted his peak. He hit .357 and slugged .500, both best in baseball over that span. He was worth 69.4 batting runs in that period, far outpacing the league - second was Lip Pike at 53.2. McVey won his third pennant with Boston in 1874.
In 1876 McVey followed Al Spalding to William Hulbert's Chicago White Stockings, founding yet another super team. He kept hitting but began losing some of his power. In two seasons with Chicago McVey hit .357, but had been eclipsed by younger stars like teammate Cap Anson. He threw 151.1 innings over the two years, putting up a respectable 3.33 ERA, largely in relief or emergency starting.
McVey jumped clubs once more in 1878, returning to Cincinnati to play for the rebooted Red Stockings NL franchise. He could still hit, putting up a 135 OPS+ over two years in Cincinnati, and he managed '78 and shared '79 managing duties with old Boston teammate Deacon White. The club finished second in '78 but 5th in '79.
By 1880, with a young family and more money than he ever expected to make in baseball, McVey turned away from the spotlight and the major leagues. Perhaps he saw his skills slowly eroding, or a lack of managerial future, but he remembered California fondly after the 1869 trip, and he uprooted his family and moved to Oakland. He was joined by his parents, who were sharing a house with Calvin at the time of the 1880 census. William took up farming again, to questionable success.
McVey tried playing semi-pro ball in California, but his first team, Bay City, jumped leagues and then folded within weeks. He joined another team, the Californias, for several months, and ended the season with the San Fransisco Knickerbockers, a successor to the club started in the early 1850s by some of the gold-rushing original Knicks.
McVey kept playing independent ball throughout the 1880s, and we have records of him playing as late as 1886, though no records of his statistics survive. He was still known as a ballplayer, though - when he registered to vote in 1896 he was recorded as having 'fair complexion with brown hair and blue eyes,' with distinguishing characteristics: 'baseball marks on fingers.'
The McVeys moved about southern California and the Bay Area in the 1890s, often ending up back in San Francisco. By 1901 he was working as a special policeman by day and a watchman by night. He lost his home and his wife was seriously injured in the 1906 earthquake, and McVey was reduced to living alone in a small shack and panhandling. He was unemployed as late as 1908, but by 1913 had caught on with a mining outfit in Nevada until he was crippled in a 30-foot fall. An old Cincinnati teammate, Doug Allison, petitioned the NL for financial relief for the old hero, but little was raised and McVey remained mired in poverty.
The spirited, athletic teenage phenomenon had seemingly long disappeared, leaving a broken, poverty-stricken old man in his stead, but McVey had one final moment of glory - riding through the streets of Cincinnati before the 1919 World Series as part of a celebration of 50 years since that legendary 1869 Reds team. He passed away in 1926, and drew just one vote in the inaugural Hall of Fame veterans committee election ten years later.
While he has been largely forgotten by baseball history, and even by the 1930s was hardly considered a legend of the game, McVey was a closely-watched superstar by 16, was the game's most feared hitter from 1869-1875, and was tabbed again and again by kingmakers like Al Spalding, Henry Chadwick, and Harry Wright as one of the best in the game. Calvin McVey is an unsung hero of baseball history and one of the very best of his time.
Wednesday, 10 May 2023
The List: Class of 1879, 2/2: James Whyte Davis
James Whyte Davis (1826-1899), Builder
Eligible: 1876
Contributions: Played with the Knickerbocker Club from 1850-1880, most of that infamous club's history. Synonymous with the club and the sport at the time.
In an excellent article on the matter, John Thorn tells the tale of 'Too Late' James Whyte Davis, a man who was so tied to the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club that he has the unique distinction of being buried in the club's original 1855 flag. While he was not an original member of the club, Davis was one of the most respected men in baseball for almost three decades.
Born in 1826, in New York to a shipmaster and liquor seller, Davis found gainful employment as a broker of produce and merchandise, ending up in stock brokerage. Like so many young professionals, Davis grew up on bat-and-ball games and drew an invitation to join the Knickerbockers through his fire house connections (Oceana No. 36) in September 1850. In one of his early games, he was a few minutes late to the match and was not allowed to play. He argued viciously, but repeatedly told, 'too late.' The name stuck.
'Too Late' was a well-regarded as a player and played center field for the New York 'All-Star' team against the Brooklyn clubs in the 1858 Fashion Course games. He had a penchant for landing on the wrong side of history: at an 1856 meeting of the Knickerbocker rules committee, he stuck by Duncan Curry when Curry's 'old-fogies' won a motion to bar non-Knicks from joining games and keep the minimum players and innings both at seven. The following year, 1857, fellow Knick Louis Wadsworth led a contingent of New York baseball men (under the guise of founding a city-wide rules commission) to overthrow Curry and set the number of players and innings at nine. Ten years later, Davis was one of three delegates at the 1867 NABBP convention who rejected the Philadelphia Pythians, a black club, membership into the Association. There is no evidence of his own racism, and Davis's intention seems to have been keeping politics out of baseball and avoid dividing the Association, but in doing so, Davis drew baseball's first color line.
In 1875 the Knickerbockers held an exhibition match celebrating 25 years of play from Davis featuring players from all of Knicks history, including founding member Duncan F Curry. He quit the club in 1880, and the club folded following the 1882 season, long passed over for the professional game. Davis's wife died in the late 1880s and he died, penniless, in 1899. He was buried in his Knickerbocker uniform and wrapped in the tattered old flag of the Knicks, which had flown at the Elysian Fields from 1855-1875 and had hung over Davis's desk until his death.
Davis was the subject of recent controversy, as the 2005 Thorn article pointed out that he was thrown in an unmarked grave and erroneously recorded as James 'White' Davis. Despite an 1893 letter requesting money from old ballplayers, not a dime was ever raised, and his grave went unmarked. In 2016, as part of their ongoing campaign to mark and maintain old baseball gravesites with the help of donors and a grant from MLB, SABR placed a new headstone on the grave, giving 'Too Late' the memorial he always asked for.
Eligible: 1876
Contributions: Played with the Knickerbocker Club from 1850-1880, most of that infamous club's history. Synonymous with the club and the sport at the time.
In an excellent article on the matter, John Thorn tells the tale of 'Too Late' James Whyte Davis, a man who was so tied to the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club that he has the unique distinction of being buried in the club's original 1855 flag. While he was not an original member of the club, Davis was one of the most respected men in baseball for almost three decades.
Born in 1826, in New York to a shipmaster and liquor seller, Davis found gainful employment as a broker of produce and merchandise, ending up in stock brokerage. Like so many young professionals, Davis grew up on bat-and-ball games and drew an invitation to join the Knickerbockers through his fire house connections (Oceana No. 36) in September 1850. In one of his early games, he was a few minutes late to the match and was not allowed to play. He argued viciously, but repeatedly told, 'too late.' The name stuck.
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| Woodcut of Davis |
In 1875 the Knickerbockers held an exhibition match celebrating 25 years of play from Davis featuring players from all of Knicks history, including founding member Duncan F Curry. He quit the club in 1880, and the club folded following the 1882 season, long passed over for the professional game. Davis's wife died in the late 1880s and he died, penniless, in 1899. He was buried in his Knickerbocker uniform and wrapped in the tattered old flag of the Knicks, which had flown at the Elysian Fields from 1855-1875 and had hung over Davis's desk until his death.
Davis was the subject of recent controversy, as the 2005 Thorn article pointed out that he was thrown in an unmarked grave and erroneously recorded as James 'White' Davis. Despite an 1893 letter requesting money from old ballplayers, not a dime was ever raised, and his grave went unmarked. In 2016, as part of their ongoing campaign to mark and maintain old baseball gravesites with the help of donors and a grant from MLB, SABR placed a new headstone on the grave, giving 'Too Late' the memorial he always asked for.
Monday, 1 May 2023
The List: Class of 1879, 1/2: Candy Cummings
William Arthur "Candy" Cummings (1848-1924), Player
Eligible: 1879
Contributions: One of the top pitchers of the NA and early NL, Cummings is an all-time great control pitcher, holding the record for BB/9 (0.5) more than 140 years later. Credited with inventing the curveball.
Candy Cummings was born in the nowhere of Ware, Massachusetts, in 1848, the son of William and Mary, a dry goods merchant and a homemaker. He was the second of twelve children, and his father must have done good business, because the family moved to Brooklyn in 1850 and Candy was educated at a boarding school in Fulton, NY.
One summer day in 1863, legend claims, Cummings, aged 14, and some of his friends were throwing clam shells into Gowanus Creek in Brooklyn. The boys were adept at spinning and flicking the shells in a way that made them curve and arc through the air, and it occurred to young Arthur that "it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way." Cummings practiced regularly, trying to find a way to curve a pitched ball the way he had with the shells. A small boy (even as a grown man, Cummings would never weigh more than 120 pounds), Cummings needed the practice (and his trick pitch) if he hoped to catch on as a competitive ballplayer. What he couldn't have known in 1863 was how valuable his diligent practice would prove.
In 1865, just 16 years old, he made the Brooklyn Star Junior squad as the starting pitcher and went 37-2. By the end of the season, approaching his 17th birthday, he was invited to join the Excelsior, perhaps the best club assembled to that point in history. Almost immediately, he was named the club's starting pitcher, and his teammates dubbed him 'Candy', an old Civil War term for the best of something.
By 1867 Candy had perfected his trick pitch, settling on the supination and rolling release employed in the throwing of breaking balls still today. By this time he was already one of the nation's best pitchers thanks to his impeccable command. Adding the curveball made him unhittable. Remember, no hitter had seen a curveball yet; they'd never taken a swing at one. Jim Creighton, among others, had thrown trick pitches that would dip or fade, like today's changeups, but these were generally regarded as a 'change of pace,' a pitch to disrupt timing, not something that would actively evade a bat.
In 1868 he jumped back to the Brooklyn Stars, now billing themselves as the "Championship team of the United States and Canada." Cummings was widely regaled as baseball's best pitcher, going 50-28 against the top amateur talent of the National Association from 1869-71. While the NA produced an offshoot professional league in 1871 (NAPBBP), Cummings remained an 'amateur' for that season, though he was undoubtedly compensated by the Stars for his play, and much of the sport's top talent was in the amateur NA (NAABBP) still. In 1871 Henry Chadwick called him the best player in baseball in one of his annual guides. Though he stayed with the Stars, many pro clubs offered him contracts.
Cummings joined the (openly) professional ranks in 1872. He received offers from most clubs in the Association, signed three of them, and was awarded by the NA to the New York Mutuals. Cummings was never shy about leading teams on or jumping clubs ('revolving'). For the four years he played in the NA he played with the Mutuals, Baltimore Canaries, Philadelphia Whites, and Hartford Dark Blues. He pitched every inning the Mutuals played in 1872, went 33-20 and finished second in the league in strikeouts.
In Baltimore ('73) he split pitching duties with aging amateur-era legend Asa Brainard, and the rest seemed to do him well, as he went 28-14 with a 124 ERA+, finishing fourth in the league in K/BB and second in ERA. In '74, now with Philadelphia, he pitched every single inning again and finished third in the league in pitcher WAR.
1875 was Cummings's best season, lured by a newer, grander contract to Hartford. Because of the length of the recently expanded season Hartford brought in a protege for Cummings, 19-year-old Tommy Bond, to learn the curveball and play right field. Cummings pitched every game for the first two months of the season, and when he thought Bond ready, the two were a formidable 1-2 punch as the season wore on, lending some rest to both men. In the end Cummings threw 416 innings, won 35 games with a 1.60 ERA (146 ERA+), struck out 82 batters (a total bested only once in NA history) and walked just four. This was good for a 12.3 WAR. Hartford, like all teams in all years of NA play, finished a distant second to those dominant, star-studded Boston clubs.
In 1876 the NL was founded, and Hartford jumped to the new league. Ironically, for the first time in his pro career, Cummings stayed with the same team. While his effectiveness continued (144 ERA+), Cummings was beginning to be outshone by the young Tommy Bond, who had replaced him as the team's primary starter by season's end. Cummings made 24 starts while Bond made 45, with the younger man going 31-13. On September 9, Cummings was started in both ends of a double-header, and pitched two complete games, winning both.
At season's end, Cummings turned down all offers from NL clubs, signing instead with the player-founded International Association. When he attended the new league's general meeting, he was elected president. This did not stop him from his team-hopping ways, and in June 1877 the president of the IA quit his team and signed on with the NL's Cincinnati Red Stockings. Unfortunately, Cummings was too shopworn at this point, and his curveball was no longer novel - now he was just a small man with a worn out arm. He put up a dreadful-for-the-time 4.34 ERA and went 5-14.
By this point, Cummings was no longer an attraction and as such was not really welcome in organized baseball. Long renowned for revolving and reneging on contracts, Cummings had walked out on Baltimore partway through 1873, and the team blacklisted him. When brought before the association before the 1874 season to determine if the ban would be association-wide, Cummings alleged that Baltimore owed him back pay, though Baltimore produced records showing that he'd been paid up front and actually owed the team money. Because he was one of the association's top draws at the time, he was not reprimanded, but that stain was still on his record and meant more now that he wasn't as good.
Eligible: 1879
Contributions: One of the top pitchers of the NA and early NL, Cummings is an all-time great control pitcher, holding the record for BB/9 (0.5) more than 140 years later. Credited with inventing the curveball.
One summer day in 1863, legend claims, Cummings, aged 14, and some of his friends were throwing clam shells into Gowanus Creek in Brooklyn. The boys were adept at spinning and flicking the shells in a way that made them curve and arc through the air, and it occurred to young Arthur that "it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way." Cummings practiced regularly, trying to find a way to curve a pitched ball the way he had with the shells. A small boy (even as a grown man, Cummings would never weigh more than 120 pounds), Cummings needed the practice (and his trick pitch) if he hoped to catch on as a competitive ballplayer. What he couldn't have known in 1863 was how valuable his diligent practice would prove.
In 1865, just 16 years old, he made the Brooklyn Star Junior squad as the starting pitcher and went 37-2. By the end of the season, approaching his 17th birthday, he was invited to join the Excelsior, perhaps the best club assembled to that point in history. Almost immediately, he was named the club's starting pitcher, and his teammates dubbed him 'Candy', an old Civil War term for the best of something.
By 1867 Candy had perfected his trick pitch, settling on the supination and rolling release employed in the throwing of breaking balls still today. By this time he was already one of the nation's best pitchers thanks to his impeccable command. Adding the curveball made him unhittable. Remember, no hitter had seen a curveball yet; they'd never taken a swing at one. Jim Creighton, among others, had thrown trick pitches that would dip or fade, like today's changeups, but these were generally regarded as a 'change of pace,' a pitch to disrupt timing, not something that would actively evade a bat.
In 1868 he jumped back to the Brooklyn Stars, now billing themselves as the "Championship team of the United States and Canada." Cummings was widely regaled as baseball's best pitcher, going 50-28 against the top amateur talent of the National Association from 1869-71. While the NA produced an offshoot professional league in 1871 (NAPBBP), Cummings remained an 'amateur' for that season, though he was undoubtedly compensated by the Stars for his play, and much of the sport's top talent was in the amateur NA (NAABBP) still. In 1871 Henry Chadwick called him the best player in baseball in one of his annual guides. Though he stayed with the Stars, many pro clubs offered him contracts.
Cummings joined the (openly) professional ranks in 1872. He received offers from most clubs in the Association, signed three of them, and was awarded by the NA to the New York Mutuals. Cummings was never shy about leading teams on or jumping clubs ('revolving'). For the four years he played in the NA he played with the Mutuals, Baltimore Canaries, Philadelphia Whites, and Hartford Dark Blues. He pitched every inning the Mutuals played in 1872, went 33-20 and finished second in the league in strikeouts.
In Baltimore ('73) he split pitching duties with aging amateur-era legend Asa Brainard, and the rest seemed to do him well, as he went 28-14 with a 124 ERA+, finishing fourth in the league in K/BB and second in ERA. In '74, now with Philadelphia, he pitched every single inning again and finished third in the league in pitcher WAR.
1875 was Cummings's best season, lured by a newer, grander contract to Hartford. Because of the length of the recently expanded season Hartford brought in a protege for Cummings, 19-year-old Tommy Bond, to learn the curveball and play right field. Cummings pitched every game for the first two months of the season, and when he thought Bond ready, the two were a formidable 1-2 punch as the season wore on, lending some rest to both men. In the end Cummings threw 416 innings, won 35 games with a 1.60 ERA (146 ERA+), struck out 82 batters (a total bested only once in NA history) and walked just four. This was good for a 12.3 WAR. Hartford, like all teams in all years of NA play, finished a distant second to those dominant, star-studded Boston clubs.
In 1876 the NL was founded, and Hartford jumped to the new league. Ironically, for the first time in his pro career, Cummings stayed with the same team. While his effectiveness continued (144 ERA+), Cummings was beginning to be outshone by the young Tommy Bond, who had replaced him as the team's primary starter by season's end. Cummings made 24 starts while Bond made 45, with the younger man going 31-13. On September 9, Cummings was started in both ends of a double-header, and pitched two complete games, winning both.
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| An older and worn-down Cummings in 1877 |
By this point, Cummings was no longer an attraction and as such was not really welcome in organized baseball. Long renowned for revolving and reneging on contracts, Cummings had walked out on Baltimore partway through 1873, and the team blacklisted him. When brought before the association before the 1874 season to determine if the ban would be association-wide, Cummings alleged that Baltimore owed him back pay, though Baltimore produced records showing that he'd been paid up front and actually owed the team money. Because he was one of the association's top draws at the time, he was not reprimanded, but that stain was still on his record and meant more now that he wasn't as good.
Teams were wary of him for other reasons, as well. In one 1874 start he had given up 17 hits and 10 runs in a loss that was noteworthy because one of his teammates was investigated by the association for throwing the contest. Long associated with gambling and a lack of commitment, Cummings had no suitors now.
Cummings tried a comeback in the IA in 1878, but it was short-lived. He returned to Ware to learn the wallpapering and painting trade, playing semipro sporadically thereafter. In 1884 he moved to Athol, MA and opened his own painting service. He and his wife raised five children, and Cummings gradually retreated from the baseball world, returning only when challenged as the inventor of the curveball. He penned countless articles and letters on the subject, responding ferociously when another pitcher of the amateur age claimed to have been the first to make a ball curve.
He was ultimately successful - all the major baseball writers of the age, from Spalding and Chadwick to Tim Murnane and Alfred H Spink hailed him as the creator of the curveball, and it was listed on his plaque when he was inducted to Cooperstown in 1939. Cummings passed in 1924.
Ultimately we will never know if he was the fist to use a curve, but he was almost certainly the first to use in in professional league competition, and was the only one using it so effectively for several years. He was also a great teacher of the pitch, creating star pitchers in Tommy Bond and Bobby Mathews. He was a fine originator and character of the sport's history, but above all, Cummings was a fantastic player that deserves the highest recognition from baseball history.
Cummings tried a comeback in the IA in 1878, but it was short-lived. He returned to Ware to learn the wallpapering and painting trade, playing semipro sporadically thereafter. In 1884 he moved to Athol, MA and opened his own painting service. He and his wife raised five children, and Cummings gradually retreated from the baseball world, returning only when challenged as the inventor of the curveball. He penned countless articles and letters on the subject, responding ferociously when another pitcher of the amateur age claimed to have been the first to make a ball curve.
He was ultimately successful - all the major baseball writers of the age, from Spalding and Chadwick to Tim Murnane and Alfred H Spink hailed him as the creator of the curveball, and it was listed on his plaque when he was inducted to Cooperstown in 1939. Cummings passed in 1924.
Ultimately we will never know if he was the fist to use a curve, but he was almost certainly the first to use in in professional league competition, and was the only one using it so effectively for several years. He was also a great teacher of the pitch, creating star pitchers in Tommy Bond and Bobby Mathews. He was a fine originator and character of the sport's history, but above all, Cummings was a fantastic player that deserves the highest recognition from baseball history.
Saturday, 16 July 2022
Class of 1887, 2/2 : Octavius Catto
Octavius V Catto (1839-1871), Builder
Eligible : 1872
Everybody knows the story of how the colour barrier was broken in baseball, allowing black players, and eventually players of all ethnicities, to play professional baseball : in 1947 Jackie Robinson was called up to the LA Dodgers, and endured years of vile epithets and jeers in stadiums across the country, beanballs, criticism from the press, umpires, opposing players and teammates alike, kept his head high and put in a Hall of Fame career, paving the way for many of the best players of the second half of the 20th century. Of course, this narrative is false. Not the stuff that happened to Jackie, or the things Jackie did. But the idea that Jackie Robinson broke baseball's colour barrier in April 1947 is wrong.
Fans of baseball history will know that on 1 May, 1884 Moses Fleetwood Walker, a black man from Mount Pleasant, Ohio, caught his first game for the Toledo Blue Stockings of the American Association (AA), one of two major leagues at the time, making him the first black man to play professional baseball before being run out of the game later that year by significant racial pressure. But this, too is wrong. Again, all of these things happened, but Walker was not the first.
In June of 1879 William E White, a freed slave, played for the Providence Greys. He wasn't great and was out of baseball later that year, and his story is complicated by his status as what was then known as a 'mulatto', the son of his slave mother and his owner father. His mixed race allowed him to hide his identity as a black man for much of his life. Is White the first professional black baseball player? If not, who is?
It's complicated.
The issue of black people playing baseball is an important one, and its history is as old as baseball itself. I would respectfully suggest we remove some of the emphasis placed on Jackie, or Fleetwood, or White. While they certainly deserve the respect they each earned in their own rights, to reduce not just their own stories but the story of black men in baseball to a single game in the spring of 1947 or 1884 serves chiefly to erase so much of important black baseball history -- not just the negro leagues, for which there is significant political will to revive and maintain their history, but the half-century of baseball that predates even the earliest official negro leagues, back to the very beginning of baseball in the Northeastern United States as we know it.
This is not the story of the beginning of black baseball, but its the story of a man who was as close to such a thing as can be credited to a distinguishable character. This is the story of Octavius V Catto.
Catto was born in Charleston, South Carolina on 22 February, 1839, to a free-born mother and a father who had been granted his freedom after a life of slavery as a millwright. Catto's mother, Sarah Isabella Cain, was a prominent Charleston socialite and activist within the black community, and his father, William, became an ordained Presbyterian minister before relocating his family to the north - first Baltimore, then Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania.
As the son of prominent members of the black community, Catto received a diverse education, including segregated primary schools, the all-white Allentown Academy in New Jersey, and the Institute for Coloured Youth (ICY), the country's first and most prestigious all-black high school where he received a top-rate classical education in literature, Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. While at ICY Catto joined a scholarship discussion group led by Jacob C White, whom we may hear from again in these pages. After graduating in 1858, Catto continued learning Greek and Latin with a private tutor in Washington, DC.
In 1859 Catto returned to the staff at ICY, now named the Benneker Institute, as Recording Secretary and a teacher of English and mathematics. By the mid-1860s Catto was a leader among the staff, and gave the commencement address for 1864, during which he criticised white teachers of black students, and commented on the developing Civil War. By the following year he was speaking to packed houses at Philadelphia's National Hall, and by 1869 he was principal of male students at Benneker.
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| Catto as a recruiter in the Civil War |
Through the 1860s Catto fought hard to desegregate Philadelphia's trolley car system, and was involved in at least one early instance of civil disobedience, which the New York Times reported :
Philadelphia, Wednesday, May 17—2 P. M.
Last evening a colored man got into a Pine-street passenger car, and refused all entreaties to leave the car, where his presence appeared to be not desired.
The conductor of the car, fearful of being fined for ejecting him, as was done by the Judges of one of our courts in a similar case, ran the car off the track, detached the horses, and left the colored man to occupy the car all by himself.
The colored man still firmly maintains his position in the car, having spent the whole of the night there.
The conductor looks upon the part he enacted in the affair as a splendid piece of strategy.
The matter creates quite a sensation in the neighborhood where the car is standing, and crowds of sympathizers flock around the colored man.
— New York Times, May 18, 1865, p. 5
Catto's advocacy paid off when, with the help of legendary congressman and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, Pennsylvania abolished the practice of segregated public transportation in 1869.
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| 1863 Pamphlet citing Catto's speeches |
Catto's relevance to our Hall and to baseball history started in his youth. As a young man at various institutions of higher learning, Catto played cricket, like so many young men, both black and white. At some point in their teenage years Catto and one of his close friends, Jacob C White, switched to baseball and while teaching at the ICY founded a baseball team - the Independent Base Ball Club - in the mid-1860s.
Catto and White had a greater vision for the Independent than a casual / hobbyist squad for young professional men like the New York clubs 20 years earlier. To them, fielding a competitive team representing a black institution of higher learning was an important statement for civil rights, and in the fallout of the Civil War (ending 1865), baseball was one of the most important arenas of American cultural life, and making a statement there was incredibly significant. By 1866 the Independent was one of the best teams in the city, and renamed themselves after one of the ICY's more popular fraternities, the Knights of Pythias - the Pythians.
Catto was the the driving force behind the club - co-founder, captain, and starting shortstop/second baseman. While the team was very successful, going 9-1 in 1866 and undefeated in 1868, the impact on the larger black community was significant. The Pythian were one of the most famous black clubs in the northeast, and their matches against black clubs from Washington drew huge crowds. When the Pythian played the Washington Alert, founded by Frederick Douglass, jr., Frederick Douglass himself came to watch. These games between elite black clubs were covered favourably in the press, and attended and promoted by white players. Catto had been right - black baseball was an avenue to positive sentiment from the white class, and pride for the black community.
Catto's leadership and fine play led the team to an undefeated 1868 season. Catto's plan worked magnificently - the Pythians were famed not just or their skill on the field (particularly with the bat) but for being gentlemanly and upstanding young men, and garnered positive reviews from onlookers and journalists alike. It should be noted that this patronizing language could be taken as offense, and maybe should be, but it was exactly what Catto was after. His goal was not just to put a winning black ballclub on the field, but to display a winning and mature black disposition to a white audience.
The Pythian was a political home run for Catto, as atrocious as the pun is. It gave him an opportunity to address and organize huge crowds of young black men. He would often give speeches before or after games to the gathered crowds (again, of both black and white spectators) on issues of civil rights, and he took the Pythian around the Northeast and down the Atlantic coast in an early example of barnstorming's illustrious history in baseball, speaking to crowds the entire way. Baseball was exactly the civil rights vehicle Catto had hoped.
The Pythian's success saw enormous effects on the Philadelphia baseball community. In the wake of the Pythian's success, many black clubs organized overnight, including several women's clubs, which drew large crowds. When Philadelphia emerged as a hub of Negro League baseball in the coming decades, it was thanks to Philly's history as a hub of black baseball, and that reputation can trace its lineage directly to Catto and the Pythian. In fact Philly owes much of its reputation as a baseball town to its history as a black baseball town, and has, again, Octavius V Catto to thank for that fact.
I shouldn't imply that Catto's career with the Pythians was comprised of never ending successes; there were limitations to what the white establishment, in government or in organized baseball, would allow. For example, Catto's 1867 petition to have the Pythians admitted to the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) is an important moment in baseball history. Following that season of play, Catto applied to be admitted to the Pennsylvania State Association of Base Ball Players, the state chapter of the NABBP, with the support of the member Philadelphia Athletic club, the renowned club that was the precursor and namesake of today's Oakland A's.
The Athletics, a respected club of the amateur era, were run by player / manager Hicks Hayhurst, who seemed energized by the pre-Jim Crow era of reconciliation and would regularly stage games between his white club and area black clubs to highlight the skill of the latter, and was happy to sponsor the Pythian to the Pennsylvania Association. For all Catto had done to further the cause of black baseball and civil rights, the 1867 convention was a harsh lesson : the Pythian were not only rejected, but denied the chance to address the convention or request a vote on their membership, while the convention admitted 265 new white teams.
Catto, never one to be deterred, attended the national convention of the NABBP in Philadelphia later that year, submitting another application for membership to the national body and again supported by the Athletics. This time the proposal was allowed to see the floor as a vote, but the result was the same : there would be no black baseball team in the NABBP. The National Association explained their verdict in an almost benevolent, regretful tone : "If Colored clubs were admitted there would be, in all probability, some division of feeling, whereas by excluding them no injury would result to anyone." Later statements confirmed an aversion to 'politics' in what would amount to an abdication of responsibility in the discussion, and one that was later apologised for by baseball historians, who wrote of baseball as a 'healing balm' between north and south, which was too important to be hampered by the inclusion of blacks, showing that baseball's distasteful colour barrier dates back essentially to the invention of the game.
Catto, again, changed tack. Realising that he would never be invited or allowed to participate in what was evidently a white man's organization, he endeavored to use baseball for his civil cause in a new way - by beating a white club. In an inversion of the old axiom, if Catto couldn't join 'em, he would simply beat 'em.
Initially it seemed like the Pythians would have a hard time finding a dance partner - what white club would risk the humiliation of losing to a black one? But again, Catto had an ally in the Philadelphia Athletic. One of the Athletic's founders, Thomas Fitzgerald, was a stanch progressive on race and had one of the loudest megaphones in the city as the publisher of City Item. He regularly published pieces arguing for black voting rights, to the point that his views were considered too radical for the Athletic and he was ousted from the club. Fitzgerald spent much of 1869 arguing for normalizing relations between black and white baseball. He called out the Athletic in particular, arguing that they were afraid of losing to the black Pythian, and public pressure mounted.
By August of 1869 white clubs were lining up to express interest in Philadelphia papers in playing the Pythian - first the Masonics, then the Keystones, the Experts, the Franklins, even the Athletics. But it was just publicity - no games between white and black players took place. Still, Fitzgerald beat the drum in the press and Catto leveraged his political and commercial relationships. Soon the Philadelphia Olympic, by many accounts the nation's oldest ballclub with roots dating to 1831, accepted, and the two clubs took the field on 3 September 1869, the first interracial game, at least of this profile, in baseball history. The game took place on the Olympic's home field, and Fitzgerald served as the umpire.
The game drew an immense crowd - by some accounts the largest crowd in the history of baseball outside of the Olympic's game against the legendary Cincinnati Red Stockings earlier that summer. It was another example of Catto's view of baseball as a vehicle for demonstrating the qualities of African Americans. At the time, the game had one umpire who instead of calling every safe/out, would adjudicate as players called their own outs, in case of a dispute. Before the game Catto instructed his players not to appeal any call by the Olympic, as they would be viewed as blacks complaining to whites in front of a high-profile crowd of thousands. The Pythian, whose normal starting pitcher, John Cannon, was injured and didn't perform well. The Olympic won, 44-23, but the next day's papers praised their effort and conduct, and claimed they would have been able to win the game if they'd appealed several unfair calls to the sympathetic umpire. It was yet another PR coup for Catto and the Pythian.
Catto still wanted a victory of a white club, and got one on October 16 of the same year when the Pythian beat the City Item Club 27-17. Interracial games featuring many other black clubs became, if not common, then regular occurrences following 1869, giving a rare opportunity to workers of both races to interact with each other.
These inter-racial games would mark the highwater mark for Catto's baseball career during his lifetime, though his political activity never would end, right up to the moment of his death.
By 10 October, 1871, Election Day, Catto was a well-known political agitator, organiser, orator, writer, and teacher. Then, as now, these activities made him a hero to many - but a target to others.
On that day in 1871 Philadelphia was a tinderbox. Predominantly-Republican black people and predominantly-Democratic Irish, who called neighbouring districts home, clashed in the streets all day. Police were called on to stem the violence, but many of them were Irish themselves and were noted for inciting violence, blocking black people from voting, in some cases resulting with the arrests of the officers themselves.
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| Illustration of Catto's murder |
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| Marking the place of Catto's murder |
In 2017 Philadelphia erected it's first statue of an African-American - a 12-foot bronze statue of Octavius Catto at City Hall. At the unveiling, Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney lamented, "How in God's name did I not know this man? He was the Dr. King and the Jackie Robinson of his day."
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| 2017 statue in front of City Hall |
But because he was a towering figure in the history of civil rights does not mean that he is not an important figure in baseball history as well. In the years after his death his club, the Pythian, kept playing before chartering the National Colored Base Ball League, one of the first and most influential Negro Leagues, in 1887. Catto's fingerprints were all over the early days of black baseball.
Perhaps Catto's most important legacy is that of the activist athlete. In the United States the political athlete is an institution, from Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali to John Carlos and Tommy Smith to Colin Kaepernick. Fans often claim to yearn for the separation of sport and politics, but the politically active athlete is a crucial part of American history and culture. In baseball, in activism, and in the particular blend of the two, Octavius Catto led the way.
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