Class of 1882, 1/2: Ross Barnes

Charles Roscoe Barnes (1850-1915), Player
Eligible: 1882
Contributions: Star of the amateur era alongside Spalding, Barnes won two batting titles in the NA and another in the NL. Pundits compared him favourably to famed second-basemen of the early 20th century.

A recurring theme in baseball history, and one of the more romantic aspects of the sport, is the way that its finest players can simply 'lose it'. One day a player can be on top of the world and the next, for any myriad reasons, that same ability can be lost forever. Pro fighter Chael Sonnen says that every fighter goes out the same way: face-down and embarrassed, and the same happens to most ballplayers. One day you're 1934 Babe Ruth and the next you're 1935 Babe Ruth. One of the game's first such nosedives was the disappearing act of Ross Barnes, a star of the late 1860s who simply disappeared as a productive player in his prime. In 1915 WAS Phelon wrote in Baseball Magazine, "No matter how great you were once upon a time, the years go by and men forget. Ross Barnes, forty years ago, was as great as Cobb or Wagner ever dared to be."

 Charles Roscoe "Ross" Barnes was born in 1850 in upstate New York. The family relocated to Rockford, Illinois, in or around 1865. The small industrial city near Chicago had seen an explosion in baseball's popularity after many men returned from the Civil War playing the game, and was referred to as the 'cradle of the American sport in the West.' Rockford happened to also be the home of the best baseball player in the world, Al Spalding, whose star was also about to rise. We don't know when Barnes picked up baseball, but in 1866 he joined Spalding's junior club, the Pioneers. By the end of that season both men were playing for one of the region's best semi-pro clubs, the Rockford Forest City.

Barnes was an immediate star. Playing shortstop as the best fielder on the team, he was known for his intense and speedy play, his sure hands (there were no fielding gloves at the time), and strong arm. He was a fantastic batter and perhaps the game's best baserunner. In 1867 the Rockford club upset the otherwise unbeatable Washington Nationals as part of their national tour, bringing Spalding and Barnes into the consciousness of the baseball world. In 1868 the Rockford club did their own tour, and played against Harry Wright's Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869, nearly upsetting the most dominant (and first openly professional) baseball team of all time in a thrilling match. The following season Rockford defeated Cincinnati, handing them one of only a few losses over a course of several years. During the years 1867-70, when Spalding and Barnes were two of the most respected names in baseball, they were teenagers. Barnes turned 20 in May 1870.

When the National Association of Base Ball Players opened a professional association in 1871, Harry Wright was hired by a Boston businessman to start the city's first professional club, the Boston Red Stockings. He remembered the two standouts from Rockford, and Barnes and Spalding played for Boston for the duration of the NA's existence, from 1871-75. Barnes shifted to second base to allow room at shortstop for George Wright, considered by most the best player of the era. Through the first three years of his contract, Barnes was hitting .424, winning two batting titles, leading the league twice in runs and slugging each, once in stolen bases. As the talent pool increased, Barnes stayed near the top of the game, hitting .354 over 1874-75, including setting the NA's single-season hits record in 1875. He ended up with a staggering 185 OPS+ over the life of the NA. His 445 wRC led second-place George Wright (who Barnes constantly battled for the limelight) by more than 60 runs.

While he was regaled as quick and athletic, Barnes was an intelligent hitter. The Boston Globe: "Not of the class of chance hitter who, when they go to bat simply go in to hit the ball as hard as they can without the slightest idea where it is going. He studied the position and made his hits accordingly." Barnes was the king of the fair-foul hit, a practice that allowed a ball to be put into play fair, and roll foul. Today, balls that go foul either on the fly or before passing first or third base are called foul - at the time, a ball striking fair territory and rolling foul or passing the bases in fair territory while on the fly was considered fair. Barnes was a master of placing a ball in foul territory, and his ability to use this tool has led many historians, including Bill James to dismiss him as a historical talent. However, when the NL banned the fair-foul prior to 1877 one executive claimed "I don't think [the new rule] will affect his average in the least. He can bat equally well to any portion of the field."

For what it's worth, I don't believe it is fair to detract from Barnes's ability because of the rules at the time he played. Do we ignore the greatness of Creighton or Spalding because they were the best at underhanded pitching? Old Hoss Radbourn because he had no pitch counts? Or Arlie Latham for stealing a bunch of bases off of slow pitchers and catchers wearing no mitts? You are compared to your peers. The fair-foul was a fair play at the time, and Ross was revered for his ability at it: "It was univeraslly regarded as requiring exceptional finesse. Only the most highly skilled strikers were able to execute it with consistency." (Robert H Schaefer, The Lost Art of Fair-Foul Hitting) Barnes was never a cheap hitter: he led his league in doubles, total bases, and slugging three times, triples twice. James accuses him of fair-foul bunting, but Barnes was fair-foul hitting.

As a fielder, he was regarded as a star second baseman in a time when second basemen had to cover more ground than any other position - all the ground from first to second, short right and short centre, as well as covering second on steals. The shortstop was more of a rover who patrolled the shallow outfield in left-centre. Player and writer Tim Murnane said that he 'could cover more ground than any man I ever saw. He had a long reach and could pick up ground balls when on the dead run from either side.' Paired with a strong throwing arm, Barnes led the league in assists, fielding percentage, and double plays almost every year. Murnane, who once bested Barnes in the NA steals race (30 to 29) said that he 'had no superior as a baserunner' and that he was the first player to 'throw himself wide of the base and hold onto the bag.'

All of this added up to Barnes being the NA's best position player for the duration of the league (1871-75), and the results showed for Boston as the team won four Pennants. He was also an enormous star for the league. A lifelong bachelor, he was popular with the ladies and quite a fan of drink - a split formed with his teammates Harry and George Wright, Al Spalding, Charlie Gould, and Cal McVey (teetotalers) on one side, and Barnes and the rest on the other. Barnes and Gould hated each other so much that they refused to meet each other's eye on the field (Gould played beside Barnes at first base) and when Gould retired after 1872 it was reported that getting away from Barnes was the primary reason. Barnes was known to be infatuated with his own looks, vain to a fault, but always described as honorable and a gentleman.

Partway through 1874 the Red Stockings and Philadelphia Athletics postponed their respective seasons to undertake a goodwill tour of England, showing off the American game and playing some exhibition games against English cricket clubs. Cricket games were also played, and the teams you would expect to win at each sport did, but the end result was disappointing. No lasting effect on the English was noted, and both clubs lost money on the enterprise. During the tour, rumors were already swirling that the club might not survive, and be broken up at season's end. The rumors continued through the offseason and into the 1875 season, but by the end of summer a bombshell had dropped: frustrated by Association politics and a lack of discipline from both clubs and players, William Hulbert was withdrawing his Chicago White Stockings from the NA and starting his own association - the National League. Moreover, he had signed most of the best players in baseball, including the 'Big Four' as they were being hailed in Boston: Spalding, McVey, Barnes, and Deacon White. The Red Stockings, long immune to revolving, were crushed.

Rumor was that the players would abandon the club immediately, but they played out their contracts, and in 1876 the Chicago club was the toast of the baseball world. Barnes led the league in almost every offensive category, hitting .429 with a staggering 235 OPS+. He put up 6.0 WAR in just 66 games as Chicago cruised to an easy inaugural NL pennant. It would be Barnes's swan song. He was 26.

Before the 1877 season the NL instituted the modern foul ball rule, disallowing Barnes's fair-foul hits. Because his career nosedives after 1876, modern baseball historians have claimed his success was due to the fair-foul rule, but there was something else going on. By mid-May 1877 Barnes excused himself from the White Stockings. The Tribune wrote: Barnes has been physically incapable of exertion; he is as weak, debilitated and worn as would be any strong man after six month's sickness." Barnes was expected back in June after a quick rest in his native Rockford, but his absence dragged on through the summer as criticism mounted. The Tribune published more than one defense of the great player, at one point publishing a telegraph from Barnes reading: "I seldom leave the house now. I don't feel badly, but I grow weaker every day." He finally returned in mid-August, receiving a raucus ovation from the Chicago crowd, but the papers reported that he had none of his old energy or ability. At 27, Barnes appeared done, and his year-end numbers looked like it, too. He played just 22 games and while he hit a respectable .272, he was a far cry from the 'King of Baseball' some publications called him.

With no recovery in sight, Barnes was not offered a contract for 1878, and spent the season in court, suing the White Stockings for not paying him while he was ill. He was ultimately ruled against. He spent some of '78 in London, Ontario as player/manager for the Tecumseh of the International Association. The IA at the time was the top minor league of the day and probably not a far cry from the talent of the NL. He played a full season of baseball in 1879 with old teammates Cal McVey and Deacon White in Cincinnati, posting an OPS+ of 106, above league average but well below his standards, still suffering from the chronic fever and fatigue that baseball historian and SABR member Robert H Scheafer described as 'ague'. He sat out 1780 and worked as a travelling salesman before old friend Harry Wright invited him to join his Boston Red Stockings in '81. Barnes, now 31, hit like a league-average player (103 OPS+) but played a miserable shortstop and described himself as 'useless as a fifth leg on a horse.'

Barnes was out of baseball after the experiment with Boston. Still a young man, Barnes was reportedly fabulously wealthy, to say nothing of his well-to-do Illinois family. He sat on the Chicago Board of Trade, with fingers in his family's interests in banking and industry. He tried umpiring in 1890 with the Player's League, but found it an exercise in self-abuse and quickly gave it up. He worked as an accountant in Chicago and ran hotel operations in Rockford. The lifelong bachelor died in his Chicago apartment in 1915, aged 64.

Ross Barnes is something of an unsolved tragedy. We don't really know how good he was outside of the fair-foul rule, or outside of his mysterious illness, but we do know that he was one of the very best players of the amateur era, when he was a teenager, and that he was unquestionably the best player of his time, a career that spanned the entirety of the professional National Association and the beginning of the National League. As late as WWI, writers and legends were remembering him as perhaps the best of all time, frequently remembering him as a better player than legends like Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, and Ty Cobb, and it's because he might have been. He was the best baserunner of his day, the best defender at a premium position, and he was a career .398 hitter before his illness. He might have been.

Previous: 1881 Col. James Lee
1880s Overview
Next: 1882 2/2: William Hulbert

Class of 1881, 2/2: Col. James Lee

Colonel James Lee (1796-1874), Builder
Eligible: 1871
Contributions: Original Gotham member (1837), likely importer of the (prototypical) game to New York City.

This will be a quick one, because so little is known of Lee's life and his baseball career. Because the historiography of baseball starts, essentially, with the Knickerbocker's 1845 rules and scorebook, little is known of the history of the game to that point. We do know that, according to Wheaton's late-19th-century interview that Col. Lee was one of the original 1837 Gotham club members, the first group we know of to write the rules of the game down. He was important enough to the Gotham and to baseball that in 1846 the Knickerbockers, shortly after forming, named him an honorary member.

Col. Lee was born in 1796 and remembered later in life playing a version of baseball growing up in New York. A soldier stationed typically in New York, John Thorn suggests that he fraternized and played ball with fellow soldiers during the War of 1812, possibly at the 'Parade,' a plot of land set aside for military drills that would become Madison Square, the site of many Manhattan ballgames in later decades, and eventually Madison Square Garden.

President of the New York Chamber of Commerce as an adult, John Montgomery Ward in his 1888 attempt at writing the early history of the game described him as a "gentleman eminently worthy of belief." Lee, as one of the earliest players in New York and one of the founders of the Gotham, had a heavy hand in baseball's selection as the game of choice for young men, according to Ward (via his source and original Knick William Ladd). He wrote that Lee and his friends chose Base Ball as an inherently American game, and not a foreign invention like cricket. Mere years after the revolution, America was quickly building an identity, and baseball proved an excellent proxy for the culture war against cricket and the English.

In 1907 when Spalding sent reams of evidence to AG Mills (who came to the unfortunate conclusion that Abner Doubleday invented baseball), Spalding listed Lee as one of the seven most influential originators of the sport. Considering that Spalding had been entrenched in the highest levels of the game since the amateur era, and considering the amount of research and discussion he had conducted, his findings were not baseless.

We don't know much of Lee's later life, but he passed in 1874, leaving a little-told and hardly explored, but undoubtedly significant impact on the sport of baseball in New York and, ultimately, America.

Previous: Class of 1880 1/1 Jim Devlin
1880s Overview
Next: Class of 1882 1/2 Ross Barnes

Class of 1881: 1/2 Jim Devlin

James A Devlin (1849-1883), Player
Eligible: 1878
Contributions: For the duration of his brief career (1875-77), Devlin was baseball's best pitcher not named Tommy Bond, posting 22.4 fWAR in just three seasons. At the height of his powers, however, Devlin and three others were banned from baseball for life for throwing games, marking one of baseball's first instances of crushing pressure against gambling interests. Devlin was at once one of baseball's great players and a fine example of a recurring narrative in baseball history, the gambler.

Jim Devlin pitched for three years in the first decade of professional baseball and put up a losing record, and as a result one could be forgiven for dismissing him as any kind of important character in baseball history. One would be remiss, however, not to recognize that at the time of retirement, if you can call it that, following the 1877 season, Devlin ranked 5th all-time in WAR, 2nd in strikeouts, and first in K/9.

Not that much is known about Devlin's early life and career. He was born in Philadelphia in 1849, and presumably grew up playing ball as the sport exploded in the northeast in 1850s and 1860s. He first appears in organised baseball for his hometown Philadelphia White Stockings in 1873 as a light-hitting utility infielder. He signed on with the Chicago White Stockings for 1874 and hit .286 off the bench as a reserve first baseman / outfielder, appearing in 45 of the team's 59 games.

The following year he was a stellar bat off the bench, slashing .289/.298/.381, which in 1874 was good for a 131 OPS+. He also recorded a pair of double plays as an outfielder, good for 4th in the league and displaying what would ultimately be his great gift: his arm. The following year Chicago's ace, old workhorse and amateur legend George Zettlein started to wear down and the White Stockings turned to the 26-year-old Devlin to relieve the veteran's arm (at this time, a team generally only carried a single full-time pitcher). Devlin was already blossoming as a full-time first baseman, establishing himself as one of the league's best fielders at the position and finishing 7th in the league in doubles as a hitter, but still came in to relieve Zettlein four times and made 24 starts of his own. He pitched well in 224 innings, his 1.93 ERA good for a 118 ERA+, and was then signed by the fledgling NL's Louisville Grays as their pitcher for 1876.

Little exists in terms of his repertoire, but we know Devlin had a live arm, and was a big, strong guy. He struck out lots of batters for his era and showed good control as well. He served as Louisville's ace for 1876-1877 and was the best pitcher in baseball outside of fellow Hall member Tommy Bond, going 65-60 with a 1.89 ERA (156 ERA+). He led the league both years in most counting stats, from innings pitched to WAR (18.3 in 1876, 13.4 in '77). He pitched all but 21 innings for the '76 Grays, and every single inning for the '77 edition.

His efforts did little for a rather thin Louisville team - they finished 5th in the NL in 1876 and 2nd after fading down the stretch in '77. By the end of the 1877 season Devlin was one of the top few pitchers in baseball history, even with just two-and-a-half seasons pitched, but his named was forever besmirched when he was indicted in a gambling scandal involving three other Louisville players, who were banned from baseball for conspiring to throw the 1877 NL pennant. Regarded as one of the best pitchers on the planet, Devlin would never play major league baseball again.

Devlin's 1877 banishment was not the first time he was connected to gambling. A previous telegram to Devlin had surfaced the previous season, from Louisville right fielder George Bechtel: "We can make $500 if you lose the game today. Tell John (Louisville manager John Chapman) and let me know at once." Devlin had replied by declining the offer, "I play ball for the interest of those who hire me." Still, the casual nature of the offer and the presumed ease of informing the club manager of a fixed game suggest that it was not a novel proposition. Bechtel was cut from the club and banned from baseball shortly thereafter.

On August 16, 1877 Louisville was in first place in the NL behind the stellar pitching of Devlin and the white-hot bat of left fielder George Hall (hitting .373 to that date), but went 0-8 with a tie on their subsequent road trip, losing a number of exhibitions along the way, and never regained their footing. Hall hit .149 over the next 18 games as the club fell off the pace and lost the NL Pennant to Boston.

Club management already knew what was up and when Devlin was reportedly seen around Lousiville wearing new jewelry, and pitched well in post-season exhibitions after stinking in the stretch run, the Grays held individual interviews with the players, where they pretended that they already had information from co-conspirators. Hall and Devlin confessed immediately to taking money from a man named McCloud to throw the pennant and implicated replacement player Al Nichols as well. No evidence ever surfaced to implicate the fourth man, but when veteran shortstop Bill Craver refused to hand over his telegraph records to the club, he was grouped with the other three and expelled from the club. The Louisville Courier-Journal printed the story on November 3, and the quartet never played major league baseball again.

In his testimony, Devlin confessed not just to taking $100 per game he threw, but to giving Hall, who had connected Devlin to McCloud in the first place, just $25 and telling him McCloud had only sent $50. Hall testified that he only ever accepted the money for exhibition games and that Devlin had never given him a cent for the (at least) nine League games they had fixed.

It was a watershed moment in baseball history, as league president William Hulbert came down on the four men like a hammer. He accepted no apologies or excuses, and listened to no arguments. Even in the cases of Craver and Nichols, who had little or no evidence against them, Hulbert made it abundantly clear: no gambling in baseball. There were far-reaching repercussions for baseball as well. Louisville folded, as did St. Louis, who had signed Devlin and Hall and had hoped to build a club around them. The NL was reduced to just three clubs, and Hulbert scrambled to accept entries from such small markets as Providence, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee. Once exclusive, the NL was now much more accepting of new clubs.

Devlin, self-described as 'dumb' and barely literate, had nowhere to turn after baseball. With a wife and young son at home, Devlin traveled to Chicagoafter his banishment to beg forgiveness after his banishment. Al Spalding, at that time sharing an office suite with Hulbert, later wrote:

 The situation, as he kneeled there in abject humiliation, was beyond the realm of pathos. It was a scene of heartrendering tragedy. Devlin was in tears, Hulbert was in tears... I heard Devlin's plea to have the stigma removed from his name. I heard him entreat, not on his own account, he acknowledged himself unworthy of consideration, but for the sake of his wife and child. I beheld the agony of humiliation depicted on his features as he confessed his guilt and begged for mercy. 

 I saw the bulk of Hulbert's frame tremble with the emotion he vaibly sought to stifle. I saw the president's hand steal into his pocket as if seeking to conceal his intended act from the other hand. I saw him take a $50 bill and press it into the palm of the prostrate player. And then I heard him say, as he fairly writhed with the pain his own words caused him, "That's what I think of you, personally; but, damn you, Devlin, you are dishonest' you have sold the game, and I can't tryst you. Now go; and let me never see your face again' for your act will not be condoned so long as I live."

Rebuked by organised baseball, Devlin then wrote a (hardly-legible) letter to Boston manager and baseball royalty Harry Wright begging for work, anywhere, in any league, as a player or even as a groundskeeper. "I have not got a Stich of Clothing or has my wife and child... The Louisville People made me what I am today, a Beggar"[sic]. If Wright ever replied, we have no record of it.

For his part, Devlin was finished as a major-league pitcher, though we have records of him playing for at least nine independent-league teams. The National Association, then little more than a semi-pro operation losing the war against the NL badly, reinstated Devlin for the 1879 season, and the Cincinnati Enquirer subsequently branded them amateurish: "Which can stand it longest - the Association who expels a dishonest player, or the one who welcomes him to their ranks." We know he was still playing ball in San Francisco as late as 1880. Outside of his time in were then known as the 'outlaw leagues', John Thorn suggests that he continued playing under a fake name.

Working as a police officer in his native Philadelphia, Devlin passed away in 1883, aged 34, of either tuberculosis or consumption fueled by his alcoholism, leaving his wife and son. One of many tragic stories in the early history of baseball, Devlin is one of a handful of great players banned for off-the-field behaviour, but he was, for a brief time, the best baseball player on the planet.

Previous: 1880 2/2 Jim Creighton
1880s Overview
Next: 1881 2/2 Col James Lee

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.

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.

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.

Woodcut of Davis

'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.

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.

An older and worn-down
Cummings in 1877

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. 

 

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.

The List: Class of 1878, 2/2: Alexander J Cartwright

Alexander J Cartwright (1820-1892), Builder
Eligible: 1871
Contributions: Led the splinter group of Gothams that founded the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in 1845, promoted the club and recruited top players from New York; regular member until 1849.

In short, Alexander Cartwright did not invent baseball. Need it be restated: nobody did. 'It just growed,' wrote Henry Chadwick. Still, after the Doubleday myth was debunked in the opening decades of the 20th century, it was Cartwright alone who took credit for baseball's invention and earned a plaque in Cooperstown in 1938 following a lengthy campaign by his descendants and the baseball community to find an alternative to the debunked Doubleday myth. Still, we understand the influence of the Knickerbocker Club and rules today, and one of the most influential men involved (besides those already noted) is unquestionably Alexander Joy Cartwright.

A young Cartwright in New York

Cartwright was born 17 April, 1820, in New York City, the son of a merchant sea captain. He began working as a Wall Street clerk at 16, and later at the Union Bank of New York. He was a prominent volunteer firefighter, first with the Oceania Hose Company No. 36, then famously with Engine Company No. 12, nicknamed the Knickerbockers. Growing up, and later with many of his fellow firefighters, Cartwright passed his free time playing bat-and-ball games in the streets and parks of Manhattan, though he would later join the intramural squads of the professional class.

By the late 1830s he was playing base ball regularly, but in 1845 the lot he and some of his fellow firefighters were using to play ball in Manhattan was developed, and Cartwright and his club had nowhere to play. Cartwright found a park in Hoboken, NJ called the Elysian Fields, which were owned by famed inventor Col. John Stevens. Cartwright was allowed to use the field for baseball for the price of $75 per year, and to recoup the costs of the rental, Cartwright founded the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, named for his engine company. This marks, basically, the end of his impact on baseball, but he accomplished a great deed in doing so.

To start his club, Cartwright invited the most serious ballplayers from around the city, men committed to building the sport: Duncan F Curry, William R Wheaton, William H Tucker, Doc Adams. Cartwright enlisted them and charged them a high membership fee, ensuring their commitment. These men, now aligned to the cause of baseball, laid the foundations for the game that was codified in 1845 and grew to become a burgeoning national sport by 1857, at which point the Knicks stepped out of the spotlight as the NABBP took greater influence.

Older Cartwright as fire chief
in Honolulu

Cartwright would umpire the first recorded game of baseball in June, 1846, and stay involved with the Knicks until he left New York three years later. The Union Bank burned down in 1845, and Cartwright went into business as a book seller, printing and selling the published Knickerbocker rules in 1848. Still looking for a reliable source of income after his banking job, Cartwright joined the Gold Rush in 1849, continuing almost immediately to Hawaii, where he served as fire chief of Honolulu from 1850-1863 and allegedly advising Hawaiian royalty. He would die in 1892, six months before the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.

Many myths abound, since debunked, about Cartwright's role in baseball history, myths that earned him that spot in Cooperstown: that he set the rules of 90 feet and 9 men a side, that he promoted baseball wherever he went across the country and into Hawaii, all of which are false. Still, Cartwright founded the Knicks, brought together baseball's most important people, and gave a jolt of life to a young game that would propel it rapidly into the nation's biggest sport.

NufCed Hall: 1870s Recap

Let's recap the decade of the 1870s. As the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players rises in 1871 only to fold five years later, the National League is born in 1876 to become the dominant, and enduring, baseball league. Professionalism, long denied in the 1860s becomes accepted with the founding of the NA, and the world's best players are (mostly) paid to play baseball. Some of the game's great pioneers, who built the sport in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s, are enshrined in our burgeoning Hall of Fame, introduced here.

Class                              Player                           Builder
1871                               -                                     William R Wheaton
1872                               -                                     Daniel 'Doc' Adams
1873                               -                                     William H Tucker
1874                               -                                     Duncan F Curry
1875                               -                                     Henry Chadwick
1876                               -                                     Louis F Wadsworth
1877                               -                                     William Cauldwell
1878                               Al Spalding                    Alexander J Cartwright 
1879                               Candy Cummings         James Whyte Davis

The List : Class of 1878, 1/2 : Albert G Spalding

Albert Goodwill Spalding (1849-1915), Player
Eligible: 1878
Achievements: Led the National Association in pitcher wins each year of its existence, and the NL in wins his one year playing for Chicago's NL team. Accumulated 252-65 record and 60 WAR in just six full years. Also posted a 116 OPS+ as a regular hitter. Also a pioneering manager and executive with Chicago, and one of baseball's most successful sporting goods makers. Helped William Hulbert found the NL in 1876.

 His is the face of a Greek hero, his manner that of an Anglican Bishop, and he is the father of the greatest sport the world has ever known. 
                 - New York Times, 1899

Simply, there is nobody more deserving than Al Spalding to be this Hall's first player inductee. He was likely the best pitcher of the amateur era, and wasn't just the best pitcher of the National Association (1871-1875), he was the greatest pitcher in each season of NA play. He was the best pitcher in the nascent National League before retiring young to be a championship manager, legendary executive and owner, run perhaps the greatest sporting goods company in American history, and rewrite (for better or worse) baseball's creation myth. Al Spalding is a titan of baseball history.

Spalding's appearance on the baseball world stage is a fantastic piece of baseball history, and also tells a bit about the transition from the early game we discussed in the inductions of 1871-1877, to the modern, professional sport we have come to know and love.

The year was 1867. The sport had grown from the handful of diasporadic 1840s clubs to the inaugural meeting of the National Assotiation of Base Ball Players in February, 1858 to, in 1867, more than 400 clubs ranging from the backwoods of Maine in the north to New Orleans in the south and San Francisco in the west. The Association was more of a loose collection than any official league - schedules were poorly coordinated and while some of the better clubs could claim to be champions, no such structure existed. Two things were important, though - the rules were codified, meaning everybody was playing the same game (as opposed to the 1830s and 40s when the sport was very different in New York versus Boston or Pennsylvania), and the Association clung fiercely to the idea of amateurism - professionalism was strictly outlawed, though most historians agree that players were likely being compensated under the table as early as the early 1850s. Still, the idea was amateurism and sport, though that was all soon to change.

The 1867 National Club of Washington is a fine example of this. The 1866 iteration had been a fine club, going 10-5, but the subsequent year club president (and future US Senator) Arthur Pue Gorman gave up his spot as the club's star shortstop to pursue a developing trend in Association baseball: discreet professionalism. The difference was, Gorman did it better than any team before. Using his connections within government to find pretend public-sector jobs for his new recruits, he stole the star players from New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Rochester clubs, including perhaps the amateur-era's best player in shortstop George Wright from the Gotham club of New York. Wright's place of employment was listed as 238 Pennsylvania Ave, a vacant lot. Declaring themselves the NA's best club, Gorman's Nationals announced a July-long national tour taking on all comers. While they would prove themselves to be the best team in the NA for 1867, they would shape the course of baseball history and in the process uncover a legend.

 Accompanying Wright and his fantastic Nationals was legendary baseball writer Henry Chadwick, invited along as team scorekeeper but serving as chief booster by reporting the team's exploits in The Ball Player's Chronicle while on tour. Their achievements were not few: in preparation for the tour they hosted Washington's five best clubs (including four venerable NA members in the Olympic, Jefferson, Union, and Continental), beating all five including a 91-8 destruction of a Department of the Interior club. Note that high scoring was indicative of the time - remember that at this time pitchers pitched to the batter and there were no gloves or manicured fields making errors commonplace. Fresh off their hometown massacre, the Nationals traveled to Columbus, Ohio to beat the city champion Capitol club, 90-10.

They then traveled to Cincinnati to take on Harry Wright (George's older brother, lured out of a retirement of cricketing and coaching, a former Knickerbocker and perhaps the best player of his time) and the Red Stockings, undefeated for two years and widely recognized as the best team in baseball. Cincinnati had nothing for the Nationals and were crushed, 53-10. So humiliated were the Reds that Harry Wright was instructed by his club president to throw off the veneer of amateurism and pursue professional players. The Reds were baseball's first openly professional club in 1869. But as the summer of 1867 played out the Nationals continued their tour, destroying the Buckeyes and then the city champions of Indianapolis, Louisville, and St. Louis. In the last two games alone they scored 219 runs. Untouchable, the Nationals rolled into Chicago to wind up their tour against two of the country's best clubs, the Atlantics and the Excelsiors (both named for the original Brooklyn clubs).

Before the marquee games against the Excelsiors and Atlantics, the Nationals arranged for a warmup match after many weeks on the road. The Excelsiors suggested the Rockford Forest City club, a middling squad who had given the Excelsiors a game match earlier that season (the Excelsiors had won). The Nationals brought them in to Chicago only to be upset 29-23 at the hands of a visibly-shaken rookie pitcher from the local squad. The baseball world cried foul, claiming the fix had been in to even betting odds before the main matches. The cries grew louder when Washington beat the actual competition the following day by a combined score of 127-21. What the critics couldn't have known at the time was that the nervous 16-year-old pitching for Rockford was already perhaps the best pitcher alive.

Spalding, tall and third from the right, with the Forest Citys

Albert Goodwill Spalding was born in Byron, Illinois, in 1849. He never held a noteworthy job because he was one of baseball's first born professionals - at 14 he was playing in men's amateur leagues, captaining his own Pioneer team, and at 15 had been invited to join the Forest Citys, with whom he became famous in 1867. Shortly after that legendary performance against the Nationals he took a position as a clerk for the Chicago Exelsiors, with the understanding that he was being paid to play baseball, though when the team's financial backer collapsed under the weight of paying enough $40-per-week clerks to fill a baseball team, Spalding returned to Rockford and played 1868-70 with his old teammates, gaining acclaim as the Association's best pitcher, and perhaps its best player.

In 1871 baseball changed tack again. While teams had been turning pro for two years, a number of key clubs from the National Association of Base Ball Players threw off the veneer of amateurism, breaking off to form the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), while the remaining clubs formed the NAA(amateur)BBP. The NAPBBP would be history's first professional organised baseball league.

One such professional club was the Boston Red Stockings, founded in 1870 by the wealthy president of a net-weaving company, Ivers Whitney Adams. The Red Stockings got their name when Harry Wright (former manager of that Cincinnati club) was enticed to Boston by Adams. Wright also brought along his brother George, still baseball's best player, as well as his former nemeses Spalding and Ross Barnes, baseball's best second baseman, from Forest City, as well as young stars Charlie Gould and Cal McVey.

Baseball is a man-maker.

The NA had no answer for Spalding and the Red Stockings. In five years of NA play (1871-75) Boston took the first four pennants and finished second in '75. Spalding, sporting a strong fastball and change (then called a 'dew-drop') was far and away the Association's best player, going 204-53, leading the league in wins every year, FIP twice, and IP twice. His 2.21 ERA over that span was good enough for a 131 ERA+, but he managed to throw 2346.2 innings in the five years, leading baseball in WAR as well. He was simultaneously one of baseball's best hitters, hitting .323 with a 121 OPS+. By wRC, only four players created more offensive value in the NA (two of them, Barnes and Wright, his teammates). Spalding completed most of his 264 starts, but manager Harry Wright liked to surprise opponents by pulling the hard-throwing Spalding and putting himself in the game to throw soft breaking pitches.

Spalding, top, with his teammates on the legendary Red Stockings

1874 was a very important year for Spalding. Not only did he win 52 games and score 80 runs, more importantly, he opened a sporting goods store in Chicago with his brother, Walter. This was the foundation for an incredibly successful franchise that would make balls for professional baseball until the 1970s, invent the modern bat, and serve as America's most successful sporting goods company for the next 100 years, but it was also Spalding's introduction to business management, and what he found, to his surprise, was that he liked it. He liked it more than baseball - and while he was easily the best baseball player in the world, he may have been a better businessman.

A born leader, Spalding had organized and led a semi-pro team as a boy, and opened a booming business at 23. While his contemporaries were notorious drinkers and gamblers, Spalding rarely drank and kept well clear of the shadowy characters of baseball, which enamored him to Harry Wright and later William Hulbert. Wright, though, would select Spalding to lead a World Baseball Tour in 1874. Spalding left for England in January, organzed supporters for his planned exhibition trip, organized the first ever game of baseball in England on February 27, returned in March in time to lead his Boston club to another Pennant, then took the Red Stockings and the volunteering Philadelphia Athletics back to England in July for a string of exhibitions all over the British Isles, as well as some cricket matches against British clubs. The tour was mostly a failure - Brits were largely uninterested in the game, and the tour lost money on turnouts lower than expected, with no impact left behind. They returned to Philadelphia on September 9.

The tour is a good example of two things, however. Spalding's organizational and business acumen, and his distaste for the English. The latter was not rare at the time - in the 1870s the Revolution was less than a century old, and the British had just supported the Confederacy in the Civil War. Still, Spalding considered the British effete and the game of cricket 'genteel' compared to the rigorous, manly, and American game of baseball. Harry Wright saw both of these traits in Spalding, and chose him to head his grand tour of England, but both would be immensely important as Spalding's life and career progressed.

Spalding had one last trick on the diamond, however. During the days of the NA frequently breaching contracts or changing teams was common among players, referred to as 'revolving,' and one such instance involving Philadelphia infielder Davy Force would change baseball forever. Following the 1874 season Force managed to sign contracts with both Philadelphia and (his current club) Chicago. A panel of NA officials decreed the Chicago contract, which Force had signed first, would be honored. When a new president of the Association was elected later that winter, one hailing from Philadelphia, he awarded Force to Philadelphia. Chicago president William Hulbert, incised, pulled his White Stockings from the Association and started a new league, the National League.

The NL, which commenced play in 1876, insisted on higher membership fees and that schedules be honored (it was common for NA teams to stop playing either when eliminated from contention or once their home schedules were finished, leaving other clubs holding the bag for lost ticket revenue), and imposed harsher rules on player conduct. Hulbert inserted himself as League President but maintained his White Stocking club (today's Cubs) and immediately set his eyes on a powerhouse. He appealed to Spalding's Illinois roots and brought him and Ross Barnes back to Chicago. He also managed to poach Deacon White from Boston and Cap Anson from Philadelphia. The quartet represented most of baseball's best players, and went 52-14 en route to the inaugural NL Pennant.

Spalding, who went 47-12 with a 1.75 ERA in 1876, didn't just come to Chicago for money, though. In order to get him to move Hulbert had to promise him the manager's seat and give him a minority share in the team, as well as letting him help organize the NL and recruit players for it. Already, Spalding was showing an increased interest in the operations side, and he confirmed this when he gave up pitching in 1877. With side-arming becoming allowed, Spalding felt he could no longer serve as the game's dominant pitcher, and ceded pitching duties to the mediocre George Bradley, inserting himself as the regular first baseman. While he was always regarded as a superb hitter, Spalding had a rough year, hitting a career-worst .256 and hanging up his cleats for good. He threw 11 innings in 1877, but the team was a lacklustre 26-33 as the Boston Red Stockings reassembled their juggernaut. Spalding stepped off the field for good, as player and as manager, to focus on his booming business and running the White Stockings as secretary and right-hand-man to Hulbert.

1889 edition of the Spalding's Base Ball Guide

Spalding also went into publishing in the late 1870s, publishing not just the first set of league rules for the NL, but also the wildly successful Spalding Guide, for which old friend Henry Chadwick served as editor. William Hulbert died in April, 1882, leaving Spalding as the principal owner and president of the White Stockings. He is credited with the first Spring Training, held in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1886. Between 1880 and 1886 the club won five more Pennants with Spalding running the club. Meanwhile Spalding lead the wars against the American Association, Players League, and the Union Association, various attempts to start a rival major league.

During the winter of 1888-89 Spalding took a group of the NL's best players on a worldwide tour, canvassing Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Hawaii, Ceylon, Italy, and France, promoting the sport (and his sporting goods company) with exhibition games and returning to great fanfare in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

Spalding shocked the baseball world when he retired as White Stockings president in 1891, mirroring his snap retirement as a player. The 1890s would be the story of AG Spalding Sporting Goods, as the firm opened stores and bought factories all over the United States. By 1893 Spalding had acquired most of his competition, and he became very wealthy as his company became a mainstay of the American sporting world to this day.

Later in his life Spalding withdrew from baseball. He sold his controlling stake in the White Stockings (by now the Chicago Orphans) in 1902, though in the first decade of the 1900s he became determined to prove that baseball was an American game (remember his irreverence toward the English), arguing with Chadwick, who believed (correctly) that it was based in English rounders. Spalding convened the 1908 Mills Commission and was respected enough that his influence proclaimed Abner Doubleday the father of baseball, and when Chadwick died, leaving his papers to Spalding, Spalding used the old writer's records to recreate baseball's past, releasing America's National Game in 1911, the first scholarly attempt at writing baseball's creation story.

Spalding became involved in the controversial Theosophic community in San Diego late in his life, dying far from the spotlight in 1915. Still, he is remembered as a titan of baseball history, and of American sport history. In 1880 the Boston Herald wrote: "Next to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, the name AG Spalding is the most famous in American literature." In 1900 he was named as Commissioner of the USA's Olympic committee by President McKinley.

The best player of both the amateur era and the beginning of the professional era, one of the great baseball minds and executives in baseball history, an influential writer and publisher, and the founder of perhaps the most important sporting goods company in the game's long history, Spalding deserves to be on this list again and again, for many independent reasons. He would be on baseball's Mount Rushmore - he could be all four faces. Spalding impacted the game in so many different ways, in such influential ways, he truly is one of the most important people in baseball history.

The genius of our institutions is democratic - Base ball is a democratic game.