Class of 1883, 2/2: Frank Pidgeon

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

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

Pidgeon, 1858

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

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

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

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

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

Eckford ball club in 1858, Pidgeon centre

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

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

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

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

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

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1880s Overview

Next: 1884 Abraham Tucker

Class of 1883, 1/2: Dick McBride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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1880s Overview
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Class of 1882, 2/2: William Hulbert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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1880s Overview
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