their new salaries attracted little press attention. “The benefits of professionalism were not immediately recognized,” Greg Rhodes, a co-author of Baseball Revolutionaries: How the 1869 Red Stockings Rocked the Country and Made Baseball Famous , told me. “So the Cincinnati experiment wasn’t seen as all that radical.” The Red Stockings opened the season by winning 45 to 9. They kept winning and winning and winning – huge blowouts. At first only the Cincinnati sports writers had caught on that something special was going on. Then, in June, the team took its first road trip east. Playing in hostile territory against what were considered the best teams in baseball, they were also performing before the most influential sports writers. The pivotal victory was a tight 4-to-2 win against what had been considered by many the best team in baseball, the powerful New York Mutuals, in a game played with Tammany Hall “boss” William Tweed watching from the stands. Now the national press was paying attention. The Red Stockings continued to win, and, by the conclusion of the road trip in Washington, they were puffing stogies at the White House with their host, President Ulysses Grant. The players chugged home in a boozy, satisfied revel and were met by 4,000 joyous fans at Cincinnati’s Union Station.
AMERICAN IDOLS The Red Stockings had become a sensation. They were profiled in magazines and serenaded in sheet music. Ticket prices doubled to 50 cents. They drew such huge crowds that during a game played outside of Chicago, an overloaded bleacher collapsed. Most scores were ridiculously lopsided; during the 1869 season the team averaged 42 runs a game. Once they even scored 103. The most controversial contest was in August against the Haymakers of Troy, New York. The game was rife with rumors of $17,000 bets, and bookmakers bribing umpires and players. The game ended suspiciously at 17 to 17, when the Haymakers left the field in the sixth inning, incensed by an umpire’s call. The Red Stockings were declared the winners.
Above: The picked nine of the
Red Stocking baseball club. Left: Unidentified baseball player New York Public Library
At the time... playing sport for a reason other than for the love of the game was immoral, even corrupt.
American Consequences
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