[200 years ago this week, “Father of Baseball” Henry Chadwick was born. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Chadwick and other 19th century baseball histories, leading up to a special weekend post on my new podcast on 19th century baseball and much more!]
Four figures
who together help us chart the evolution of professional baseball.
1)
Jim Creighton:
I really don’t know that I can do justice to the genuinely legendary (in both
positive and tragic senses) career of the first player to be paid to play
baseball; you’ve really got to check out that hyperlinked Baseball Reference page,
but before you do prepare yourself for the shocking and horrific (and entirely
baseball-related) reason Creighton died before his 22nd birthday. Obviously
those specific details are quite unique to Creighton—but as that first
superstar and thus first player to be paid, receiving some form of
compensation (probably a percentage of the gate) from the Brooklyn Excelsiors
after they recruited him away from his prior Brooklyn teams in 1859 (long
before there were official professional leagues), Creighton nonetheless
foreshadows this next stage in the sport’s evolution.
2)
Davy Force:
In 1869, a decade after Creighton’s signing, the National Association of Base
Ball Players (NABBP) created a new professional category into which teams could
opt if they wanted to pay some or all of their players. Led by the dominant Cincinnati Red Stockings, twelve clubs
declared themselves professional for that season, and two years later the first
fully professional league, also known as the NABBP,
was created. But for the first few years multiple teams could sign the same
player and then compete for his services, producing a hugely chaotic situation
that must have been very confusing for spectators season to season (or even
game to game). When shortstop Davy
Force tried to play for the Chicago White Stockings but was forced to
return to his prior club, the Philadelphia Athletics, because the league’s
president was associated with them, league administrators decided more
structure was needed. The result was the 1874
establishment of the National League, the first real forebear of the modern
major leagues.
3)
Moses
Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker: Once again I’ll recommend that you check
out that hyperlinked article, a wonderful piece on the lives and careers—before
and after as well as during their time in professional baseball—of these two pioneering
brothers who helped integrate baseball in the 1880s, some 60 years before
Jackie Robinson (and faced the same horrific racial hate and threats of violence
he did). The Walkers were eventually forced out of white major league baseball,
although Moses would continue to play in both the minor leagues and the
short-lived National
Colored Base Ball League before his 1891 retirement. Those latter leagues
reflect a central premise of my podcast: that the range of semi-pro and local leagues
meant that late 19th century baseball featured the possibility (and
the reality, if a fraught and fragile one) of multi-racial teams far more than
did much of 20th century baseball. I’ll write about one of those
teams in tomorrow’s post!
Last baseball
history tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Baseball or sports histories you’d highlight?
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