Sunday, November 9, 2008

The Eclipse Base Ball Club

The Black Sox and Eclipse nines, representing the two leading local colored base ball organizations, will play at Compton Avenue Park this afternoon, beginning at 4 o'clock.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 3, 1884

At this point, I've identified seven 19th century African-American baseball clubs in the St. Louis: the Blue Stockings, the Sunsets, the Black Stockings, the Belleville, Illinois club, the Lebanon, Illinois club, the Nine Stars, and the Eclipse.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you know anything at all about these players?

Jeffrey Kittel said...

Not as of yet. I know just a little bit about Henry Bridgewater, who was the manager of the Black Stockings, but I've been mostly focused on finding clubs.

At this point I have partial rosters for the 1875/76 Blue Stockings, the 1883 Black Stockings, and the 1885 Nine Stars. Some of what I have is just last names and that's going to make it darn near impossible to run them down but we'll see.

Anonymous said...

See Brunson's "Henry Bridgewater's Black Stockings of St. Louis, 1881-1889."

Base ball, a jorunal of the early game, Vol. 1, No. 2

Jeffrey Kittel said...

Thank you. Appreciate the tip. Someone actually sent me a copy of Brunson's article last week and while I haven't had a chance to go through it thoroughly, I did skim it. Good piece, interesting interpretation of what was happening in StL during the Interregnum period, and a ton of information about black baseball in StL in the 19th century.