The 1876 Brown Stockings: The Red Legs Have Evidently Become Demoralized

Twenty-five hundred spectators witnessed another decidedly tame base ball contest at the Grand Avenue Park yesterday afternoon, in which the representative nines of St. Louis and Cincinnati were the contestants. Both teams were out in their full strength, Pearson resuming his position behind the bat for the Red Legs, and doing much better there than his substitute the day previous. The Cincinnatis improved very little, if any, over their game of Saturday, of which yesterday's contest was a counterpart. Several easy flies were dropped, and much wild throwing indulged in by the Red Legs, who, by their recent defeats, have evidently become demoralized. Gould secured their only tally in the first inning on a low throw by Battin, which Dehlman failed even to stop, thereby allowing the striker to reach second, from whence he was brought home on Pearson's model hit. The Red Legs could do nothing with Bradley's pitching, so well was it supported on all sides. Fisher and Pearson are each credited with two safe hits, and Foley and Kessler with one each, which was the sum total. Perfect fielding kept the Cincinnatis down to one run, while hard batting and loose play gave the Browns eleven runs, two of which were earned. The home men, one and all, did so well that it is unnecessary to particularize...

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, May 17, 1876

Random notes:

-Here's the TL;DR version: Man, the Redlegs are bad. I'm not even going to bother to write two paragraphs about this crap team. Check the box score.

-Nine unearned runs given up by the Reds and fifteen errors. That's not good. The Brown Stockings committed seven errors and the only run they gave up was unearned (Battin threw the ball away to put the first batter on; fly out to center; ground out, 5-3; and then a base hit by Pearson to bring in Gould). Not exactly a sharply played game.

-I need to create a spreadsheet and start tracking home attendance for the Brown Stockings. Neither BRef nor Retrosheet has the attendance for the season and I'm interested in what it was. My general understanding is that attendance was down from the 1875 season and I'd like to know if that was really true. Of course, all I have to go on is the newspaper reports and we have to take those with a grain of salt. But what else do we have?

-By the way, I love "demoralized" as a euphemism for "not good at all." The 2009 St. Louis Rams are demoralized. The Chicago Cubs have been demoralized for over one hundred years. Perfectly awesome. But if you throw in "evidently" then you're just being a smart ass.