Henry Lucas Kills The Quincy Club

The management of the Quincy Base Ball Club waited until this afternoon for an answer from President Lucas, of the Unions, as to admission into that association, and no answer having been received, the Quincy club this afternoon was disbanded.  Two years experience, this year with a first-class club which would have been certain of the pennant, and a dead loss of several thousand dollars, renders it safe to predict that the days of professional base ball playing in Quincy are over.  The Northwestern League was ruined 1, by too many clubs being admitted; 2, by too big salaries; 3, by the cities being too much scattered; 4, by the arrangement of the schedule requiring long jumps and doublings on railroads, making an enormous tax for fare.  There are some excellent base ball players here open for engagements.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 17, 1884

The 1884 Maroons: Quincy Is Too Good For The Union Association

The Quincy Club, which recently resigned its membership in the Northwestern League, and is now applying for admission to the Union Association, played a beautiful game with the St. Louis Unions yesterday afternoon at Union Park.  The home team won by a score of 5 to 1, all of their runs being earned.  Black struck out seven of the local batsman, and was remarkably effective up to the eighth inning, after which he was hit pretty hard.  Daniels' catching was greatly admired.  But two hits were made off Sweeney, both being credited to Lynch.  The play of the visitors was greatly admired, and the contest established that the Quincys would make a creditable showing in any association.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 15, 1884


I honestly believe that Quincy would have gotten into the UA if they had given up more runs in this game.  If they had played poorly and lost 20-1, Quincy would have been recognized in the history books as a big league ballclub, alongside such great UA teams as Altoona and Wilmington.   

Quincy's Big League Aspirations

Manager Brackett, R.T. Scheckells and J.T Smith, Directors of the Quincy Club of the Northwestern League, met at the office of President Lucas yesterday afternoon and asked for admission to the Union Association  Mr. Brackett said his club when they left the Northwestern League were in the lead in the race for the pennant, and he claimed they could hold their own with any club in the Union Association.  He offered to pit his club against the Unions to-day and his offer was accepted...

The manager of the Quincy Club claims to have two pitchers, either one of whom is the equal of Foutz, a catcher who is superior to Baldwin, and the best first baseman in the country...

This afternoon the St. Louis Unions will play a game with the Quincy Club, which recently resigned from the Northwestern League.  The game will be called at 4 o'clock...

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 14, 1884


A little background on this rather interesting twist to the 1884 season:  According to the Quincy Daily Whig (August 10, 1884), at a meeting of the Northwestern League in Chicago, on August 9, Grand Rapids and Muskegon were dropped from the league and the remaining clubs, which included Quincy, had to put up a $500 bond as a guarantee that they would finish out the season.  The Whig wrote that the "announcement of the reorganization of the Northwestern league was received here with a great deal of dissatisfaction and disgust.  It is impossible for clubs to travel the distances required and have anything left out of the receipts of the games.  It is not probable now that the Quincy club will consent to the arrangement and especially to giving the bond of $500 to play to the end of the season. Manager Brackett favors uniting with the Union association, believing this is the best thing that can be done under the circumstances."  By August 13, Quincy had dropped out and the Northwestern League was falling apart. The Quincy Daily Journal, of August 14, 1884, wrote that the league was "about done for.  Only four clubs of the twelve which composed the league at the opening of the season are left, viz. Milwaukee, St. Paul, Saginaw and Minneapolis.  Since the resignation of W.D. Whitmore, the league is without a president, and it now looks as if there will be no Northwestern league after a few days."  While the Northwestern League picked up a few clubs and survived, they did so without Quincy.

But it is absolutely amazing that the management of the Quincy club decided that their best move, after dropping out of the Northwestern League, was to try and join the UA.  It's extraordinarily amazing that they thought such a move was possible.  I think this says a lot about the UA.  I think it speaks to how the league was perceived and the quality of baseball that was being played in the league.  Because regardless of what the managers of the Quincy club said, they were not the best team in the NWL.  To the best of my knowledge, the Grand Rapids club had a healthy lead when they dropped out, were forced out or ran out of money (however it happened).  But Quincy management thought that they could drop out of the NWL and talk their way into the UA - in August, with the season mostly over, and after the UA had already poached a couple of their best players.  It's crazy.

So I guess the Quincys' game against the Maroons was a bit of an audition.  I guess Lucas wanted to see if they were crappy enough to fit in with the other crappy clubs in his crappy league.     

The First Baseball Game In Quincy, Illinois

 The first game of Base Ball ever played according to regulations in our city, came off yesterday at Alstyne's Prairie, before a large crowd of spectators.  Great interest was manifested by all present in the exciting sport and the "boys" played remarkably well considering that this was their "first appearance in public."  A few more such games as we had yesterday and the "championship" will be Quincy's.

-Quincy Daily Herald, June 24, 1866


This small blurb in the Quincy paper helps illuminate the process by which baseball spread in the Illinois/Missouri/Iowa region.  Quincy, Illinois, which sits on the Mississippi River not too far south of where the three states meet, was founded in 1818 and, geographically, lies within the boarders of a west-central Illinois region that had an active, documented town-ball culture in the early and mid 19th century. There is enough evidence to support the idea that St. Louis shared in that ball-playing culture, prior to the arrival of the Regulation Game in the area in the late 1850s.

What appears evident to me is that, at least in this area of the United States, the evolutionary spread of the New York game of baseball took place in two steps.  The first took place prior to the Civil War, when the game reached the larger cities of Illinois, Missouri and Iowa.  The second took place after the war, when the game began to spread beyond the big cities and reached smaller towns such as Quincy.  I believe that this is evidence that the war hindered the development and spread of baseball, rather than that the war was a factor in the spread of the game to places like Quincy.  If not for the extreme disruption of life that the war brought, I believe that the game would have spread to the smaller towns in the area in the early 1860s rather then in the immediate post-war era.  If not for the war, Quincy probably would have had their first baseball clubs in 1860 or 1861 rather than in 1866.