The 1869 Missouri State Base Ball Association

The adjourned meeting of the State Base Ball Convention occured last evening, in the hall of the Empire Club, on Third street, Capt. C. Overbeck, temporary Chairman.

On call of the Convention it was found that the following Clubs were represented:

Union, Empire, Lone Star, Resolute, Magnolia, Rowena, St. Louis, Iron State, Olympic, Eckford, Missouri, Baltic, Buck Eye, Atlantic, Haymakers, Turner.

The election of permanent officers resulted in choice of Asa W. Smith, of the Unions, President; James Foster, of St. Louis, 1st Vice President; Joseph Ketterer, of Lone Star, 2d Vice President; F.T. Caroll, of Resolute, 3d Vice President; Thos. McCorkle, of Union, Recording Secretary; G.D. Barklege, of Iron State, Corresponding Secretary; C. Overbeck, of Lone Star, Treasurer.

After which, a committee of five were appointed to draft a constitution and by-laws, who were instructed to report at the adjourned meeting on the 18th inst.

-Missouri Republican, June 11, 1869


To the best of my knowledge, the Missouri State Base Ball Association was founded in 1868 so this would have been the second election of officers.  While Asa Smith was reelected president of the association in 1869, it appears that all of the other officers were new. 

An Early Pud Galvin Sighting

On June 11, 1874, the Empires played a banged up Turner Club at the Grand Avenue Grounds. The Turners were missing three of their regulars due to injury and another player "was so indisposed that he could not play up to his standard..." While the Empires went on to win the game easily by a score of 12-2, the interesting thing was who the Turners had on the mound. The Turners pitcher that day was a young man named James Frances Galvin, who would become better known as Pud Galvin, go on to win 364 games in the big leagues, and enter the Hall of Fame in 1965.

Prior to this, the earliest record I could find of Galvin playing in a game was a May 30, 1875 contest between the Reds and the Empires where he played left field for the Empires. That same year, Galvin was signed by the Brown Stockings as their token St. Louisian and played in eight big league games. Late in the 1875 season, he would join a reorganized Reds club for whom he would play in 1876.

E.H. Tobias, in a letter to The Sporting News on January 18, 1896, names the seventeen year old Galvin as a member of the Turner Club in 1874. There also appears to be an even earlier game in 1874, between the Turners and the White Stockings of Chicago, where it appears that Galvin may have been playing second base for the club. However, the box score is a bit difficult to make out and Tobias makes no mention of Galvin playing in the game.

Edit: Tobias also presents records of games in 1874 and 1875 where Galvin was playing with the Niagara Club. So between 1874 and 1876, Galvin would play with the Turners, the Niagaras, the Empires, the Browns and the Reds. Tobias also casts some doubt on Galvin's status with the Browns. While I've read on more than one occasion that Galvin was signed by the Browns because they thought it best to have at least one player from St. Louis on the team, Tobias notes that Galvin didn't join the Browns until well after the season had started and only because George Bradley was ill and unable to pitch.

Maybe We Should Go Find Some Professional Players (Or Chicago Adds Insult To Injury)

In 1874, according to E.H. Tobias, the Chicago White Stockings "came to St. Louis under an arrangement to play four games each with the Empire, Red Stocking and Turner Clubs..." These were probably the three best clubs in St. Louis at the time and the Chicagos cleaned their clocks. While there were a couple of close games, the White Stockings went undefeated on their St. Louis trip and embarrassed the St. Louis baseball fraternity.

Below is the dates of the games played and their results:

April 21 Chicago 24 Empire 2
April 23 Chicago 6 Reds 0
April 26 Chicago 6 Empire 4
April 28 Chicago 22 Turners 5
April 29 Chicago 30 Empire 9
April 30 Chicago 31 Reds 10
May 1 Chicago 21 Empire 10
May 2 Chicago 31 Reds 13

Thankfully, the weather in St. Louis was rather rainy (as it usually is at that time of year) and the rest of the games were unable to be played-although the Reds did make a trip to Chicago and finished their series with the White Stockings on May 6 (when they promptly lost by a score of 14-7). The Chicagos came to St. Louis, went 7-0 on the trip and outscored the best teams in St. Louis by an aggregate score of 171-53. If you count the Reds game in Chicago, the White Stockings were 8-0 against the best St. Louis had to offer and had a run differential of +125.

To add insult to injury, the Chicagos "perpetrated highway robbery while (in St. Louis) and secretly carried their spoils home with them in the person of Johnnie Peters, second base of the Red Stockings, and (Dan) Collins, the Empire pitcher." So not only did the White Stockings come in and crush everybody, they also stole two of the best players in town.

You can date the beginning of the movement to create a professional baseball team in St. Louis and the beginning of the St. Louis/Chicago baseball rivalry to late April/early May 1874. It was this crushing performance by the Chicagos and the humiliation suffered by the St. Louis baseball community that set into motion the events that would lead to the creation of the Brown Stockings. It also puts into perspective the celebration that erupted following the Brown Stockings 10-0 victory over the White Stockings on May 6, 1875. The Browns 4-3 win over the Chicagos two days later was just icing on the cake (and payback for stealing Peters and Collins).

Edit: This little story keeps getting worse. It seems that the White Stockings came back to St. Louis in October of 1874 and continued their dominance over the St. Louis clubs. On October 15, they defeated the Reds 17-3 and two days later they beat the Empires 13-0, the first time in the proud history of the Empire Base Ball Club that the team had ever been shutout. So for those scoring at home, the Chicagos were 11-0 against St. Louis clubs in 1874, outscoring them 215-63 for a run differential of +152.

The Reds First Big Win

If we accept E.H. Tobias' assertion that the Reds came into existence in 1873 (as I believe that the evidence suggests we should) then the Reds first big win against a St. Louis amateur power came on July 19, 1873 against the Turners. The Turner Base Ball Club had been in existence since at least 1869 and was a member of the State Base Ball Association. They challenged for the championship in 1872 and were able to take one game from the Empire Club. In 1873 they challenged the Empires again although they lost all three games to the champions. The Turners' reputation was such that when the Chicago White Stockings visited St. Louis in 1874 one of the teams that they played was the Turners.

Despite the Turners reputation as a top amateur team, the upstart Reds were actually favored in the first game between the two. On July 5, the two teams met and to the surprise of the Red Stocking faithful the Turners hung eleven runs on the new club in the third inning and went on to win the game 19-17. Tobias writes that Packy Dillon, the Reds' catcher, was suffering from a finger injury during the game that caused the Reds to shuffle their lineup to the teams' detriment.

The second game of the series between the two clubs took place on July 19. In what was described as "a splendid exhibition of cool, watchful playing," the Reds avenged their earlier defeat. Jumping out to a 7-0 lead, the Reds defeated the Turners 16-5 behind four runs by Billy Redmon and three each by John Paul Peters and center fielder Dean. Pidge Morgan pitched well, putting up goose eggs in six frames, and the Reds defense played outstandingly behind him, committing only "three or four" errors.

This was a significant victory for the Reds, establishing them as a power on the local baseball scene and validating the hype that had surrounded them entering the 1873 season. It also jump-started a successful season that saw the club take the Empires to a deciding fifth game in their championship series before falling to the defending champs.