The Boys Are Pretty Sanquine Of Success

A letter from John C. Chapman of the St. Louis Club, dated March 18 [1875], says:

"Our boys are all in fine trim now, they having been exercising in the gymnasium for the past six weeks, and I know from my own experience that it has greatly benefited us in every respect; as, besides improving our physical condition, it has given us confidence in our ability to do good work in the field.  When the weather is mild we go to the grounds for practice.  Last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday the weather was delightful, and our team took advantage of it to do some very good field-training.  On the 14th we had a practice-game with the Empires.  Only four innings were played, as a thunder shower obliged a suspension of play in the fifth.  Though we gave them Bradley to pitch to Seward's fine catching, our score at the close of the fourth inning stood 8 to 1 in our favor.  There was a large crowd of people out to see the game, and the play of the 'regulars,' as you call us, pleased them exceedingly.  Seward caught very well from Bradley's swift delivery.  He has been engaged by our club as change catcher.  This will be the only local player in our nine.  We expect to visit Louisville about the 16th of April, to play matches with the gentlemenly Eagles of that city - a very strong team - and also with the Louisville Olympics.  These will be our first games out of town.  The boys are pretty sanguine of success in their matches with the Chicago nine and the Westerns of Keokuk.  It is well to feel confident, you know, but not so to be too sure.  There's no 'soft thing' in baseball matches now-a-days, as the uncertainties of the game prevent anything of that kind.  The rivalry between Chicago and St. Louis now in baseball matters surpasses even that of 1870 between the Chicago and Cincinnati clubs.  When they meet it is anticipated that over 10,000 people will be present.  We shall not visit the East until the latter part of June, by which time we shall be in a very good trim to give your crack clubs a tough tussle for victory.  Let me say to you officially that the St. Louis Club will play no match games on Sunday.    John C. Chapman."

-Mears Baseball Scrapbook, Volume 4, 1856-1907


Chapman was like some kind of 19th century media star in 1875 and his reports shed a lot of light on what was happening with the Brown Stockings as they prepared to open the season.  It's good stuff. 

Just Beat Chicago

A letter from Chapman announces the arrival at St. Louis of the Brooklyn contingent of the St. Louis professional club, and John, in his epistle to the Brooklynites dated from the Everett House, St. Louis, Jan. 22, says:

Pearce, Dehlman, Fleet, and myself arrived here last Sunday morning, after a tough ride of over three days and as many nights.  We are all well pleased with our new friends.  They are all gentlemen of high standing and as fine a set of men as I have ever met.  They are very anxious for us to beat Chicago.  If we only do that - which I know we will - they will be satisfied.  This will be the greatest city in the country for baseball the coming season.,  Everyone appears to be red-hot on it here.  We had a very pleasant time last evening at the new club-rooms of Manager Graffen, a large party being present.  The directors of the new club are determined to have their club rules observed and to make each and every player live up to his contract.

-Mears Baseball Scrapbook, Volume 4, 1856-1907


It's always interesting and reasonably rare to hear directly from the players with regards to what was going on in St. Louis in 1875 (and this most likely comes from the January 20, 1875 issue of the Clipper).  I was most interested in what Chapman said about beating Chicago.  It's reasonably well known that the reason the Brown Stockings were put together was because of the failures of the St. Louis clubs to beat the White Stockings of Chicago but I don't think that I've ever heard anybody connected with the club state that.  This is direct, contemporary testimony supporting the thesis that the Brown Stockings formed because of the success the Chicagos enjoyed in St. Louis in 1874.   

An 1875 Interview With Jack Chapman

During the recent visit of the "Brown Stockings" to Louisville a number of the players were interviewed by the Courier-Journal relative to the base ball prospects for the season.  The last victim of reportorial pertinacity was Chapman, who is charged with having delivered himself as follows:

Reporter - How came so many Atlantic men to leave for St. Louis?

Mr. Chapman - St. Louis is bound to be the greatest place on the continent for base ball this season.  Her stock company offered big inducements, and we accepted.

R. - Who compose the St. Louis stock company, and why is it to be a great base ball place?

Mr. C. - Very rich and nice people form the company.  Its officers are mostly millionaires who desire their city ably represented in base ball.  The people "turn out" there in thousands, and are all agog with base ball excitement.  Five thousand people witnessed our practice game last week.

R. - What are base-ball players paid?

Mr. C. - Substitutes get from $900 to $1,200.  Regulars receive from $1,000 to $2,500.  Bob Ferguson, of our old club, gets $2,500 this year for captaining the Hartfords.

R. - What becomes of players during the winter?

Mr. C. - A good many loaf, and others work at different jobs.  Generally, whatever they hit upon that suits.

R. - From your observations, how do our Eagles compare with other clubs?

Mr. C. - They are a fine set, and compare favorably with any junior club in the land.  They are all gentlemen.

R. - In what respect are they deficient?

Mr. C. - Nerve.  All else they have, and only need more mixing with professionals and closer observance of the fine points of the game to become experts.

R. - Is Mr. Ellick a good player?

Mr. C. - He is very fine.

R. - Do you hope to beat the Boston Reds this season?

Mr. C. - We hope to do it, and I believe we shall.  The Reds are a good team, made excellent by having stuck together so long.  I consider the Athletics the stronger nine this year.  Harry Wright is the best captain in America.  The Mutuals were the best club of last season, and but for the bad feeling among members, would now be the champions.

R. - Do you think Louisville could support a professional club?

Mr. C. - I do, indeed, and am surprised she hasn't one.

-Mears Baseball Scrapbook, Volume 5


That's a cool interview and I have to dig around to see if I can find the rest of them. 

Jack Chapman Brings Down The House

The players engaged by the St. Louis Base Ball club, with the exception of Pike, Waitt and Hauge (not yet arrived), were introduced to the stockholders of the association last evening in the reading-room of the club manager's store, No. 619 Olive street, which the latter has neatly furnished for the convenience of the players and the base ball fraternity generally.  All the sporting papers are kept on file, and the latest base ball news cheerfully communicated.  A large number of the members dropped in during the evening and inspected the material that is to represent St. Louis in the coming struggle for the flag of 1875.  All the boys were in good health, and confident of giving a good account of themselves.  They are, one and all, muscular and active looking fellows, rather below the medium height, but in their lithe and easy carriage, as well as their bright eyes and brown skin, give evidence of good physical condition.  The evening was passed in discussing the probabilities and prospects of the coming summer...Messrs. Miller, Chapman and Dehlman sang some ballads in creditable style, Chapman bringing down the house with a sample of his famous whistling.  Regular exercise has been commenced and will be continued actively until the ball season begins.

-St. Louis Republican, January 22, 1875


Just when you think you know it all, you find out that Jack Chapman was a famous whistler. 

C. Orrick Bishop And The Brown Stockings

Bishop had played amateur baseball while attending Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, and pursuing legal studies in Louisville. His playing career ended when he opened a law practice in St. Louis during 1867, but Bishop remained active in promoting local amateur baseball. This long-time love for the sport persuaded Bishop to accept a major role in the development of the Brown Stockings. Team officials, impressed by his intimate knowledge of the game, appointed him as managing director and entrusted him with recruiting players for the team. Approaching this mission very seriously, Bishop spent a month away from his thriving legal practice to travel the East Coast in search of ballplayers. He focused his efforts in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, cities whose teams had previously traveled to St. Louis.

Bishop signed three players-shortstop Dickey Pearce, right fielder Jack Chapman, and first baseman Herman "Dutch" Dehlman-from the roster of the 1874 Brooklyn Atlantics. While in Brooklyn, Bishop also secured the services of Lipman Pike, who had played the previous season with the Harford Dark Blues...

Bishop discovered the rest of his starting nine in and around Philadelphia...(specifically among) the Easton, Pennsylvania, amateur team...

Bishop had put together a fine team, and the Brown Stockings' shareholders commended him for performing his duty "in a manner highly satisfactory to his confreres in the new venture." But by hiring a starting lineup of ballplayers born in either New York or Pennsylvania, Bishop had risked alienating some sectors of St. Louis society that yearned to see the city represented by homegrown talent.

-From Before They Were Cardinals

I think the interesting question here is who specifically made the decision to bring in the "Atlantic/Easton professionals." While I had always assumed that it was a collective decision by the Brown Stockings board, Jon David Cash makes it sound here as if it was Bishop's decision alone. As managing director, he was tasked by the board to put together the team and he then proceeded to head East to sign the players. Certainly he had the support of the board in this decision to bring in "outsiders" but a great deal of credit must be given to Bishop.

This decision to bring in the Eastern players was a watershed event in the history of St. Louis baseball and had a tremendous impact on the future of the game in St. Louis. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the Brown Stockings' board was made up of several members of the Union Base Ball Club, whose former president was Asa Smith, the visionary and forward-thinking modenizer of the St. Louis game in the 1860's. Certainly Smith had had a tremendous impact on the thinking of his fellow club members who sat on the Brown Stockings' board and I believe that if Smith had been alive in 1875 he would have approved of bringing in the Eastern players.

Remembrance Of Things Past

We were very proud of our St. Louis Browns, and equally jealous of the Chicago White Sox. One never gets this partisanship out of the blood. Only last Saturday the sculptor, Ruckstull, now sixty-eight, and sunk deep in the hollow of a library leather chair from which he was freely reading Montaigne's archaic French, paused at some mention of memory and said: "What a heaven sent gift memory is!" And then, with an accusing challenge, "Can you name the whole nine of the first St. Louis league team when they won that first series from Chicago in 1874?"

And trying to beat each other to it, we alternated and interfered and reached a flushed crescendo in a run of competing explosions, telling: "Bradley, pitch; Miller, catch; Dehlman, Bannon, Hogue, on bases; Dickey Pierce at short; and in the field? Cuthbert, Chapman, and-and Haight."

But we couldn't remember Chicago. We remembered the whiskers on some of those Lake Front athletes, as luxuriant as those now worn by the Cough Drop Brothers. And all the time the sculptor was commanding attention with a hand on which the hypnotic feature was an ossified contusion of the first phalange of the little finger, pitched to him on our old railroad nine of that epoch.

-From The Print of My Remembrance

Augustus Thomas (pictured above as a young man), author of The Print of My Remembrance, was a playwright and journalist who was born in St. Louis in 1857. As a young man, he worked on the railroad in St. Louis which explains the reference to "our old railroad nine."

I guess I should point out the irony of discussing how wonderful a thing memory is and then not being able to remember correctly the year the Brown Stockings joined the NA. Thomas and Frederick Ruckstull also misidentified the Brown Stockings starting nine. "Bannon" was Joe Battin and I don't know who "Haight" was but the name they were looking for was Lip Pike.

The Atlantic Base Ball Club Of St. Louis

Bill Kelsoe, in A Newspaper Man's Motion-Picture Of The City, makes two references to the Atlantics of Brooklyn playing in St. Louis. He mentions a game played between the Reds and the Atlantics on July 29, 1874 and another between the Empire Club and the Atlantics on May 2, 1875. When I read those references, I was immediately skeptical (as seen in this post).

The Atlantics did come to St. Louis in 1868. They defeated the Union 68-9 on June 27th and then beat the Empire 53-15 two days later. This is the only record of an Atlantics' visit to St. Louis that I can find. The only other link that I can find between St. Louis and the Atlantics of Brooklyn is the fact that Lip Pike, Dickey Pearce, and Jack Chapman all played for the Atlantics before joining the Brown Stockings in 1875.

My assumption was that Kelsoe, who in writing his book used both the records of numerous St. Louis newspapers as well as his own personal recollections and those of his acquaintances, had simply confused the 1868 visit of the Atlantics of Brooklyn with games played in 1874 and 1875 by a St. Louis amateur team also called the Atlantics. He was, after all, writing almost fifty years after the fact and these things happen. When going through my notes, I found a reference to an Atlantic Base Ball Club in St. Louis that supports my assumption. This Atlantic Club was an amateur team that played its home games at the Compton Avenue Base Ball Park owned by Thomas McNeary.

In the April 5, 1875 edition of the St. Louis Globe, there is an account of a game played between the Reds and the Atlantics in which the Reds emerged with a 32-4 victory. Playing for the Atlantics that day were Libby, Price, Williams, Jones, Rippy, Myers, Kelly, Mueller, and Devinney. The Globe states that it was the intention of the Atlantics to join the Missouri State Association that year and compete for the amateur baseball championship of Missouri. The officers of the Atlantics were listed as J. Walter (president), E. Hogan (secretary), George Waugh (treasurer), and L. Meyer (director).

One has to assume, based on this evidence, that the team that defeated the Reds at the Compton Avenue Park in 1874 and the team that was beaten by the Empire at the Grand Avenue Park in 1875 was the Atlantic Base Ball Club of St. Louis and not the Atlantics of Brooklyn.

A Brillant Struggle Between The Home Clubs

On May 29, 1875, "(about) one thousand spectators were in attendance" to witness the Reds play the Brown Stockings at the Grand Avenue Ballpark in the second and last game of the season between the two clubs. The Browns won the game 6-0 in what the St. Louis Globe-Democrat described as a "brilliant struggle".

"The Browns succeeded," wrote the Globe, "by good fielding and the weak hitting of their opponents...while (the Reds), by equally good fielding, kept the score of the Browns down to six runs." George Bradley, pitching for the Browns, held the Reds to five hits while "Chicagoing" the crosstown rivals. The Browns' Joe Battin, Lip Pike, and Jack Chapman were singled out by the Globe for their fine hitting while Joe Ellick and Charlie Houtz got two hits apiece for the Reds. The defensive play of the game was probably Ned Cuthbert's "brilliant running catch" in short left field that retired Joe Blong in the ninth inning.

I am continually amazed at the fact that these teams only played two games against each other. By contrast, the Athletics and Whites, both of Philadelphia, played ten games. The Centennials of Philadelphia played almost half of their 14 games against the other Philadelphia teams. The New York Mutuals and the Brooklyn Atlantics played seven games against each other.

While it's true that the Reds did not schedule NA games after July 4th, the opportunity was there in the first half of the season for the Reds and Browns to play each other. The fact that they didn't lends credence to the Globe's insinuations that there was animosity between the two organizations.