A Look At Management And Fans In 1877

It is undoubtedly true that the phases of base ball in the different cities are as varied as to make for an interesting study if one had time to pursue them. (In St. Louis), for instance, the patron and lover of the game is entirely different than anything else in the world and, like the whole development, deserves so much study as you can give space for.

The (Brown Stocking) Club itself is duly incorporated and has a great plenty of officers. Chief among them are Mr. J.B.C. Lucas, the President, a young man whose father left him some such indefinite sum as the average citizen speaks of as "ten or twelve million, sir." Unquestionably Mr. Lucas is a fine head to the Club, and is of course the representative of the young men of wealth who live a part of the time in St. Louis; and, to their great credit be it said, go to the ball-matches instead of to some worse places. Concerning their behavior when there, I may wan to say a word hereafter. Mr. Campbell O. Bishop, who is the Vice-President of the Club, is a lawyer in excellent practice and with a good reputation. He stands for the professional part of the Club's support.

Charles A. Fowle, the Club's Secretary, is a prosperous merchant and represents a street full of stock. He probably suffers more than any other man in the management, because, if his Club should suffer defeat, and he should thereafter appear on the street, he would be at once surrounded by indignant stockholders, who demand an explanation of the cause of the loss of the game. Let it be to Mr. Fowle's credit tat he furnishes the necessary talk, and keeps things smooth where they would most assuredly spike up with a less even-tempered man to run matters...to find a more fitting representative in this city would be a difficult matter. Behind the officers named there are a Board, a Treasurer, and a bunch of stockholders, who (spend their time), as far as I could judge, to petting different members of the nine, and, therefore, without the slightest desire or intention to do so, stirring up a row in the camp. I am informed by a gentleman connected with the Club that this "buttering" players from a spirit of partisanship and favoritism, without approving or disapproving their work in the game, was one of the elements which (he said) prevented them from winning the flag last year. I am compelled to add my belief that if Lucas (wealth), Bishop (legal knowledge), and Fowle (Yankee sharpness, shrewdness, and sense) had the whole concern in their own hands, they would win the flag and make money while doing it.

Referring back to the word "buttering" used above, I want to call attention to the fact that the whole credit of games won in St. Louis is given to the pitcher, and he cannot go to the bat without a round of applause-at least that has been the case this year. A more foolish notion can hardly be imagined.

A word is due to the St. Louis Club grounds, called Grand Avenue Park, and one of the prettiest bits of land in the country-when you get to it. I can hardly make a Chicagoan understand its location by comparison. Consider, then, that if you in Chicago were going to a ball game just like in St. Louis, you would have to go down State street fourteen blocks beyond where the cars now run, and then turn off to the right and go about twelve blocks further. In other words, you would have to ride in a street-car to a point twelve blocks beyond the Stock Yards and Dexter Park. When you have got this through your head, you will understand what the St. Louis citizen has to undergo to see his favorites play ball.

This matter of the location of the park has unquestionably a considerable influence on the number of people who attend, because they understand that to go to a ball-match is not a slipping out after work is nearly done but a serious and solemn matter which means a half-day lost. Despite this fact, the crowds are good, and a first-class Club always does well-at least so long as there is interest in the home nine. The Chicagos took more money last Tuesday than they will in both Louisville games...

With the heartiest wishes for the success of the St. Louis Club, it is impossible to compliment the city on its base-ball audiences. The grand stand is filled in good part with real ladies and perfect gentlemen; but, as has before been said, they are so bitterly partisan as to one or two players in their nine that they cannot see anything else. I have been on the watch in front of that stand, and heard a owl like tat of forty demons (well-behaved, well-dressed demons, I mean) go up because one man (say Remsen) made an easy catch, while an almost impossible stop (say Blong) would pass unrecognized. It is impossible not to recognize these little cliques, and they do no end of harm. To describe the outside crowd-the barbarians-hoi-polloi-would break up anybody's objections. They have a long row of seats to themselves and they take their 50 cents out in yelling-and if yells were only a cent apiece they would cheat the management at that rate. Nobody can possibly object to enthusiasm and all that, but when a parcel of men and half-grown boys empty upon the heads of a player opposed to their nine a volley of the most utterly filthy epithets known to the slang language of the world, it is proper to note that fact...The writer has heard a lot of boys and men who must have gone through the grand stand if they were honestly in the ground, shout out to John Glenn while he was running for a fly within a little distance of where the party stood, "God d--n your black soul to hell, drop that ball you ---of a ---." and then a moment after when he was running for a foul, "You black-hearted ---------, drop it or I'll cut you in two." The same things, or nearly, have been said to first basemen so loudly that scorers and reporters on top of the stand, a hundred feet off, could hear them plainly. Evidently, the "pigpen" needs reforming. And lest there should be some question of doubt about a plain matter, your correspondent wishes to add that he blames no part of this filthy or profane language on the management of the St. Louis Club. Being, one and all, gentleman, they have no sympathy with the scoundrels or the mob. They could not very well help themselves if they wanted to, and the whole scurrilous practice must be charged upon the imperfect civilization of the masses, for which the social economist, and not the ball-managers, must find a remedy.

Let no man dare to misunderstand me, and say that I lay the loss of any game to this blackguarding. I disavow all that. Glenn and Spalding caught the balls after which they were running when they were so foully bespattered with muddy names. Passing over the fact that both are gentlemen, and never in their lives did anything to be called names for, thee fact remains that the St. Louis cheap public feel so strongly over their Club that they cannot well refrain from breaking out into their native blackguardism. The question whether a man must submit, whenever he contracts to play ball, to have his mother's good name abused by a St. Louis crowd, is one on which I need not enter. I am not little sorry that the game in St. Louis should be so far an exception to others as to make, so far as my experience goes, a necessity to have loafers as patrons. i think I am right in saying that it is the only city which does.

I wish to add-and I do it with considerable loss of pride in, and respect for, my profession-that I am afraid that the St. Louis press is partly responsible for this state of things. The papers here have faithfully inculcated the idea that their Club was the best in the world, and they have hinted, and once in awhile said, that if they lost it must be corruptly. Let me cite a case: A paper, which stands in St. Louis a shade below the station of the News in Chicago, but which is largely read by the bums and slums, said after the 4-2 game last Tuesday that it was thrown by St. Louis for the purpose of getting a larger crowd Thursday...upon which another paper...gravely reads the League a lecture on the sinfulness of giving away games for gate-money, when assuming to reform the game, taking its facts from the other previous idiot's assertions.

-The Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1877

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.

C. Orrick Bishop

Campbell Orrick Bishop, a prominate lawyer and judge in St. Louis, was a member and officer of the Union Base Ball Club as well as a member of the board of directors of the 1875 Brown Stockings.

Bishop was born in Union, Missouri on Decemer 28, 1842 to David H. and Sarah Lee (Lindsay) Bishop and graduated from St. Louis Central High School in 1858. After attending Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, he went to law school in Louisville, Kentucky, graduating and being admitted to the bar in 1867.

A partner in the Bishop & Rollins law firm in St. Louis, Bishop also served as assistant circuit attorney from 1883-1897 and again from 1901-1905. A close associate of Missouri Gov. Joseph Folk, he was named to the circuit court bench in March of 1905 and served as a judge until 1907. The highlight of his public career was his involvement with Folk and others in the 1902-1904 "Boodle Scandal," helping to ferret out corruption amongst the political and business class in Missouri. Ironically, one of those caught up in the scandal was Bishop's fellow Union Club member Charles Hunt Turner.

Bishop, who according to W.E. Kelsoe "used to play (baseball) a little," served as the secretary of the Union Club in the early 1870's and Kelsoe states that he was the "last president of the Unions." In 1875, he was a member of the board of directors of the newly formed Brown Stockings (along with, again, Charles Turner).

Bishop was also involved in the governing of the National Association in 1875 and the organization of the National League in late 1875 and 1876. When William Hulbert was trying to organize the League, according to Harold Seymour, "he traveled to St. Louis...to confer with Charles Fowle...and Campbell Orrick Bishop, an attorney who had played with the St. Louis Unions in the 1860's and then became Vice President of the Association and a member of its Judiciary Committee. Bishop drew up a constitution for a new league based upon a draft submitted to him by Hulbert."

A life-long bachelor, Bishop died on August 26, 1929.

General Sherman Joins The Union Club

Among the many pleasant reminiscences of these days was the interest manifested by men of prominence in the National game. Among those to be recalled was that grim old warrior General W. T. Sherman, who was an habitual attendant at the prominent games during the years that he resided in St. Louis. Noticing this fact C. Orrick Bishop, then Secretary of the Union Club, and now Assistant Circuit Attorney of this city, caused the General's election as an honorary member of the club and received from the General a characteristic letter of thanks for the honor thus conferred. General Sherman's usual companion on these occasions was Colonel A. R. Easton, after whom Easton Avenue was named, and very frequently Gerald B. Allen, the millionaire foundry man, made one of the General's party of deeply interested spectators.

-E. H. Tobias, writing in The Sporting News, December 14, 1895

Best I can tell, this must have taken place sometime between 1874 and 1876 when Sherman's headquarters were located in St. Louis. Tobias includes this story during his detailing of the 1869 and 1870 seasons but the event obviously took place several years later. W. E. Kelsoe notes Sherman's attendance at a game in 1875 and places it in the context of the Brown Stockings' first victory over the White Stockings in May of 1875. With that information, I think it's a good guess that Sherman was "drafted" into the Union Club in 1875.

The Arrangement Of Its Playing Nine Was Deferred

I posted before about the claim by The New York Times that the Union Club "disbanded" in November of 1870. While it's certainly an interesting and reasonable assertion, it doesn't exactly appear to be the case. E. H. Tobias, while writing in The Sporting News (December 28, 1895) about the 1870 and 1871 baseball season in St. Louis, has a different interpretation with regards to the end of the Union Club.

While detailing the election of officers for the various St. Louis clubs in 1871, Tobias wrote the following:

The Union Club was officered by Asa W. Smith, president; W. B. Edgar, vice-president; C. O. Bishop, secretary and Chas. H. Turner, treasurer. The arrangement of its playing nine was deferred until quite late in the season. Strong, pitcher, and Maxwell, second base, had severed their connection with the club and cast their fortunes with the Washington University nine and as several other players were away from home at college the organization of its players was impossible at the usual date.

So it's Tobias' assertion that the Union Club, itself, did not disband in 1870/1871 but rather that they had difficulty, for various reasons, in fielding a nine.

He goes on to write that "The State Base Ball Association held its annual election on May 10 (1871), in the hall of the Empire Club...The Union Club had no delegate present." It's rather significant that the Union Club was not represented in the state association, an organization that was built by Asa Smith. The decision by the Union Club to not field a nine and not take part in the state association, I believe, speaks to something more significant than just a problem with players being away at college. While the specifics of the Times claim may not be accurate, it may be correct in its assertion that the members of the Union Club were unhappy with direction that baseball was taking and had decided to no longer take part in the game.

"During all this season the Union Club had not been heard from, much to the regret of the champion Empires, who despairing of meeting home mettle worthy of their steel, finally resolved to go South (in September of 1871)..." Tobias' report of the Empires trip to New Orleans confirms that the Union Club had not fielded a nine all season. In the January 4, 1896 issue of The Sporting News, Tobias goes on to write that in the spring of 1872, "The Union Club remained in a comatose state with but feeble efforts being made to resuscitate it." He also firmly states that the Union Club "had folded its tent and stolen away..."

(In 1874) Asa W. Smith and a few more of its old members attempted to revive the old Union Club, but the undertaking proved to be up-hill work for though it was announced as prepared to enter the base ball arena against all other clubs and did enter into arrangements for games, it had great trouble in bringing onto the field a full nine at the critical moment. On several of these occasions, by consent, their nine was filled up from members of other clubs who chanced to be present. Many rumors were set afloat in the month of May to the effect that the club was about to come to the front with a stronger team than it ever had or that existed in the city, but all these reports proved baseless...The Western Club of Keokuk came to St. Louis (in June) under an agreement to play the Union Club but at the appointed hour the latter club was unable to present a nine. Under these circumstances an impromptu nine was secured at the park consisting of three Unions, three Empires, one Red Stocking, one Turner and one from the Gymnasium Club...The Unions, in its game with the Boston Club (in June), put on players from other clubs...

-E. H. Tobias, The Sporting News, January 18, 1896

The Union Base Ball Club that took part in the fantastic 1874 season in St. Louis was a bastardized version of the vanguard championship club that had been such an important part of the history of St. Louis baseball during the post-Civil War era. This attempt to revive the Union nine did not survive the death of Asa Smith in August of 1874.

Charles H. Turner

This weekend I was doing research on three projects that I wanted to get off my plate. The first was a basic genealogy of the Lucas’s, a prominent St. Louis family that was deeply involved in the history of 19th century baseball in the city. The second was the makeup of the board of directors of the 1875 St. Louis Brown Stockings. In A Newspaper Man’s Motion-Picture View of the City, Bill Kelsoe lists the members of the board and I wanted to gather some general information about the men who were instrumental in financing and organizing the team. Finally, I wanted to find more information about the social makeup of the Union Base Ball Club of St. Louis. Based on a few sources that I have, it appears that some of the members of the Union Club came from prominent and wealthy St. Louis families. That members of the Union Club came from the city’s upper class seems to be fairly unique among baseball clubs of the era and demanded more research. While I was unable to finish any of the three projects, interestingly all three research threads came together in the person of Charles H. Turner. As a wise man once said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Charles Turner was born in 1849 to Henry S. Turner and Julia Hunt. Henry Turner was a West Point graduate and classmate and friend of William T. Sherman who served with Stephan Kearney in the Mexican-American War. Julia Hunt was the daughter of Theodore Hunt, a naval officer and favorite in St. Louis social circles, and Anne Lucas, the only daughter of J.B.C. Lucas, one of the earliest settlers of St. Louis and one of its wealthiest and most influential citizens. H.S. Turner, with the support of his wife’s powerful family, would serve as a member of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, the Missouri State Legislature, and as Assistant United States Treasurer. In the 1880 census, he listed his occupation as “retired capitalist.” In the 1870’s, H.S. Turner, as a member of the Board of Aldermen, would introduce legislation that established the street car system in St. Louis. Within a few years, his son Charles would own the company that his father helped to establish.

Charles Turner, according to Jeremiah Fruin, was an original member of the Union Base Ball Club of St. Louis. Other members of Turner’s social set who were members of the club included his cousin Robert Lucas, Shepard Barkley, Joseph Charles Cabanne, Orrick Bishop, and Harry Carr. Turner, a catcher, was described as a part of the original battery of the Union nine. He also pitched and played second base for the club. His membership in the original Union Club raises some questions. If the club was founded in the early 1860’s at about the same time as the Empire Club (and they were certainly playing baseball by 1861) then Turner could not have been an original member, being too young. It’s most likely that Turner did not join the club until after the Civil War.

In 1875, Turner was involved in the founding of the Brown Stockings. With the urging of newspaper men W.C. Steigers and R.P. Thompson, “several young St. Louisans of prominence” set up an organization to create a professional baseball team in St. Louis that could compete with the professional Chicago White Stockings. The board of directors that was elected to run the new organization included J.B.C Lucas, president; W.C. Steigers, vice-president; Charles A. Fowle, secretary; and Charles Turner, treasurer. Other members of the board included Orrick Bishop, William Medart, and Joseph Carr. Interestingly, the Union Club was heavily represented on the board with Turner, Steigers, and Bishop all being members and with the possibility that Lucas and Carr were as well. The Lucas family was also well represented with Turner joining his cousin J.B.C. Lucas on the board.

While it’s unknown exactly what role Turner played with the Brown Stockings, he was involved, according to Jon David Cash, in the signing of the Louisville players in 1877. These signings which were an attempt to duplicate Chicago’s raid on the Boston Red Stockings, coupled with the gambling scandal that involved both the signed Louisville players as well as members of the Brown Stocking nine, helped to bring about the collapse of the Brown Stockings organization and the experiment with professional baseball in St. Louis.

It’s difficult to overstate the prominence of Charles Turner in 19th century St. Louis. Not only was he a member of the wealthiest St. Louis family, he also married into another prominent family. His wife Margaret was the daughter of Stephen Barlow, the cousin of Stephen Douglas and a wealthy politician and railroad magnate in St. Louis. Turner himself was the president of the Suburban Railway Company, which owned the St. Louis street car system, and the Commonwealth Trust Company. He was described by Lincoln Steffens as being a millionaire and served on the St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners in the 1880’s. Turner also was a member of the Board of Directors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Company, which raised the money to put on the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis.

Turner’s influence in St. Louis was exposed in a negative way by Steffen in 1902. In what became known as “The Boodle Scandal,” Turner was shown to have been a member of a cabal that bribed city aldermen and state legislators in order to get legislation passed that was favorable to their business interests. In grand jury testimony, Turner was shown to have paid over $144,000 in bribes to secure legislation that would double the value of the Suburban Railway Company, which he was looking to sell. The case was tied up in court for several years and Turner died in 1906 before facing the legal consequences of his actions.

While “The Boodle Scandal” and Steffen’s exposes may have tarnished Turner’s reputation, his legacy was saved by the service of his grandson. Charles Turner Joy was the son of Charles Turner’s only daughter, Lucy Barlow Turner, and Duncan Joy. He graduated from Annapolis in 1916 and served in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. During Korea, Rear Admiral Charles Turner Joy served as Commander of Naval Forces, Far East. After he passed away in 1956, a destroyer was named after him. The USS Turner Joy, pictured above, served the nation proudly until it was decommissioned in 1982.

Kelsoe On St. Louis Amateur Baseball In the 1860's

AMATEUR BASEBALL.

The death of Asa W. Smith, president of the Union Baseball Club of St. Louis, was reported in the papers of August 2 and 3 (1874). Asa, who was a son of Sol Smith, the actor, was accidentally drowned off the coast of Maine, at Biddeford Pool. The Keokuk Baseball Club had arrived in St. Louis, but the game scheduled with the Unions was abandoned. The visitors played the Empires, winning by 7 to 6.

The Unions were the principal competitors of the Empires for the city and state amateur baseball championship, the Reds being excluded from the contest, as some of their players were paid for their services. The Empires had held the championship two or three years and were again winners in 1874. The last president of the Unions, Judge C. Orrick Bishop, remembers that their winning championship team consisted of Eugene Greenleaf and Jim Freeman, pitcher and catcher; Joseph Charles ("Charley") Cabanne, E. C. Meacham and Rufus J. Lackland, Jr., on the bases; Bob Duncan, at short, and Asa W. Smith, Bill Duncan (Bob's brother) and Tom McCordell in the field. The last surviving member of that team, Mr. Cabanne, died in 1922 (March 17). Judge Bishop used to play occasionally, and so did W. C. Steigers (who died May 25, 1923), well known for over forty years as business manager of the Post-Dispatch; also Robert J. Lucas (died May 18, 1922). Judge Shepard Barclay, remembered as a crack pitcher in his college days, pitched for the Unions in a notable victory over the Nationals of Washington. Then there were Arthur Strong, Henry Berning, Harry Carr, Billy Yore and others who had won honors with the Olympics of Washington University or the Pickwicks of St. Louis University before joining the Unions. In their best days the Unions and Empires made a good showing against the best clubs of the country, including the famous Cincinnati Reds, the Forest Cities of Cleveland, the Rockfords and the Nationals, the Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Excelsiors of Chicago, the Unions of Morrisania, N. Y., and the Athletics of Philadelphia.

Among the local ball players of note in the sixties and who became prominent later in the industrial field were John D. Fitzgibbon, Jeremiah Fruin and John W. O'Connell. Mr. Fruin died in March, 1912, and Mr. O'Connell in August, 1918. Mr. Fitzgibbon is still with us. All three played with the Empires, Mr. Fitzgibbon being the club's captain and pitcher. When I called Capt. Fitzgibbon on the phone recently (in November,1923) he named, in addition to Fruin and O'Connell, already mentioned, most of their fellow players of fifty and more years ago-Pitcher Little, Tom Oran (catcher), John W. Shocky (later assistant chief of the St. Louis Fire Department and killed at a fire), Tom Murray, Tom Walsh, Charley Stevens, Adam Wirth, John Heath and Joe Schimper (a fireman who played ball under the name of Cambers, as stated elsewhere, and who, like Shocky, was killed by a falling wall at a fire). All these had passed away, said the veteran builder, except Stevens, one of the last to go being Fireman Wirth of Engine Company No. 14, a famous first baseman in amateur days.

The night of the conversation with Pitcher Fitzgibbon I had one also with Judge Shepard Barclay, referred to in a former paragraph as a crack pitcher of the Unions in his St. Louis college days. The judge had pitched for the Pickwicks of St. Louis University in their games with the Olympics of Washington University before he joined the Unions. He pitched the Unions to victory in one of their games with the Empires for the championship of Missouri and was their pitcher when the St. Louis Unions defeated the Nationals of Washington City. His fame as a pitcher for a college club continued with him after he left St. Louis University. This was the Barclay who pitched in the game that won for University of Virginia the championship of the South over the Washington and Lee University, the contest being reported by Chadwick for his publication. Nor was that all. Not content with his pitching victories in America, the St. Louisan crossed the ocean and pitched a winning game for "Columbia," a newly organized college club in the University of Berlin. The victory, however, dearest to his heart, the one this ex-member of the Missouri State Supreme Court loves to talk about most, was the one played in St. Louis, May 23, 1867, by the Olympics and the Pickwicks, a contest between the college clubs of, respectively, Washington University of St. Louis and St. Louis University, the latter winning with Barclay as the pitcher. The Judge remembers that Nat Hazard pitched for the Olympics and that the only player in that locally famous game still living, besides the two pitchers, is George A. Strong, now a New York lawyer,who played second base for Washington University. The umpire of the game was Adam Wirth, of the St. Louis Fire Department, as before stated, and nationally famous (because of the honor of having his picture in Harper's Weekly) as the first baseman of the old St. Louis Empire Club. The judge told of a game in which one side scored 127 runs, but I think that was another contest, perhaps one between the Unions and Nationals. Judge Barclay died November 17, 1925.

I have several letters somewhere from Henry Chadwick, but have mislaid them. In one he expressed a great desire that I try to locate a championship baseball won by the St. Louis Unions, rivals of the Empires, and have it presented to The Missouri Historical Society, but I have not been able to find it. The ball has gilt lettering and some reader of this page may know where it is.

-From A Newspaper Man's Motion-Picture Of The City

Note: This is a fascinating piece by Kelsoe on the St. Louis amateur baseball scene of the 1860's. The first thing that jumped out at me was Kelsoe's statement that the Union had defeated the Nationals which was simply not true. Also, there's obviously some connection between the St. Louis Fire Department and the Empire Club which I was only vaguely aware of and that needs further research. It's also interesting that Kelsoe states that the Reds were excluded from the amateur championship when I have other sources that say they not only competed for the championship but they actually won it in the early 1870's. Finally, the ball that Chadwick was looking for may have been the ball that was used in the game between the Morning Stars and the Cyclones in 1860, the first game played in St. Louis. Supposedly, the ball was gilded and used as a trophy ball in St. Louis for years. According to Merritt Griswold, the ball was last in the hands of the Empire Club.