Fred Goldsmith in the 1930s, contemplating his glory days as a pitcher with the Chicagos of the 1880s.
To reduce revolving of players between clubs and to contain costs, the National League enacted a reserve clause after the 1879 season. By reserving key players for the season following, National League president William Hulbert sought to assure the fans and, more important, the clubs, that the business of baseball would be characterized by continuity rather than a game of musical chairs with each new campaign. At first the reserve clause applied only to five players per club, who by and large were pleased to be so designated — to be reserved meant to be assured of a job.
However, it did not take long for problems to manifest. George Wright, the greatest player in the land for a decade, with the Red Stockings of first Cincinnati and then Boston, in 1879 left Boston to lead the Providence Grays to the championship. On April 21, 1880, however, he declined that club’s final contract offer, perhaps preferring to stay in Boston and mind his sporting-goods business. As a reserved player, however, he was obligated to play for Providence and no other; he elected to sit out the season.
If bucking the reserve clause could cost the league the services of one of its top drawing cards, it would not take a seer to predict troubled times ahead.
The NL had been restored to eight teams for 1879 — after two seasons with six — but small town entrants such as Troy and later Worcester promised stability, not profit. Since the league’s founding only Chicago and Boston had ever made any money. While Chicago would come to dominate the 1880s, as Boston had the ’70s, Hulbert’s insistence on a fifty-cent admission and a ban on liquor sales opened the door to a rival league.
By 1880 baseball was still new as a professional sport, but had a history well recalled by its fans. Before penmen entered their arcane symbols in scorebooks, a designated scorer would cut notches into a piece of lath to count the runs for each side.Worcester had been slated to enter the NL in 1879, along with Troy, but expressed last-minute jitters about the mandatory 50-cent admission. They backed out, then swallowed hard for 1880.On June 12, 1880, Worcester’s Lee Richmond, pitching from that year’s new 50-foot distance, threw a perfect game against the Cleveland Blues. In 1879, while still a student at Brown University, he had tossed a no-hitter for Worcester in an exhibition against the Chicago White Stockings, his first professional appearance.Two weeks before the perfect game, “Daisy” Richmond had a very bad day. The cartoon, one of many chronicling the club’s 1880 campaign, is from Frederick E. Pollard’s “Ups and Downs of the Worcester Baseball Club, League Season 1880,” which survives in a lone copy at the Hall of Fame.On September 2, 1880, two baseball teams composed of employees of Boston department stores — Jordan Marsh and R. H. White — groped their way to a 16–16 tie under dim artificial lights at Nantasket Beach, Massachusetts.By the mid-1880s Ben Shibe joined with Al Reach as joint owners of the Philadelphia Athletics and a sporting-goods empire. But until then each had his own retail emporium and manufactured baseballs in a dizzying array of styles. In addition to the lively “Rocket” ball above, Shibe offered the Bounding Rock, Red Dead Balls, Red Stocking, and the Cock-of-the Walk.After winning the first NL pennant in a cakewalk, the Chicago White Stockings slumbered through the 1870s, only to reemerge as a powerhouse in the next decade. Their stars included Cap Anson, King Kelly, Ned Williamson, and pitchers Fred Goldsmith and pony-sized Larry Corcoran, who tossed no-hitters in 1880 and 1882.The Recreation Grounds at 25th and Folsom,in the Mission District of San Francisco dated to 1868. The undefeated Cincinnati Red Stockings played three games here in 1869. This view is from 1880.The Knickerbocker Club of San Francisco could not play against touring NL clubs while employing players the league had blacklisted, notably Ed “The Only” Nolan (seated in center row, right) whose epic season with Indianapolis in 1877 had thrust that city briefly into the NL.After starring in baseball with Oberlin College’s inaugural nine in 1881, Fleet Walker (seated at left, middle) was invited to play for the strong semiprofessional White Sewing Machine club, based in Cleveland. The visiting Whites ran into a problem before a scheduled game with the Eclipse club in Louisville, who objected to Walker playing on account of his color.In Connecticut, African Americans played organized baseball as early as 1868, when the Middletown Heroes played in Douglas Park against visiting white teams. Here a team of hotel employees from Danbury, ca. 1881, present as ready to play ball.The Troy franchise (1881 club above) may seem a mere footnote in MLB history, but the Trojans provided out-of-town previews of four men who would light up Broadway when the franchise was vacated in favor of New York (the Gothams) in 1883: pitchers Tim Keefe (top left) and Mickey Welch bottom left) and batsmen Buck Ewing (top right) and Roger Connor (center right), Hall of Famers all. A potential fifth, Dan Brouthers, had also broken in with Troy in 1879 and 1880, but washed out, then returned with Buffalo to become the game’s top slugger.The modest ballpark in the foreground, Albany’s Riverside Park, was an alternate home site when the Troy grounds were unplayable. On September 10, 1881 Roger Connor, the feared hitter whose career home run record stood until Babe Ruth topped it, hit MLB’s first grand-slam homer right here, and it was a walkoff, with two outs in the ninth to defeat Worcester’s Lee Richmond 8–7.
