George Wright — June 14, 1870
The Greatest Plays You Never Saw, №3
This week’s great play, captured neither on film nor photo, precedes the onset of Major League Baseball and even that of the National Association. But it was a game played by two wholly professional teams, the Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Brooklyn Atlantics. Its crucial play was accomplished by the greatest shortstop of the 19th century, and it gave rise to two enduring innovations: the infield fly rule — that enduring subject of exegesis — and the practice of switch hitting. This game of June 14, 1870 remains, in my estimation, the greatest ever played.
In 1869 the touring Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first openly salaried club, took on all comers, from Maine to California and never tasted defeat. Before squaring off against the Atlantics, they had won 84 consecutive games. By playing openly as professionals — neither paying salaries under the table nor sharing gate receipts — the Reds may be said to have inspired the very concept of a professional league.
The team’s star was manager Harry Wright’s brother George, who commanded the top salary at $1,400. This lineup of the nation’s best baseball talent rolled through its 1869 touring schedule with ease. Playing against all amateur comers, the Reds won either 57 or 64 times that season — depending on whether you count all games against aggregate or “picked” nines” or not — and did not lose a single game.
At the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, the Reds and Atlantics were knotted at 5–5 in the eighth. There things stood at the conclusion of nine innings. Captain Bob Ferguson of the Atlantics agreed to a draw, as was the custom, but Harry Wright of the Reds insisted that the game be played to a conclusion, “if it took all summer.” Backed up by Reds president Aaron B. Champion, he ordered his men back on the field. Ferguson then did the same for his Atlantics.
“In the tenth inning,” reported the New York Sunday Mercury, “on the Atlantic side, after [Lipman] Pike had been caught out, [Dan] McDonald and [Dickey] Pearce batted finely for their bases, and the one was at first base and the other at second with but one man out and the winning run almost sure of attainment, when [Charlie] Smith sent a high ball to George Wright who was standing back of short-field. George, instead of taking the ball on the fly standing up, stooped down and letting the ball fall in his hands and bound out again on the ground, picked it up, threw it to [Fred] Waterman, who stood at third base, prepared for the play [emphasis mine — jt], and thereby put out McDonald, forced off at third; and as Waterman promptly threw the ball to [second baseman Charley] Sweasy, Pearce was also forced off at second, the double play ending the inning for a blank.”
How did Waterman and Wright know to be ready for the dropped pop fly? Because Wright had played for the Washington Nationals on July 17, 1867 when, according to The Ball Players’ Chronicle, in the sixth inning, Louisville’s “A. Robinson hit a high ball to George Fox, who was playing at second…. Fox held the ball on the fly, but in turning to throw it he dropped it.” The result: a double play.
After a scoreless 10th, the Reds appeared to settle the issue with two runs in the top of the 11th. But [pitcher Asa] Brainard allowed a leadoff single to Smith, then followed with a wild pitch that sent him all the way to third. First baseman Joe Start drove a long fly to right field, where Cal McVey had a spectator jump on his back. The Mercury reported: “McVey quickly threw him off, and sent the ball in to Wright…. The fellow who made the effort to stop McVey was at once arrested.”
Smith scored, and now Start was on third. The right-handed Ferguson “then took the bat,” reported the Brooklyn Eagle, “and with commendable nerve batted left hand, to get the ball out of George Wright’s hands,” thus becoming the game’s first documented switch hitter. (From 1876 through the end of last season, the number of switch hitters with at least 20 plate appearances is 1,039.) “Fergy” hit a single, sending Start home. Then, on an error, he scored the winning run.
Reds president Champion telegraphed the following message back to Cincinnati: “Atlantics 8, Cincinnatis 7. The finest game ever played. Our boys did nobly, but fortune was against us. Eleven innings played. Though beaten, not disgraced.”
Wright’s brainstorm lay in taking advantage of a stated rule. The infield fly rule, as we might recognize it, did not come into being until 25 years later and took its present form in 1901.
George Wright — June 14, 1870 was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.