Cincinnati Red Stocking Baseball Team

A photo of the first major league base ball team , the Cincinnati Red stockings.... more

by Gary Wonning

Title

Cincinnati Red Stocking Baseball Team

Artist

Gary Wonning

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

A photo of the first major league base ball team , the Cincinnati Red stockings.

The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings team photograph.
The original Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first openly all-professional team, was founded in 1866, and became fully professional in 1869. The Red Stockings won 130 straight games throughout 1869 and 1870, before being defeated by the Brooklyn Atlantics. Star players included brothers Harry and George Wright, Fred Waterman, and pitcher Asa Brainard. The 1869 Red Stockings made an eastern swing of 21 games and went undefeated. According to Walter Camp, the team received a banquet and a "champion bat...this rather remarkable testimonial was twenty-seven feet long and nine inches in diameter." The following year, the team lost only one game. They were defeated at the Brooklyn Athletic's Capitoline grounds park. According to Camp, the Red Stockings lost 8–7 in 11 innings. The game apparently served as a precursor to today's unruly crowds because he wrote: "A crowd of ten thousand people assembled to witness this match, and so lost their heads in the excitement as to give the Western men a very unfair reception." [See: "Base-Ball For The Spectator" Walter Camp, Century Magazine October 1889]

Uploaded

June 14th, 2011