Before They Were Cardinals: Major League Baseball in Nineteenth–Century St. Louis Jon David Cash University of Missouri Press Before They Were Cardinals SportsandAmerican CultureSeries BruceClayton,Editor Before They Were Cardinals Major League Baseball in Nineteenth-Century St. Louis Jon David Cash University of Missouri Press Columbia and London Copyright © 2002 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 54321 0605040302 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cash, Jon David. Before they were cardinals : major league baseball in nineteenth-century St. Louis. p. cm.—(Sports and American culture series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8262-1401-0 (alk. paper) 1. Baseball—Missouri—Saint Louis—History—19th century. I. Title: Major league baseball in nineteenth-century St. Louis. II. Title. III. Series. GV863.M82 S253 2002 796.357'09778'669034—dc21 2002024568 ⅜ϱ ™ This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Jennifer Cropp Typesetter: Bookcomp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typeface: Adobe Caslon This book is dedicated to my family and friends who helped to make it a reality This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix Prologue: Fall Festival xi Introduction: Take Me Out to the Nineteenth-Century Ball Game 1 Part I The Rise and Fall of Major League Baseball in St. Louis, 1875–1877 1. St. Louis versus Chicago 9 2. “Champions of the West” 26 3. The Collapse of the Original Brown Stockings 38 Part II The Resurrection of Major League Baseball in St. Louis, 1878–1886 4. Beer and Baseball 55 5. Von der Ahe versus Lucas 78 6. “Champions of the World” 108 7. “The $15,000 Slide” 123 Part III The Survival of Major League Baseball in St. Louis, 1887–1891 8. Farewell to Five “Old War Horses” 151 9. Browns versus Bridegrooms 171 10. War and Peace 184 Epilogue: Farewell to Chris Von der Ahe, 1892–1899 197 Appendix: “Only Doing What Is Right”: The Race Issue in Professional Baseball’s Frontier Era 201 Notes 205 Bibliography 263 Index 273 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments It would require another book to credit properly all of the gracious people who have provided encouragement. First and foremost, I want to thank everybody in my family. My parents, David and Hazel Cash, deserve special credit for their contributions toward helping me finish Graduate School at the University of Ore- gon. This study of nineteenth-century St. Louis baseball, originally my doctoral dissertation, could never have been completed without the patience and support given by my major adviser, Daniel Pope, and the executive assistant to the Dean of the Graduate School, Toby Deemer. I also want to thank the other individ- uals who served on my dissertation committee: Jack Maddex, Richard Maxwell Brown, Larry Singell, and Kelly Eakin. Many of the graduate students of that era offered words of reassurance and acts of generosity. My appreciation goes out to all of them and especially to Lori Gates, Delores McBroome, Ernest Boyd, Larry Bagby, Steve Smith, Hope Benedict, Leah Kirker, Sally Morita, Roxanne Easley, and Beth Wilson. Away from the pressures of graduate school, I could always depend on the friendship of Tom Lutz and two sisters, Janice and Joyce Findley. I owe a large debt of gratitude to the University of Missouri Press for turning my dissertation into a book. This project would never have been possible with- out the steadfast commitment of Clair Willcox. Jane Lago also shared insightful suggestions. Karen Caplinger and Beth Chandler kindly waited for me to com- plete their marketing questionnaire and then provided enthusiastic promotional efforts. John Brenner contributed skillful copyediting comments. Along the way, innumerable people helped me. I want to thank the entire staff of the State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia, and, in particu- lar, Christine Montgomery for cheerfully answering all of my abundant inquiries about obtaining photographic prints. I also benefited greatly from the advice of the staff of the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis and the assistance of Ellen Thomasson in supplying photographic prints from there. At the University of Arkansas–Monticello Library, Randall Watts guided me through the process of rounding up and corralling the final stray publishing citations for the Bib- liography. Besides the libraries of the University of Oregon and the University of Arkansas–Monticello, I also enjoyed the comforts and collections of libraries on the campuses of Oregon State University, the University of Missouri, the University of Arkansas–Fayetteville, Hendrix University, and the University of Louisiana–Monroe. I gained additional information and valuable support from the public libraries in Crossett, Arkansas; Monroe, Louisiana; and Eugene and Corvallis, Oregon. ix x Acknowledgments Over the years, a variety of individuals have motivated me. On one fateful 1984 night, Jon Gibson, David Edwards, and Bryan Holland were with me in Fayetteville, Arkansas, when the Cardinals’ Joaquin Andujar shut out the Atlanta Braves and inspired the launching of my scholarly study of St. Louis baseball. At the University of Oregon, my intramural softball teammates helped me to understand not only the profound satisfaction of sharing championship seasons but also the solace of striving for success in less productive years. Last, but far from least, thanks to all of the numerous college students in both Oregon and Arkansas who have voiced their support. I want to express my gratitude particularly to four students who have worked in the office of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arkansas–Monticello, where I have taught since 1996. All four of these student workers—Leah Dennington, Wendi McSwain, Carrie Carter, and Jarett Lamb—have been aware of my efforts to write this book and managed to bolster my will to finish it. Carrie Carter merits further praise for preparing computer disks from my original manuscript. To everybody mentioned in these acknowledgments and anybody else who I may have inadvertently forgot to mention, please read the dedication on page v. This book is for you! Prologue Fall Festival What do you imagine the American people would think of me if I wasted my time going to the ballgame? —President Grover Cleveland, declining an invitation to a major-league baseball game in 1886 On October 7, 1885, Thomas A. Hendricks, the vice president of the United States, looked out from the balcony of the Southern Hotel on a parade making its way through the crowded street below. More than a quarter-million people were milling around, many carrying torches that sent flames leaping fifteen feet into the air. Some torchbearers were periodically setting off Roman candles, and other parade participants fired double-barreled shotguns skyward.1 Hendricks, an Indianan who was serving President Grover Cleveland in the first Democratic administration since the outbreak of the Civil War, assumed that the pandemo- nium below was a well-intentioned effort to welcome him to St. Louis. Sure that he was the focal point of the crowd’s attention, he began to deliver a political speech to his audience: “This, gentlemen, is an honor that I did not expect. It is a genuine surprise to me. It must only be in the West that the greatness of the vice presidency is recognized. I know that Missouri is a good old Democratic state, but I did not suspect for a moment that my arrival would provoke the enthusiasm which I see displayed before me—“ The vice president was quickly cut off by a young torchbearer, who loudly in- terrupted the political oration by gesturing eagerly at a stocky, mustached man on the street and exclaiming, “There’s Gleason! There’s Gleason!” Hendricks was suddenly perplexed. Regaining his voice, he queried the youth: “Gleason? Gleason? And who, may I ask, is Gleason?” “Just the greatest shortstop the Browns ever had,” the torchbearer said, quickly filling in what must have seemed a major gap in the vice president’s education. “And that is one of the reasons why we are going to beat Chicago for the cham- pionship.”2 xi Vice President Thomas A. Hendricks. State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia. xii Southern Hotel, St. Louis. State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia. xiii Bill Gleason. State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia. xiv Before They Were Cardinals This page intentionally left blank Introduction Take Me Out to the Nineteenth-Century Ball Game Baseball in 1870resembled fast-pitch softball more than . modern baseball. —Bill James, Historical Baseball Abstract (1988) If present-day baseball fans could travel by time machine back to May 6, 1875, to witness the St. Louis Brown Stockings play their first game against the Chi- cago White Stockings, they would see a sport that, while recognizable as base- ball, differed substantially from the modern game in its rules and prevailing style of play. Some differences would be obvious even before the game began. The contest would start not with the home team taking the field, but with a coin flip. After summoning the team captains, the lone umpire—the game would not adopt um- piring crews until the twentieth century—would award the winner of the coin toss the choice of either batting first or last. The winning captain would not necessar- ily choose the psychological advantage of batting last. In nineteenth-century ball games, the ball used for the first pitch was expected to remain in use throughout the game; fouls and errant throws were retrieved, even from out of the stands if necessary, usually without regard to wear or damage to the ball.