National Association

About NABBP Stats

By Patrick Mondout
March 11, 2008

I have used countless resources in order to put together the pre-1871 section of this website. Virtually anything I could get access to was used and despite that and several months of work, it is and will remain incomplete. Not that I won't continue adding to it—I will. But an absolutely complete look at pre-1871 baseball is no longer possible and probably wasn't even in 1871. The record keeping was just not up to later major league standards.

While at bats and hits were kept for the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings and a few other pre-1871 teams, they were not kept for most and a complete statistical record of the NABBP is simply not possible today. This is the case for a variety of reasons. Among them: many boxscores were either unpublished or perhaps never even created in the first place and even when they were many stats we have relied on for over a hundred years were simply not kept even in the most publicized games. In short, the statistical record prior to 1871 is a mess.

See also: Knickerbocker Rules, 'Early Baseball' FAQs

There have been many rule changes since 1871 that have greatly altered our view of what stats constitute a great season. True, Levi Meyerle's .492 batting average in 1871 is a bit of a joke and no one suggests it was the greatest hitting season of all time, but at least we have batting and pitching stats for that season (and those that came after) and that at least allows us to compare players of the same era against one another.

The season of 1871 happened to be the first year of the first major league (the National Association). While that makes the season a logically starting point for historical study, the lack of solid stats for seasons prior to this is also incredibly frustrating to historians and those who are used to using statistics (and especially those who use nothing but statistics) to assess the best players of each decade and who want to understand the very competitive decade of baseball playing that preceded the National Association.

This is the case to such an extent that many just simply throw their hands in the air and either say that baseball in this era wasn't important enough to take seriously or simply admit their ignorance and continue to ignore it. That is unfortunate because although there were clubs like the Knickerbockers who apparently enjoyed the social aspects of their club as much or more than the competitive aspects, there were also truly superior clubs like the Brooklyn Atlantics and superstars like Jim Creighton, Lip Pike, Joe Start and others who deserve recognition for their pioneering efforts as baseball's first stars.¹

There are accounts of baseball games published in newspapers going back to the very beginning in the mid 1840s. By the mid-to-late 1850s, publications like the New York Clipper and Porter's Spirit of the Times were regularly covering The National Game. I have used many 19th Century newspapers from many different cities in creating this site. And Charles Peverelly's 1866 book on sports has long been a source of scores for the early teams and we have indeed incorporated his entire chapter on baseball into this site.

The full text of several helpful books have been included as BaseballChronology Books of the Month, including:

• Baseball in Cincinnati by Harry Ellard
• Baseball in Old Chicago
• Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player by Henry Chadwick (1860 and 1867 editions)
• The Game of Baseball by Henry Chadwick (1868)
• Henry Chadwick's Baseball Manual (1871)

But the source on stats on the NABBP is without a doubt the pioneering book by Marshall Wright simply entitled The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870. If you are serious about this era, you either already own this book or will shortly. The book, published in 2000, is about the closest thing to an stats encyclopedia of that era as you will ever see. Thanks to Retrosheet, there is only one frontier left in the history of baseball for stats freaks. And Marshall Wright has made an amazing and valued contribution toward our understanding of these ballplayers and those teams with this book.

Unfortunately there is no such thing as an "official source" of won/loss totals—nor any pre-1871 statistics—and it is impossible today to create a complete list of all NABBP games, let alone boxscores. Quite naturally, all our our team pages (such as the Brooklyn Excelsiors) and our year pages for years prior to 1871 feature won/loss records derived from Wright and Peverelly. However, I have access to materials that Wright and Peverelly did not when they wrote their accounts. We all try to be as accurate as we can, but we do make mistakes. I know my won/loss totals differ from other sources, but I have tried understand how Wright and Peverelly arrived at their totals and why they failed to include games that I have found. I have updated won/loss totals whenever possible.

In some cases, such as the Newburgh Hudson Rivers, I have found a contemporary source that was very complete and either unknown or unavailable (at the time) to Wright. In all cases, I believe my totals to reflect the most accurate available anywhere. But of course I am indebted to Marshall Wright's incredible reference book which I am confident will remain a sourcebook for baseball historians for generations to come.

Lastly, a note for those of you considering writing about this era or indeed any era of baseball history: If you have this level of interest, you are probably already aware of SaBR. But if not, you need to become a member right now! (Read more...)

NOTES:
1. Though not nearly as shameful for baseball as it was to not have any African-Americans in the Hall of Fame as late as 1970, the complete lack of respect for 19th Century baseball pioneers, but especially those of the pre-National League-era is astonishing for a sport that values its past like no other. Yes, the Wright brothers (George and Harry) are in, but where are the rest? And Alexander Cartwright, who may be one of the most overrated figures in baseball history, never actually played in a recorded match against another team and had been living in Hawaii for years when the NABBP was formed. I know the Hall thinks it is done with the 19th Century, but it has corrected some of its oversights before. It can do it again.

National Association sources/bibliography:
Baseball: The Early Years by Harold Seymour.
Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search For The Roots Of The Game by David Block.
Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War by George B. Kirsch.
Blackguards and Red Stockings by William J. Ryczek
The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 by Marshall D. Wright.
Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball by Warren Goldstein.
When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 by William J. Ryczek

David Nemec, the tireless 19th Century Baseball researcher, has also written a novel called Early Dreams, which takes place during this era and features real-life characters such as Cap Anson, George Wright, and Henry Lucas.

General Baseball History sources/bibliography:
Baseball: A History of America's Game by Benjamin G. Rader.
Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns (PBS DVD)
The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present by David Pietrusza.
The Great 19th Century Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, 2nd Edition by David Nemec.
Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 by Dean A. Sullivan.
Middle Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1900-1948 by Dean A. Sullivan.
Late Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball 1945-1972 by Dean A. Sullivan
Past Time: Baseball as History by Jules Tygiel
America's National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning, Evolution, Development and Popularity of Baseball by Albert Spalding
Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia by John Thorn, et al.