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1869 Baseball Season

By Patrick Mondout

The 1869 season will forever be remembered for the undefeated season for the first openly, all-professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. But the season was about more than the Red Stockings, who failed to win the championship due to an unusual way of determining the champs (by today's standards).

At a glance... 1869 NABBP SEASON Standings (Pro Teams/Games Only) Team W L T % Cincinnati (Cincinnati) 19 0 0 1.000 Atlantic (Brooklyn) 15 6 1 .705 Athletic (Philadelphia) 15 7 0 .682 Eckford (Brooklyn) 15 8 0 .652 Union (Troy) 12 8 1 .595 Mutual (New York) 11 15 0 .423 Olympic (Washington) 9 12 0 .429 Maryland (Baltimore) 7 12 0 .368 National (Washington) 4 12 0 .250 Keystone (Philadelphia) 3 17 0 .150 Forest City (Cleveland) 1 6 0 .143 Irvington (New Jersey) 0 8 0 .000 1869 SEASON Standings (Amateur Teams/Games Only) Team W L T % RS RA Lone Star (New Orleans, LA) 22 3 0 .880 806 504 Forest City (Rockford, IL) 20 4 0 .833 1174 287 Empire (St. Louis, MO) 19 4 0 .826 834 492 Fairmount (Marlboro, MA) 17 3 0 .850 747 426 Star (Brooklyn, NY) 16 6 0 .727 618 338 Clipper (Lowell, MA) 14 4 1 .763 510 296 Harvard (Cambridge, MA) 14 5 1 .725 593 353 Lowell (Lowell, MA) 14 13 0 .519 821 602 Champion (Jersey City, NJ) 13 8 0 .619 434 388 Southern (New Orleans, LA) 13 7 0 .650 625 471 Gotham (New York, NY) 9 6 0 .600 485 386 Empire (New York, NY) 9 8 0 .529 437 401 Harmonic (Brooklyn, NY) 9 9 0 .500 509 441 Athletic (Brooklyn, NY) 9 10 1 .475 406 547 Mansfield (Middleton, CT) 8 2 0 .800 328 228 Mutual (Janesvilles, WI) 8 3 0 .727 335 290 Eagle (New York, NY) 8 5 0 .615 391 327 Olympic (Pittsburgh, PA) 7 1 0 .875 266 172 R.E. Lee (New Orleans, LA) 7 3 0 .700 254 203 Athlete (Washington Hts, NY) 7 4 0 .636 267 241 Athletic (Chicago, IL) 7 4 0 .636 384 353 Pelican (New Orleans, LA) 7 6 0 .538 328 332 Niagara (Buffalo, NY) 7 7 0 .500 528 330 Tri Mountain (Boston, MA) 7 9 0 .437 473 507 Mutual (Springfield, MA) 6 4 0 .600 232 272 TOP 25 TEAMS ONLY NABBP Membership CLUBS 12 (pro)/500+ (amateur) CITIES 1 9 (pro)/300+ (amateur) Notable new cities include: Guelph, Ontario, Canada STATES (Pro in bold) Alabama California Connecticut Delaware (District of Columbia) Florida Illinois Indiana Iowa Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Missouri Nebraska New Hampshire New York New Jersey Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee Vermont Virginia West Virginia Wisconsin CONVENTION December, 1868 CHAMPION Brooklyn Atlantics

After years of under-the-table payments to some of the better players and even whole teams (who were sharing gate receipts) - all of which were against the rules of the National Association of Base Ball Players - the group finally decided to allow a special classification of professional teams within its ranks.

The 1869 season was therefore the first officially professional season with teams finally free to openly pay the best players they could find. Regular schedules, reserve clauses, gloves, and even "at bats" as a statistic were years away, but this was the season that transformed baseball from mere national pastime to the true professional sport we all know and love.

You might be tempted to wonder how good that team from New Orleans was that is listed first in the amateur standings (see right). Note that they only played other teams from New Orleans plus a few games in Alabama and when they finally began playing teams from Cincinnati and New York the following year, they lost every single game. They might have been the best in the South, but that meant little in 1869.

With the addition of a Canadian club from Guelph, Ontario, the organization could truly claim to be the "International Association," but perhaps wisely stuck with original name.

I would love to give you league leaders and batting averages, but as no one kept at bats, we have no batting averages.¹

It is tempting to think of this era as somehow more pure and free from players wanting to be "shown the money" than today. But take a look at the rosters below and compare them with the 1870 rosters. There was far more turnover back then than there is today. And if you are wondering how the undefeated 1869 Red Stockings were built, it was the same way George Steinbrenner built his teams: they outbid everyone else. Cincy signed George Wright from Morrisania, Fred Waterman from the Mutuals, Charlie Sweasy and Andy Leonard from Irvington, Charlie Gould from the Buckeyes, and Asa Brainard from the Nationals. Gould and Hooiser Cal McVey were the only non-Easterners on the Queen City's nine. George convinced his brother Harry Wright to sign on for $1,400, making him the highest paid player in baseball history and the A-Rod of his day. It was the best team money could buy, but it proved a drain on its investors and the team folded following the 1870 season. Thus the first professional team in Cincinnati did not even last long enough to participate in the National Association. In fact no team from the Queen City participated in the first major league.

NOTES:
Prior to 1883, a club's standing was determined by the number of games won, not by its winning percentage. As there were hundreds of teams, we only list all 16 professional teams and the top 25 amateurs for 1869.
1. At Bats were only kept by a pair of teams for the first time in 1870. While that makes it somewhat difficult to assess players of the 1857-1870 era, we are very fortunate that this practice became the norm in time for the 1871 National Association season!
The source of the standings are from Marshall Wright's unequaled book, The National Association of Base Ball Players 1857-1870 (see bibliography below). We do not have access to complete NABBP records that would show all amateur teams that were members in 1869 or 1870, but we know it is over 500 for both years.

National Association of Base Ball Players 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.
Baseball (1845-1881): From the newspaper accounts by Preston D. Prem
But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870 by Peter Morris
Early Innings: A Documentary History by Dean A. Sullivan
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

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.