Introduction
1. Many of the very best sport historians have frequently used the “gentlemen’s agreement” to describe baseball’s segregation process. This tendency, I believe, has been due mostly to a lack of focus on the beginnings of segregation, rather than a misunderstanding of the topic. For a sampling of the “gentlemen’s” explanation, see Gorn, Sports in Chicago, 88; Heaphy, The Negro Leagues, 4, 11; Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 189; and Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment.
2. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, September 11, 1866.
3. Sporting Life, June 29, 1895.
4. Of the many works on Jackie Robinson I have found Tygiel’s Baseball’s Great Experiment to be the most useful.
5. On baseball’s patriotic rhetoric, see Butterworth, Baseball and Rhetorics of Purity.
6. Spirit of the Times, January 31, 1857.
7. Blight, Race and Reunion, 198.
8. New York Clipper, October 6, 1866.
9. Chadwick, Chadwick’s Base Ball Manual, for 1871, 11.
10. Sunday Morning Chronicle, June 17, 1866.
11. Memphis Public Ledger, September 70, 1870.
12. For an excellent synopsis of the teams and leagues of this period, see Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home. My own study is less about the action on the field than the implications and meanings of that baseball activity. Warren Goldstein’s Playing for Keeps is one exception to this trend. Goldstein addresses how baseball players “worked” to make the game “manly” and to mold it into a pastime that served their needs in a post–Civil War world.
13. On the segregation debate, see Woodward, Strange Career of Jim Crow; Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 262; and Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South.
14. I found the following three works to be particularly pertinent to this study of baseball’s dealings with civil rights during Reconstruction: Richardson, Death of Reconstruction; Foner, Reconstruction; and Hahn, Nation under Our Feet.
15. Gorn, Manly Art, 13.
16. Quote by Sir John Robert Seely. See Ridder-Symoens and Ruegg, History of the University in Europe, 482.
17. I found particularly useful Rotenberg and McDonough’s Cultural Meaning of Urban Space. Additionally, Elsa Barkley Brown and Gregg D. Kimball’s article on urban space in Richmond provided a template for further study. See Brown and Kimball, “Mapping the Terrain of Black Richmond.”
18. Riess, City Games, 46–47; New York Clipper, May 5, 1866.
19. Riess, City Games, 46–47; Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, September 9, 1866; Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, June 20, 1873.
20. New York Clipper, April 1, 1871.
21. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, October 16, 1869, Gardiner Collection, American Negro Historical Society (ANHS) Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The New York Mutuals were among the most prestigious and successful clubs of the 1860s and ’70s—the Yankees (without the monstrous payroll) of their day.
22. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, October 12, 1873.
23. Riess, City Games, 1; Koppett, Koppett’s Concise History, 3.
24. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, November 10, 1872.
25. New York Times, April 10, 1869; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, May 4, 1867; Sullivan, Early Innings, 53–54; Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 41–42; Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, July 24, 1870.
26. Chadwick Scrapbooks, August 1867 (newspaper unidentified), Society for American Baseball Research.
27. Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 35–45.
28. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 20, 1873.
29. Ball Players’ Chronicle, October 31, 1867.
30. A typical letter from the New York Clipper’s correspondence section: “A Card From the Keystone Club to Editor of Clipper—Dear Sir: Learning through the columns of your valuable paper that a number of baseball clubs . . . contemplate visiting our city . . . I would most respectfully state that, from the business and engagements already entered into by many of our players, in conjunction with that long-deferred pleasure, a visit to our NY friends, anticipated during July, it will be impossible for us to contract any additional engagements until after Sept 1st.” New York Clipper, June 24, 1865.
31. Chadwick, Game of Baseball, 15.
32. Schiff, “Father of Baseball,” 50–58.
33. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, October 25, 1866. The New York Clipper claimed that the first-ever admission-charging female game took place on September 11, 1875. The “Blonds versus the Brunettes” was, according to the Clipper, more spectacle than baseball: “As a general thing the attraction is the novelty of seeing eighteen girls prettily attired in gymnastic dress playing in a game of baseball.” New York Clipper, September 25, 1875.
34. Chadwick, Game of Baseball, 9–10; New York Clipper, November 19, 1864; Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 50. Regarding baseball’s seemingly endless creation debate, see Block, Baseball before We Knew It; and Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden.
35. Chadwick, Chadwick’s Baseball Manual.
36. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 15–18.
37. Chadwick, Game of Baseball, 15.
38. Richmond Times, November 24, 1866.
39. Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 30–31; Scrapbook, 1866–74, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame (newspaper unidentified).
40. New York Anglo-African, December 10, 1859; Brooklyn Eagle, October 17, 1862. Cited in Sullivan, Early Innings, 33–35.
41. The designation “mid-Atlantic” does not typically include Virginia. See Marzec, Mid-Atlantic Region. I understand this traditional line drawing, but for the purposes of this study I am willing to bend a few geographical rules. The region between Richmond and Philadelphia, as will be demonstrated, had much in common. U.S. Census Bureau, Compendium of the Ninth Census, 75.
42. Lane, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours, 8; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 598. Philadelphia’s abolitionist lineage is long and impressive. The Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery organized in Philadelphia in 1775, followed by the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in 1837. See DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 17–27; and Scharf, History of Philadelphia, 734.
43. Countryman, Up South; Nash, First City, 228; Weigley, Philadelphia, 385.
44. Richmond Times, August 6, 1866.
45. U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 598.
46. U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 18. Includes totals from the cities of Washington and Georgetown.
47. Green, Washington, 273–75, 296–301, 311.
48. Simpson, The Reconstruction Presidents, 111; Masur, “Reconstructing the Nation’s Capital,” 182–83; Whyte, Uncivil War, 222–34.
1. Washington DC: A Game to Be Governed
1. Melville’s Early Baseball provides a useful guide to baseball’s early history and specifically Young’s place in it. More generally, see Allen, National League Story, 49–50; and Dickey, History of National League Baseball.
2. Stoddart and Sandiford, Imperial Game.
3. Nicholas E. Young, “Copy of Record of Various Incidents Especially Concerning Baseball,” Player File—Nicholas E. Young, Baseball Hall of Fame.
4. Harry Wright became professional baseball’s first manager in 1869 with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. George Wright was a Hall of Fame shortstop who, among other things, claimed to have invented the tradition of batting practice before ball games. For more information on the Wrights, see Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 14, 48; and Voigt, American Baseball.
5. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 43–45.
6. Seymour states of the Civil War and baseball: “There are two commonly accepted beliefs about the effect of the Civil War on baseball’s history, both of which are incorrect, or at least only partly true. One is that baseball’s growth was halted by the Civil War. The other is that Southern troops learned the game from Northern prisoners, took it home in their knapsacks, and introduced it to the South.” Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 40–41.
7. Young, “Copy of Record of Various Incidents Especially Concerning Baseball.”
8. Young, “Copy of Record of Various Incidents Especially Concerning Baseball.”
9. Ball Players’ Chronicle, August 20, 1867; Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly Intelligencer, June 20, 1873; Benson, Ballparks of North America, 406; Chadwick Scrapbooks, May 1860, Society for American Baseball Research.
10. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, September 11, 1866.
11. City Item, September 2, 1865; Scrapbook, 1866–74, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame.
12. John B. Foster, “Washington Challenged the West,” New York Sun, October 8, 1924.
13. The April 19, 1865, New York Times edition read: “Every class, race and condition of society was represented in the throng of mourners, and the sad tears and farewells of whites and blacks were mingled by the coffin to him to whom humanity was everywhere the same.” Even the battle-calloused General Ulysses S. Grant wept openly as he paid his final respects. Lincoln’s body traveled by a slow train procession back to Springfield, Illinois, seven million mourners lining the tracks to pay their respects. On the impact of Lincoln’s death, see McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 521; and McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 853–58.
14. Johnson included fourteen categories of exemption to his blanket amnesty, the largest of which was for those Southerners with property valued at more than twenty thousand dollars. See Carter, When the War Was Over, 24–25.
15. Whyte, Uncivil War, 49.
16. Green, Secret City, 76. On race relations immediately after the Civil War, see also the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum and Center for African American History and Culture, Black Washingtonians.
17. Young, “Copy of Record of Various Incidents Especially Concerning Baseball.”
18. New York Clipper, May 20, 1865.
19. Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 34–40.
20. Chadwick Scrapbooks, February 24, 1868 (newspaper unidentified), Society for American Baseball Research.
21. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, September 29, 1866; Washington (DC) Evening Star, October 22, 1869.
22. New York Clipper, September 5. 1868.
23. U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Biography of an Ideal; Van Riper, History of the Civil Service.
24. American Chronicle of Sports and Pastimes, dated only 1868, Clippings File, Baseball Hall of Fame, 729.
25. Washington Chronicle, May 10, 1872.
26. Green, Secret City, 33; Whyte, Uncivil War, 31; U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 75–280.
27. L. Brown, Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, 14.
28. Whyte, Uncivil War, 28; Green, Secret City, 54.
29. Petition of Colored Citizens of the District of Columbia, December 1865, in Masur, “Reconstructing the Nation’s Capital,” 170–71; Green, Washington, 335–38.
30. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 224–39, 119–45.
31. B. Quarles, Frederick Douglass, 99–110.
32. Masur, “Reconstructing the Nation’s Capital,” 11.
33. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 104.
34. Williams, History of the Negro Troops, 197–200; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 224–30. To obtain the discharge Frederick Douglass wrote to Abraham Lincoln: “I have a very great favor to ask. It is . . . that you will cause my son Charles R. Douglass . . . to be discharged.” Lincoln responded: “Let this boy be discharged, A. Lincoln.” And it was done.
35. Masur, “Reconstructing the Nation’s Capital,” 68–69.
36. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, October 16, 1869, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress; McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 257–58.
37. Bednar, L’Enfant’s Legacy, 11–21, 41–56.
38. Bednar, L’Enfant’s Legacy, 95–120.
39. Newspaper clipping, April 25, 1866, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC, 83.
40. New York Clipper, May 5, 1866.
41. On the former point, consider the dual-MLB cities of New York, Chicago, and (to a lesser extent) Los Angeles. Even in difficult economic times, few suggestions have been made that clubs share facilities. So entrenched is the idea of each club controlling its own facility that New York City supported the construction of near-billion-dollar new stadiums for both the Yankees and the Mets, both of which opened in 2009.
42. Schwenigner, Black Property Owners in the South, 200–204.
43. Player File—Arthur P. Gorman, Baseball Hall of Fame; Michael Morgan, “Baseball Is Big League Thanks to the County’s Arthur P. Gorman,” Howard Living, 11–12.
44. Brian McKenna, “Arthur Gorman,” Biography Database, Society for American Baseball Research; Lambert, Arthur Pue Gorman, 6–7.
45. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 71.
46. The Constitution and By-Laws of the National Base-Ball Club of Washington DC, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
47. New York Clipper, October 21, 1865.
48. New York Clipper, September 9, 1865.
49. Lambert, Arthur Pue Gorman, 10–15.
50. Peverly, Book of American Pastimes, 501–7.
51. Peverly, Book of American Pastimes, 501.
52. Ellard, Base Ball in Cincinnati, 16.
53. Heaphy, Negro Leagues, 10–12.
54. New York Clipper, December 1, 1866, October 7, 1865. Continuing the geographical fallacy, the Clipper also considered Baltimore to be a part of the race for the southern championship at times. See New York Clipper, October 10, 1868.
55. Chadwick Scrapbooks (emphasis in the original), Society for American Baseball Research.
56. Chadwick Scrapbooks, Society for American Baseball Research.
57. Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 25, 1867.
58. New York Clipper, October 6, 1866.
59. Base Ball Player’s Book of Reference, viii.
60. New York Clipper, June 24, 1865.
61. The reconciliation on Southern terms is precisely the opposite of what Andrew Doyle argues happened in the 1920s with college football. Doyle, “Turning the Tide.”
62. Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 11, 1867.
2. Richmond: Make It a Southern Game
1. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
2. Richmond Times, August 6, 1866.
3. Richmond Times, October 2, 1866.
4. On the topic of sports in the South more broadly, see Miller, Sporting World of the Modern South. Grace Hale’s study of the development of whiteness in the South is useful in understanding the customs that governed recreational pursuits. See Hale, Making Whiteness.
5. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 2, 4, 1871; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 3, 1869.
6. Carlton, Diary, 1864–1869, Carlton Papers, Library of Virginia.
7. Chesson, Richmond after the War, 57–61.
8. Andrews, South since the War.
9. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 9.
10. Richmond Times, November 2, 1866.
11. Richmond Times, November 2, 1866.
12. Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 8, 1874.
13. The challenge of balancing Reconstruction’s many significant political achievements while focusing on its societal shortcomings was a paramount one in conducting this study. I found the following texts among the most helpful in considering both the successes and the failures of Reconstruction: Anderson and Moss, Facts of Reconstruction; Blair, Cities of the Dead; Foner, Reconstruction; Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long; Kennedy, After Appomattox; and Stampp, Era of Reconstruction.
14. Richmond Times, July 7, 1866.
15. Berman, Richmond’s Jewry, 11–20, 228–40.
16. Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Richmond City, 1870; Richmond City Directory, 1873–74.
17. Pollard, Lost Cause, 752.
18. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 3, 1866. On Hollywood Cemetery, see Mitchell, Hollywood Cemetery, 63–72.
19. Richmond Times, July 11, August 4, 1866.
20. New York Clipper, April 3, 1869; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 4, 1869; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, April 10, 1869; Hewett, Roster of Union Soldiers, 61.
21. “Babcock, Alexander G.,” Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State of Virginia, National Archives and Records Administration, M324, 1–15; Scott, Partisan Life with Mosby, 258–62, 417–25.
22. Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 16, 1866.
23. Richmond City Council Records, “Meeting Minutes,” July 7, 1867, October 10, 1870, September 9, October 14, December 10, 1867, Library of Virginia; Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Richmond City, and a Business Directory of about Fifty Counties of Virginia; Office of the Assistant Superintendent of the Third District, November 29, 1866, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, National Archives and Record Administration; O’Brien, From Bondage to Citizenship, 17; Rachleff, Black Labor in the South, 5.
24. Divine, Richmond City Directory; Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Richmond City, and a Business Directory of about Fifty Counties of Virginia; Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Richmond City, 1870; Richmond City Directory, 1871–1872.
25. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 1, 1866; Richmond Times, October 9, 1866.
26. Savannah (GA) Daily News and Herald, October 10, 1867.
27. Charleston (SC) Courier, Tri-Weekly, September 10, 1868.
28. Richmond Times, November 8, October 29, 1866. Cholera had added to Richmond’s misery. As the humid summer lingered, the Philadelphia Inquirer (September 13, 1866) commented on Richmond’s cholera pandemic, but clarified that probably only three Richmonders per day were being treated for the epidemic and the victims were “mostly negroes.” See also Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 2, 1866.
29. For “an estimate of the match games of baseball played during the year 1866,” see Richmond Times, December 19, 1866.
30. Henry Chadwick married Jane Botts of Richmond, Virginia, on August 9, 1848. Botts was the daughter of Alexander L. Botts, the onetime president of the Virginia State Council and a longtime friend of John C. Calhoun. On the other side of the spectrum, Jane Botts was also related to Richmond’s most famous Unionist, John Minor Botts. See Schiff, “Father of Baseball”; and Harrison, “Good Playing and Gentlemanly Bearing”; and New York Clipper, October 6, 1866.
31. Richmond Daily Dispatch, November 12, 1866; Richmond Times, November 9, 1866. “It will be seen that the Confederate uniform will not be permitted to be worn in public in this city, after the fifteenth day of this month, and that any person violating this order will be liable to arrest.” Richmond Times, June 12, 1865; Atlanta Daily Intelligencer, October 20, 1866; Richmond Times, October 10, 1866.
32. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long, 262.
33. Richmond Times, October 3, 1866.
34. The Union Club joined 201 other baseball clubs at baseball’s largest national convention. The South effectively boycotted the event, still planning to organize as Southerners rather than as members of the national baseball community. For more on Richmond Clubs’ reactions to the National Association of Base Ball Players conventions, see Daniel and Mayer, Baseball and Richmond, 5.
35. Richmond Times, December 22, 1866.
36. Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Georgia Journal and Messenger, September 2, 1870.
37. Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1–13, 32–34; Ribowsky, Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 10–17.
38. U.S. Congress, An Act to Protect All Persons in the United States in Their Civil Rights, and Furnish the Means of Their Vindication (April 9, 1866), Statutes at Large, 39th Cong., 1st sess., 27–30; Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 9, 1866.
39. Richmond Times, October 10, 1866; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 24, October 12, 1866; Daniel, “Good Playing and Gentlemanly Bearing.”
40. Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 28, 1866.
41. Richmond Times, August 14, 1866.
42. Boyd, Boyd’s Directory of Richmond City, 1870; Richmond Times, August 10, September 29, 1866; Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 6, 1866.
43. Richmond Times, October 23, 1866.
44. Richmond Times, October 3, 1866. The clerk occupation, of course, was a common one among baseball men. William H. Finn (Pastime) and M. M. French (Spotswood), among others, identified themselves as clerks in the 1866 Richmond city directory.
45. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
46. Carlton, Diary, 1864–1869, Carlton Papers, Library of Virginia.
47. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
48. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
49. New York Clipper, October 6, 1866.
50. New York Clipper, October 13, 1866.
51. On the fear of miscegenation, see Smith, Racial Determinism; and Robinson, Dangerous Liaisons, 21–56. On the relationship between race and gender, see Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow.
52. Richmond Times, July 21, 1866.
53. New York Clipper, October 6, 1866.
54. New York Clipper, October 25, 1866.
55. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 2, 1866.
56. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
57. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 2, 1866.
58. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 23, 1866; Richmond Times, October 10, November 19, October 18, 1866.
59. Championships were decided, before the establishment of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players in 1871, by popular opinion, on a city-by-city basis. During the 1866 season, the Times and Daily Dispatch referred to “championship” matches nearly two dozen times, with the Times even calling the Union Club “champions.” Richmond Times, October 18, 1866.
60. Richmond Times, October 19, 1866. The Times had earlier referred to the Union Club as a championship club, a mistake it amended in its October 19 edition. “A mistake—By some inadvertence it was stated yesterday morning that the Union Baseball Club was the champion club of the city. The statement was incorrect, as the union boys were fairly defeated in a match game a few days since with the Pastime Club.”
61. Richmond Times, November 24, 1866.
3. Philadelphia: Baseball’s Boomtown
1. New York Clipper, March 5, 1870.
2. North American, May 19, 1907.
3. North American, May 19, 1907.
4. Jules Tygiel used the term milieu to discuss the cultural context in which baseball games were and are played; I use it here and will occasionally use it throughout the text similarly. See Tygiel, Extra Bases, x–xi.
5. Alexander, Our Game, 22.
6. New York Clipper, June 24, 1865.
7. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 29, 1866.
8. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 3, 1866.
9. Called at various times Fitzgerald’s City Item, the City Item, and the City Item and Visitor. For the sake of clarity, I will refer to Thomas Fitzgerald’s paper simply as the City Item.
10. C. Morris, Makers of Philadelphia, 122; Scrapbook, 1879–1903, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame.
11. New York Clipper, July 7, 1867.
12. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 29, 1866.
13. McElroy, McElroy’s Philadelphia City Directory for 1865 (entered, according to an act of Congress, in the year 1865, by A. McElroy, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania).
14. Gopsill, Gopsill’s Philadelphia City Directory for 1869.
15. City Item, April 22, 1865.
16. Vincent, Rise and Fall of American Sport, 106–7.
17. City Item, March 31, 1866; Scrapbook, 1879–1903, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame.
18. Scrapbook, 1866–74, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame.
19. The Brooklyn Atlantic-Athletic rivalry had heated up during the war when the Atlantics lured Tom Pratt, the Athletics’ ace pitcher, away midseason in 1863. Hailed as “Champions” by the New York Clipper, the Atlantics defeated the ascendant Athletics every time the two clubs met in the 1864–66 seasons. The 1866 game in Philadelphia drew forty thousand spectators. See Scrapbooks, 1879–1903 and 1866–74, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame; New York Clipper, September 21, 1867; Philadelphia Inquirer, June 30, 1866; Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 21–33; Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 55; and Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 47.
20. Douglass’ Monthly, February 1862, quoted in Weigley, Philadelphia, 386.
21. Weigley, Philadelphia, 386.
22. Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 9; DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 221.
23. Pennsylvania State Equal Rights’ League, A Synopsis of the Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania State Equal Rights’ League at Pittsburgh, August 8–10 (Philadelphia: G. T. Stockdale, 1866), 44, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
24. Philadelphia Press, June 16, 1866. Before the Pythians organized, the Excelsiors had played the Monitor Club of Jamaica, based in Long Island, and the Bachelor Club of Albany.
25. The location of a club often revealed the makeup of its membership. The Buffalo Base Ball Club hailed from the Seventh Ward, home of the Pythians and Octavius Catto.
26. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 46–48.
27. U.S. Census Bureau, Ninth Census of the United States, 75–280.
28. Banneker Institution, “Preamble to the Constitution,” October 1, 1857, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
29. The Knights of Pythias, as a national organization, embraced a “gentlemen’s agreement” on racial segregation. Several members of the Pythian Base Ball Club, Joshua Kelley among them, applied for recognition from the Knights of Pythias organization only to be rejected in 1870. See Martin, “Banneker Literary Institute of Philadelphia”; Casway, “Philadelphia’s Pythians,” 121; Carnahan, Pythian Knighthood, 120; and Tow, “Secrecy and Segregation.”
30. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 23, 1867.
31. Discrepancies in score were common. In this instance the original scorecard kept by the Pythians read 39–16, while the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury tallied the score as 35–16.
32. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 30, 1867; Gopsill, Gopsill’s Philadelphia City and Business Directory for 1867–1868.
33. Baseball reporters often referred to a scoreless game as a “whitewashing.” Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 20, 1868.
34. Powers, Black Charlestonians, 17–22; Hamilton, Black Preacher in America, 13–23, 37–49; DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 199.
35. Powers, Black Charlestonians, 36–61; Lane, Roots of Violence, 16–44; Lane, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours, 135–40.
36. Griffin, Trial of Frank Kelly; Gregg Kimball, “Richmond’s Place in the African American Diaspora,” in Afro-Virginian History and Culture, edited by Saillant.
37. Waskie, “Biography of Octavius V. Catto”; Lane, Roots of Violence, 34.
38. Men of Color to Arms! Now or Never!, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
39. Casway, “Philadelphia’s Pythians,” 120–21.
40. New National Era, October 26, 1871.
41. Casway, “Philadelphia’s Pythians,” 121–22.
42. Waskie, “Biography of Octavius V. Catto.”
43. Pennsylvania State Equal Rights’ League, Synopsis of the Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneur, 16; New National Era, October 26, 1871.
44. Bill Wormley to Octavius Catto, September 11, 1860, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
45. Contract, Octavius Catto and Elisha Weaver, May 12, 1870, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
46. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 21, 1867.
47. Octavius Catto to Alert BBC, June 30, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For more on the interactions between the Alert and Pythian Clubs, see chapter 5.
48. Lanctot, Negro League Baseball, 19–23.
49. Casway, “Philadelphia’s Pythians,” 121; Philadelphia Press, August 26, 1866.
50. Pythian Base Ball Club to Alert Base Ball Club, June 22, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
51. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 9, 1867.
52. Baseball teams usually consisted of only nine players, thus called “nines.” Substitutes were rarely used. For a large organization such as the Pythians, multiple “nines” (or squads) represented the club, allowing more men to participate on the field.
53. Philadelphia Recorder of Deeds, “The Liberty Hall Association,” June 10, 1867, Philadelphia City Archives.
54. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, December 8, 1867; “Report of the Pythian Scorer,” November 26, 1868, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
55. New York Clipper, November 3, 1866; Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 17–20.
56. Cancelled checks, “Payable to Com. on Reception of Alerts” (July 11, 1867), “Banneker Inst.” (September 4, 1867), “The Directors—Balls and Bats” (July 3, 1868), Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
57. Committee on Reception, “Report, July 1867,” Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
58. Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 20–37.
59. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 7, 1867; New York Clipper, July 6, 1867.
60. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 7, 1867.
61. New York Times, December 25, 1882; Vincent, Rise and Fall of American Sport, 106; Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 211–15.
62. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 7, 1867.
63. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 15, 1871.
64. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 6, 1867.
65. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 6, 1867.
66. Pythian BBC to Athletic BBC, July 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
67. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 323.
68. New York Clipper, May 20, 1865.
69. Brooklyn Eagle, December 10, 1863, June 28, 1864.
70. North American and United States Gazette, October 15, 1863; Thomas Fitzgerald, “Light at Last: or, The Shadow on the Casement” and “Who Shall Win?,” in Plays, 1868, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia School District, Board of Education, Report of the Special Committee; North American and United States Gazette, January 11, 1868.
71. North American and United States Gazette, December 2, 1867, May 3, 1871.
72. City Item, May 5, 1866; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 18, 1864.
73. City Item, May 5, 1866.
74. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 107; Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 42; Voigt, American Baseball, 17; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, September 8, 1866.
75. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 26, 1866.
76. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 26, 1866. See also Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, May 27, 1866.
77. New York Clipper, November 4, 1865.
78. City Item, February 7, March 7, April 7, 14, 1865.
79. City Item, January 14, 1865.
80. “I no longer address you as gentlemen. . . . There is danger in pursuing the policy you have lately adopted. I sincerely and honestly believe that, would you take me back, and give me my former position, I would be enabled to place the club in the proud position it occupies in the estimation of every one save your humble service. . . . I have my weaknesses. Who has not? It is notorious that I was never addicted to telling the truth . . . I overestimated my abilities, and found, when too late, that I did not possess sufficient brains. Keep this quiet, I beg of you, gen-members. . . . You, perhaps, noticed our egotism in our last epistle in addressing you. We will, therefore, be pardoned, and on the ground that we know no better. . . . Repent of your folly, and return to the arms of the one who has ever considered you in the light of a loving parent, and who weeps as he signs himself, Fitzitem.” Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 21, 1866.
81. City Item, May 27, 1865.
82. Jacqueline Steck, “Thomas Fitzgerald,” in American Newspaper Journalists, 1873–1900, edited by Perry J. Ashley, vol. 23 of Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research, 1983).
83. City Item, December 9, 1865.
84. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 26, 1874.
85. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, January 28, 1866.
86. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 9, 1866.
87. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 8, 1866.
88. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 101; Ryan Feeney, “The Power of One: Thomas Fitzgerald and the Origins of Interracial Baseball” (unpublished, Baseball Hall of Fame, 2001).
89. Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 25.
4. Philadelphia: Setting Precedent
1. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players—Harrisburg,” December 18, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
2. For a discussion of the development of baseball’s rules, see Neft, Cohen, and Neft, Sports Encyclopedia of Baseball. For a broader discussion of baseball’s evolution, see Kirsch, Creation of American Team Sports.
3. George D. Johnson (Mutual BBC) to Pythian BBC, April 23, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
4. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 21, 1867.
5. New York Clipper, July 27, 1867.
6. Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18, 1867.
7. The Alert-Pythian result remained contested, thus was not considered an official loss. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 21, 1867.
8. Pythian BBC to C. C. Berry, August 14, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
9. Head Quarters, 1st Battalion, City Guard of Washington DC, to Pythian BBC, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
10. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 1, 1867.
11. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 8, 1867.
12. See also chapter 5.
13. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, December 8, 1867, reported a tally of 30–15; the Pythians’ records claimed a victory by the score of 30–9. Because newspapers often relied on secondhand reporting, such discrepancies can be found throughout baseball’s early history. The papers, however, rarely misidentified the victor of a particular game.
14. Dorwart, Camden County, 74. For the history of Camden and its relationship with Philadelphia, see also Cammarota, Pavements in the Garden.
15. Scorecard, October 10, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
16. Check ledger, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
17. Ball Players’ Chronicle, October 3, 1867.
18. City Item, March 31, 1866.
19. The Philadelphia Press occasionally referred to a rough plot of land in South Camden, New Jersey, as the “Pythians’ Grounds,” but no record exists to demonstrate that the club had either purchased or leased the property. Philadelphia Press, August 26, 1866.
20. 19th Century Scrapbook, 1864–1868, Baseball Hall of Fame Research Library.
21. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, March 18, 1871.
22. “Last week, by way of a dashing contest for 1870, they [the Athletics] played their last match on their grounds on Columbia Avenue and 17th street, a locality they have occupied since 1865. The increased value of this property, consequent upon the growth of the city, has obliged the club to vacate their old field and return to their former grounds, on 25th and Jefferson streets, which they will occupy in 1871 conjointly with the old Olympic Club.” See New York Clipper, December 17, 1870; and Scrapbook, 1866–74, Philadelphia Athletics, Baseball Hall of Fame.
23. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 27, 1867.
24. 19th Century Scrapbook, 1857–1866, Baseball Hall of Fame Research Library (emphasis added).
25. Kirsch, Creation of American Team Sports, 62–63; Voigt, American Baseball, 6–7, 20–23.
26. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, October 19, 1867.
27. Lane, William Dorsey’s Philadelphia and Ours, 101–2; check ledger, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
28. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
29. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
30. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
31. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
32. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
33. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
34. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
35. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
36. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
37. Ball Players’ Chronicle, August 22, 1867.
38. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
39. New York Sunday Mercury in Chadwick Scrapbooks, 19, Society for American Baseball Research.
40. Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 213–14. William Ryczek similarly gives Hayhurst too much credit for his flaccid support of the Pythians. See Ryczek, Baseball’s First Inning, 119.
41. New York Clipper, August 4, 1866.
42. Octavius Catto to Charles McCullough, August 12, 1869, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
43. Feldberg, Philadelphia Riots of 1844, 23, 34; Clark, Irish Relations, 120–21, 144–45; DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro, 38–39.
44. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 11, 1868.
45. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 11, 1868; Davis and Haller, Peoples of Philadelphia, 140–43.
46. City Item, May 12, 1866.
47. Just to avoid confusion, there was a “Athletic Base Ball Club” in Washington DC composed of African American players that played against other black clubs. These Athletics should not be confused with Philadelphia’s Athletic Base Ball Club. For an account of the former, see National Republican (Washington DC), August 21, 1867.
48. City Item, July 24, 1869. In the same issue Fitzgerald printed the satirical “Athletic Rules,” which professed to be the new organizing statutes of the Athletic Club. The rules included: “Each member will rise at 5,” “Ground nuts forbidden,” and “No more social games, except with the Pythians and Atlantics.” Confusing, to be sure.
49. City Item, July 31, 1869. The same City Item edition carried a similarly provocative and relatively anonymous letter to the editor, “Can you tell me, sir, why the Keystone, or Olympic, or Athletic, or some other first-class organizations—refuses to play the colored Pythian Club? . . . [M]y belief is that the Athletics of Keystones would, unless they played remarkably well, be beaten by the Pythians.”
50. City Item, June 26, 1869.
51. Loosely translated, “Go to hell, my dear.”
52. City Item, July 31, 1869.
53. City Item, August 7, 1869.
54. City Item, August 14, 1869.
55. Presumably, “Meyrle” refers to Levi Meyerle, despite the slight difference in spelling. Meyerle played in the Athletics’ infield through the 1860s and 1870s. See Player File—Levi Meyerle, A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, Baseball Hall of Fame.
56. City Item, August 21, 1869.
57. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, September 11, 1869.
58. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, September 11, 1869.
59. New York Clipper, September 25, 1869.
60. New York Times, September 5, 1869; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, September 11, 1869; City Item, September 11, 1869.
61. City Item, September 11, 1869.
62. City Item, September 11, 1869 (emphasis added).
63. New York Clipper, September 25, 1869.
64. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer and Weekly Express, October 4, 1869.
65. City Item, October 16, 1869.
66. City Item, September 11, 1869.
67. Morning Post in City Item, September 25, 1869.
68. Foner, Reconstruction, 371.
5. Washington DC: Nationalizing Separation
1. Curran, Bicentennial History of Georgetown University, 269. The notion of one year being particularly “critical,” especially during the Reconstruction era, goes back to Beale’s Critical Year. For Washington DC baseball, the collision of significant on- and off-the-field activities makes 1867, not 1866, the most critical year of all.
2. National Base Ball Club, Constitution, By-Laws, Rules, and Regulations of the National Base Ball Club of Washington DC, 1867, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
3. National Base Ball Club, Constitution, By-Laws, Rules, and Regulations, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
4. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 100, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
5. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 94, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
6. Spalding, America’s National Game, 103.
7. Ball Players’ Chronicle, June 25, 27, 1867.
8. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 106, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
9. New York Clipper, July 20, 1867; Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 18, 1867.
10. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 118, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC; Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 123. Chicago hosted a weeklong baseball convention during the Nationals’ visit. Representatives from more than sixty clubs from throughout the Midwest came to witness first-class baseball.
11. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, July 27, 1867.
12. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 120.
13. Spalding, America’s National Game, 109.
14. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 119, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
15. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 125.
16. Chicago Republican, July 28, 1867.
17. Chicago Republican, July 28, 1867.
18. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 202, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
19. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, 202, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
20. Charles Douglass to J. C. White, September 10, 1869, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
21. Alert Base Ball Club to Pythian Base Ball Club, June 6, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
22. New York Clipper, July 6, 1867.
23. New York Clipper, October 10, 1868.
24. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, August 22, 1867, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress; Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 121–27.
25. George D. Johnson (Mutual BBC) to Octavius V. Catto (Pythian BBC), April 23, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
26. New York Clipper, July 27, 1867; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 21, 1867, January 28, 1866.
27. Pythian Base Ball Club to Alert Base Ball Club, July 29, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
28. Charles Douglass to J. C. White, August 3, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
29. J. C. White to Charles Douglass, August 8, 1867, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
30. Louis A. Bell (Alert BBC) to Pythian BBC, 1867, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
31. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray, 119.
32. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, August 10, 1867, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
33. Aron, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service, 68–70.
34. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, August 16, 1867, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
35. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 1, 1867.
36. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, September 2, 1867, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
37. Formal invitation, August 31, 1867, at rooms of the Mutual BBC, “Welcome Pythians,” Woodward’s Hall, D Street, between Tenth and Eleventh, Pythian Base Ball Club Records, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
38. New York Clipper, December 21, 1867.
39. Ball Players’ Chronicle, December 19, 1867; New York Clipper, December 21, 1867.
40. The assertion that this declaration by the nominating committee was a constitutional change and that “this era from 1867–1871 represented the only time when the written rules of a national baseball organization prevented blacks from playing on the same diamond alongside white athletes” is, I believe, imprecise. Although a precedent-setting decision occurred, the NABBP did not insert a segregationist clause into its constitution. So, technically, there was a decision to cite, but not a constitutional clause denoting racial segregation. See Heaphy, Negro Leagues, 10–11.
41. New York Clipper, December 21, 1867.
42. New York Tribune, December 12, 1867.
43. Cleveland Herald, December 20, 1867.
44. Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, December 19, 1867.
45. City Item, December 21, 1867.
46. Seymour and Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game, 42.
47. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 16.
48. Sullivan, Early Innings, 32.
49. Ball Players’ Chronicle, December 19, 1867.
50. New York Times, November 14, 1870 (emphasis added).
51. Octavius Catto has become the leader of record for the Pythians and thus is ascribed to most everything related to the Pythians. As was discussed in a previous chapter, Raymond Burr, not Octavius Catto, submitted the Pythians’ application to the Pennsylvania Association. See Threston, Integration of Baseball in Philadelphia, 9.
52. Ribowsky, Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 13–14.
53. Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 56.
54. Seymour and Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game, 534–38.
55. Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, 130.
56. Biddle and Dubin, Testing Freedom, 367.
57. Thorn and Palmer, Total Baseball, 486.
58. Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 60.
59. Undoubtedly, errors and omissions will be found in this study by other baseball historians. These errors will be duly pointed out and then, hopefully, corrected in future works.
60. Wang, Trial of Democracy, 236.
61. Essary, Maryland in National Politics, 245.
62. Essary, Maryland in National Politics, 257.
63. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 17, 1869; Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 4, 1870, June 25, 1871, August 3, 1873; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 1, 1867.
64. Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 7, 1870.
65. New York Clipper, May 15, 1869.
66. New York Clipper, May 22, 1869.
67. Washington’s Evening Star took the lead in local reporting on baseball and had a mixed record on political issues. The Star had supported Lincoln’s reelection in 1864, but distanced itself from the policies of the Radical Republicans. See also White, Uncivil War, 23–25.
68. McFeely, Frederick Douglass, 272; Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 199–202.
69. Ball Players’ Chronicle, February 9, 1871.
70. Daily Intelligencer, September 29, 1866; Chicago Republican, July 28, 1867.
71. Part of the reason for the openness of the Treasury Department was that the department grew from eleven hundred employees in 1865 to more than nineteen hundred in 1870. See Aron, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service, 57; U.S. Congress, “Clerks Employed in the Treasury Department,” 43rd Cong., 1st sess., House of Representatives, Misc. Doc. No. 253, April 20, 1874.
72. Washington (DC) Evening Star, August 16, 1869.
73. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 17, 1869.
74. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 18, 1869.
75. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 20, 1869.
76. The Olympics of Philadelphia met the Pythians of the same city on September 3, 1869, in the first mixed-race game on record. Thus, by a few days, Philadelphia beat Washington DC to interracial baseball. The Olympics of Philadelphia, however, had declined in prestige rapidly since their pre–Civil War heyday. See Ryczek’s When Johnny Came Sliding Home (101), as well as the late-August 1869 editions of the New York Times and New York Clipper.
77. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 21, 1869.
78. New York Clipper, October 2, 1869.
79. Washington (DC) Evening Star, September 17, 20, 1869.
80. New York Clipper, October 2, 1869.
81. Baltimore Sun, September 23, 1869. The Sun followed up on the rejection two days later (Baltimore Sun, September 25, 1869), clarifying: “The directors of the Maryland Base Ball Club of this city correct the statement that they have refused to play the Olympics of Washington because the latter had engaged a colored club which was not a convention organization. The subject, it is stated, has never been discussed by the Maryland club.” The clarification did not deny the intent to punish the Olympics for crossing the race line, only that the issue had been openly discussed.
82. Washington (DC) Evening Star, October 13, 1869.
83. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, October 16, 1870, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
84. New York Clipper, October 23, 1869. Baseball presses often used the term muffin to describe novice or poor players.
85. Brooklyn Eagle, September 20, 1869.
86. See P. Morris, Baseball Fever, 198–99; Chicago Tribune, August 24, 1870; and Weekly Louisianan, January 29, 1871.
87. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 3, 1869.
88. Voigt, American Baseball, 36.
89. On the significance of and reasons for barnstorming, see Lanctot, Negro League Baseball, 111–16; and White, Creating the National Pastime, 128–46.
6. Richmond: Calibrating a Response
1. New York Clipper, December 18, 1867.
2. Daily News and Herald, October 19, 1867.
3. Daily Phoenix, October 19, 1867.
4. Georgia Weekly Opinion, October 22, 1867.
5. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, October 19, 1867.
6. Chadwick, Game of Base Ball, 162.
7. Atlanta Daily Intelligencer, December 17, 1867.
8. Atlanta Daily Intelligencer, December 17, 1867.
9. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 24, 1866.
10. Richmond Times, October 17, 1866.
11. Washington (DC) Daily National Intelligencer, October 26, 1866.
12. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
13. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
14. See, for example, Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 3, 1869; New York Clipper, June 21, 1873; and newspaper clipping, April 7, 1893, McHarg Family Papers, Georgetown University Special Collections. See also Riess, Touching Base, 29.
15. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
16. Richmond Times, October 27, 1866.
17. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
18. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 27, 1866.
19. New York Clipper, October 27, 1866.
20. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
21. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC; Richmond Times, October 29, 1866.
22. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
23. Richmond Times, October 29, 1866; Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 29, 1866.
24. Richmond Times, October 29, 1866; Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 29, 1866.
25. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
26. Richmond Times, October 29, 1866.
27. French, Baseball Scrapbook and Memorabilia, untitled newspaper clipping, French Papers, Historical Society of Washington DC.
28. Richmond Daily Dispatch, November 6, 1866.
29. Richmond Times, November 7, 1866.
30. Richmond Times, November 10, 1866.
31. New York Clipper, April 13, 1867.
32. Ball Players’ Chronicle, June 27, 1867.
33. Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 11, 1867.
34. Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 25, 1867.
35. Richmond Times, August 6, 1866.
36. Richmond Times, September 15, November 12, 19, 1866.
37. Richmond Times, May 7, 10, 1867, October 10, 1866; Richmond Daily Dispatch, November 22, 1866.
38. Richmond Daily Dispatch, November 12, 1866.
39. Richmond Times, May 10, 1867.
40. Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 17, June 14, August 14, 1867.
41. Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 28, 1867.
42. Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 25, 1867; Daily Intelligencer (Atlanta GA), May 26, 1867; Daily Gazette (Little Rock AR), September 27, 1867; Daily News and Herald (Savannah GA), April 22, 1867; New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, June 1, 1868.
43. Daily Intelligencer, April 23, 1867.
44. Daily Intelligencer, June 16, 1867.
45. National Republican (Washington DC), April 8, 1868.
46. Cincinnati Daily Gazette, November 23, 1869.
47. New York Times, October 1, 1867.
48. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, September 10, 1868.
49. Morning Republican (Little Rock AR), September 8, 1868.
50. New York Clipper, June 20, 1868.
51. Daily News and Herald (Savannah GA), April 22, 1868; Daily Phoenix (Columbia SC), July 23, 1867.
52. New York Clipper, June 20, 1868.
53. Somers, Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 121.
54. Somers, Rise of Sports in New Orleans, 119–20.
55. Schiff, “Father of Baseball,” 97–98.
56. Chadwick Scrapbooks, Society for American Baseball Research.
57. Greenberg, Honor and Slavery, 124. Greenberg’s study focuses on the culture that developed during slavery.
58. Perez, “Between Baseball and Bullfighting,” 494.
59. Daily News and Herald (Savannah GA), April 22, 1868.
60. New Orleans Commercial Bulletin, January 7, 1868; Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 4, 1867.
61. Ball Players’ Chronicle, July 4, 1867.
62. Daily Phoenix (Columbia SC), September 29, 1867.
63. The Pickwick Club Historical Summary: Act of Incorporation, By-Laws, Roster of Membership, 1–5.
64. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 14, 1868.
65. National Republican (Washington DC), April 8, 1868.
66. Kirsch, Creation of American Team Sports, 202–3; Atlanta Daily Sun, November 8, 1872; Morning Republican (Little Rock AR), September 8, 1868.
67. Cleveland Morning Herald, May 16, 1871; Bangor (ME) Daily Whig and Courier, June 8, 1868; Daily Patriot (Concord NH), September 5, 1871; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 22, 1875.
68. Bangor (ME) Daily White and Courier, June 8, 1868.
69. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 7, 1867.
70. Richmond Daily Dispatch, June 10, 1867.
71. Richmond Times, October 2, 9, 1866.
72. Captain Peter S. Michie, United States Army Corps of Engineers, Map: Richmond, Virginia, 1865, Library of Virginia.
73. Richmond City Council Records, August 21, September 9, 1867.
74. Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 27, 1867; Richmond Times, May 14, 1867; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 24, 1867.
75. Richmond Daily Dispatch, October 16, 1867.
76. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 3, 1869.
77. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, April 10, 1869; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 4, 1869.
78. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869.
79. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869; Daily Phoenix (Columbia SC), July 28, 1869; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, August 7, 1869.
80. New York Times, July 28, 1869.
81. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869.
82. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869.
83. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869.
84. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 29, 1869.
85. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, July 31, 1869.
86. Daily Phoenix (Columbia SC), July 28, 1869.
87. Southern Watchman (Athens GA), August 4, 1869; Atlanta Constitution, July 28, 1869.
88. New York Times, July 28, 30, 1869.
89. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, August 7, 1869.
90. Newark (NJ) Advocate, July 30, 1869.
91. New York Times, October 1, 1867.
92. Godkin, “Philosophy of ‘the National Game,’” 168.
93. New York Times, August 16, 1869.
94. New York Times, August 16, 1869.
95. Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1869.
7. Philadelphia: Permanent Solutions
1. Just how fast Jim Crow segregation set in, of course, has long been a historical debate. See Woodward’s Strange Career of Jim Crow, Rabinowitz’s Race Relations in the Urban South, and Litwack’s Been in the Storm So Long.
2. For a broad and insightful analysis of the role of violence during and after Reconstruction, see Shapiro, White Violence and the Black Response.
3. Contract, Octavius Catto and Elisha Weaver, “Philadelphia, May 12, 1870: Articles of agreement made this the 12th day of May, 1870 between and by Elisha Weaver of the one part and Octavius Catto of the other part witnessed that the said Elisha Weaver of the one part agrees to sell unto Octavius V. Catto of the second part all his right title and interest in the Liberty Hall Association in Lombard St for the sum of $950.00: said interest represents the one tenth part of the stock in said association subject to the debts and liabilities of said Elisha Weaver now having accrued up to the present date in the above Liberty Hall Association . . .” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
4. Biddle and Dubin, Tasting Freedom, 402–3.
5. Octavius Catto to Jacob C. White Jr., October 2, 1870, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
6. Whyte, Uncivil War, 99.
7. John Johnson to Octavius Catto, August 14, 1870, ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Biddle and Durbin, Tasting Freedom, 413.
8. New National Era, October 19, 1871.
9. New National Era, October 27, 1870.
10. Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 104–11.
11. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 25, 1871.
12. New York Clipper, July 8, 1871.
13. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 13, 1871.
14. New York Clipper, August 19, 1871.
15. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 13, 1871.
16. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 27, 1871.
17. New York Clipper, September 2, 1871.
18. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 27, 1871.
19. New York Clipper, April 27, 1872.
20. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, June 4, 1871; New York Clipper, October 8, 1870; Weekly Louisianan (New Orleans), January 29, 1871; Cleveland Herald, August 25, 1874.
21. Heaphy, Black Baseball and Chicago, 8–9.
22. Chicago Tribune, November 2, 1867.
23. Chicago Tribune, August 24, 1870.
24. Chicago Tribune, August 24, 1870.
25. Avery, City of Brotherly Mayhem, 17–20.
26. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
27. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
28. Biddle and Dubin, Tasting Freedom, 422–28.
29. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
30. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
31. New National Era, October 19, 1871.
32. The conflicting newspaper reports regarding the Catto murder make ascertaining exactly what occurred impossible. For extensive accounts, see Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11–15, 1871; and New National Era, October 19, 1871.
33. Griffin, Trial of Frank Kelly.
34. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 12, 1871.
35. New National Era, October 19, 1871; Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
36. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 11, 1871.
37. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 12, 1871.
38. New National Era, October 26, 1871.
39. Washington Chronicle quoted in New National Era, October 26, 1871.
40. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 15, 1871.
41. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 15, 1871.
42. Philadelphia Press, October 14, 1871.
43. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 12, 1871.
44. Philadelphia Press, October 17, 1871.
45. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 15, 1871.
46. Philadelphia Press, October 17, 1871.
47. Philadelphia Inquirer, October 18, 1871.
48. New National Era, October 19, 1871.
49. New National Era, November 9, 1871.
50. New National Era, November 9, 1871.
51. New National Era, November 9, 1871.
52. New National Era, October 19, 1871.
53. New National Era, October 19, 1871.
54. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 26, 1874.
55. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 23, 1874.
56. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 236; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 25, 1875; New York Clipper, May 8, 1875; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, December 31, 1876.
57. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 23, 1874.
58. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 22, 1875.
59. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, February 6, 1876.
60. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, December 10, 1876.
61. Ball Players’ Chronicle, November 7, 1867.
62. New York Clipper, December 5, 1868. The total included one “social game” against a Princeton club that the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury (November 8, 1868) did not include in its tally. See also Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 8, 22, 1868; and New York Clipper, September 25, 1869.
63. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 28, 1869.
64. New York Clipper, April 15, 1871. Regarding game play, a few new rules went on the books in 1871, as happened at the beginning of each new baseball season. The ball size was standardized, new rules mandated that called strikes could be levied against a batter who refused to swing at acceptable pitches, and the convention also made standard the practice of batters being allowed to overrun first base. See Voigt, American Baseball, 37–38; and Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings.
65. New York Clipper, December 23, 1871; Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 95–96.
66. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 16, 1873.
67. Shiffert, Base Ball in Philadelphia, 114.
68. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, February 7, 1869, June 11, December 31, 1871, January 14, 1872.
69. New York Clipper, March 1, 1873; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, November 16, 1873.
70. New York Clipper, January 17, 1874; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 6, 1874; Chadwick Scrapbooks, 1874, Society for American Baseball Research.
71. New York Clipper, February 12, 1876; Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 224–26.
72. New York Clipper, February 12, 1876.
73. New York Clipper, February 19, 1876.
74. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, February 13, 1876.
75. New York Clipper, August 26, September 30, December 9, 1876; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, December 3, 1876.
76. New York Clipper, December 12, 1876.
77. Griffin, Trial of Frank Kelly.
78. Avery, City of Brotherly Mayhem, 22.
79. Griffin, Trial of Frank Kelly.
8. Richmond: The Final Tally
1. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, April 10, 1869; New York Clipper, April 3, 1869.
2. Much has been written on the Lost Cause and the role of the Confederate memory in reshaping the South. I found the following works to be the most helpful: Blair, Cities of the Dead; Blight, Race and Reunion; Cox, Dixie’s Daughters; and Wilson, Baptized in Blood.
3. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 2, 1871.
4. Janney, Burying the Dead but Not the Past; Ayers, Gallagher, and Torget, Crucible of the Civil War, 165–82.
5. Petersburg Index and Appeal, April 6, 1875; Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 9, 1876; Sheriff & Chataigne’s Richmond Directory.
6. New National Era, May 5, 1870; Foner, Reconstruction, 512; Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 27, 1873; McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 265; New National Era, June 9, 1874.
7. New National Era, January 13, 1870.
8. Dabney, Richmond, 216.
9. Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 11, 1871.
10. The South’s “a-horse-back mode of living” is tellingly captured in Hundley, Social Relations in Our Southern States, 29.
11. Franklin, Militant South, 33, 174.
12. Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 22, July 12, 1876. Horses also became a way of celebrating the Confederacy, as evidenced by reports on the status of Babcock’s trusty steed. “An Old War-Horse-Captain AG Babcock has in his possession a regular veteran war-horse. He is known as ‘Old Black’ and can be seen any day at Captains Babcock’s farm, ‘Cedar Lawn.’ He has the brand ‘US’ and ‘CS’ on his shoulder, which shows that he was captured from the Federals during the late war.” Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 1, 1882.
13. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 28, 1871.
14. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 7, 1875.
15. Richmond Daily Dispatch, January 2, 1873.
16. Charleston Courier, Tri-Weekly, April 21, 1870.
17. Atlanta Daily Sun, January 6, 1872.
18. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 4, 1871.
19. Petersburg Daily Index, September 9, 1872.
20. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, October 13, 1872.
21. New York Times, January 16, 1871.
22. Maddex, Virginia Conservatives, 49.
23. New National Era, May 30, 1872; Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 26, 1876, September 4, 18, 1875; Maddex, Virginia Conservatives, 134–37; Michael Perman’s treatment of Southern politics is especially insightful in understanding the Democrats, North and South, and how they intersected. See Perman, Road to Redemption, 6, 57–86, 60–61.
24. Richmond City Directory, 1871; Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 2, 1872.
25. Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 4, 14, 1874.
26. Weekly Louisianan, September 4, 1875.
27. Galveston Daily News, June 20, 1875; Morning Republican (Little Rock AR), June 18, 1871.
28. New York Times, September 10, 1870.
29. Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, October 5, 1870.
30. New York Clipper, October 19, 1867; Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 102–3.
31. National Republican (Washington DC), May 24, 1869.
32. Daily Cleveland Herald, August 6, 1870.
33. Atlanta Weekly New Era, May 24, 1871.
34. Boston Daily Globe, July 10, 1874.
35. National Republican (Washington DC), April 19, 1876.
36. Shenandoah Herald, May 28, 1879.
37. Atlanta Daily Constitution, July 7, 1877.
38. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 23, 1876.
39. Petersburg Index and Appeal, September 9, 1872.
40. Petersburg Index and Appeal, April 6, 1875.
41. Petersburg Index and Appeal, April 17, 1875.
42. Gudmestad, “Baseball, the Last Cause, and the New South,” 271.
43. See Gudmestad, “Baseball, the Lost Cause, and the New South,” 271 (emphasis added).
44. Gudmestad, “Baseball, the Lost Cause, and the New South,” 270.
45. Sheriff and Co.’s Richmond City Directory, 1875–1876.
46. Hucles, “Many Voices, Similar Concerns,” 563–65.
47. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 6, 1875.
48. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 5, 1875; Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 8, 1875.
49. Gudmestad, “Baseball, the Lost Cause, and the New South,” 271–78.
50. Retrosheet, “1874 Final Standings” and “1875 Final Standings,” http://www.retrosheet.org.
51. Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 29, 1875.
52. Richmond Daily Dispatch, April 28, 1875.
53. New York Clipper, May 8, 1875.
54. New York Clipper, May 8, 1875.
55. New York Clipper, May 8, 1875.
56. Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 22, 1876.
57. Richmond Daily Dispatch, September 12, 1876.
9. Washington DC: Professional Separation
1. Quoted in Goldstein, Playing for Keeps, 136.
2. The eventual benefits of professionalism have been pointed out, but these mostly came during the 1880s. See Ruck, Raceball, 21.
3. Melville, Early Baseball, 49.
4. Wiegand, Politics of an Emerging Profession, 109.
5. Chadwick seemed to recognize the inevitability of open professionalism: “Professionals—This is the term applied to all ball players who play base ball for money. . . . The Rules prohibit players from receiving compensation for their services in a match, but there is scarcely a club of note that has not infringed the rule.” Chadwick, Game of Base Ball, 44.
6. New York Clipper, December 10, 1870.
7. Jackson, Professions and Professionalization, 7.
8. New National Era, January 20, 1870.
9. Johnson, “City on a Hill,” 129–36. A few daring white doctors then rebelled and formed the National Medical Society with the intention of allowing black membership. The integrated group collapsed in a matter of weeks. The white doctors scurried back under the umbrella of the DC Medical Association.
10. Moreno, Black Americans and Organized Labor, 29–32. For the difficulty of overcoming race in attempting to unite the working class, see also Gertis, Class and the Color Line.
11. Vollmer and Mills, Professionalization, 52. In some scholarship optimism about the healing faculties of professionalism and sports sounds relatively similar. Consider the work of Vollmer and Mills, for example, in concert with Richard Thompson’s Race and Sport: “Modern sport undermines any system of social stratification based on colour” (11).
12. Chicago Tribune, September 17, 4, 1870; Heaphy, Black Baseball and Chicago, 8–9.
13. New York Times, November 14, 1870.
14. New York Times, November 14, 1870.
15. New York Times, November 14, 1870.
16. New York Times, November 14, 1870.
17. New York Times, November 14, 1870.
18. There has been a significant amount of scholarship on “virtual representation” and the rise of American nationalism. For a useful sampling of this research, see Reid, Concept of Representation; and New York Times, November 14, 1870.
19. New York Times, November 14, 1870 (emphasis added).
20. Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home, 100, 139, 242; New York Clipper, November 26, 1870.
21. Brooklyn Eagle, November 14, 1870.
22. Brooklyn Eagle, November 17, 1870.
23. New York Clipper, December 10, 1870.
24. New York Clipper, December 10, 1870.
25. New York Clipper, December 10, 1870 (emphasis added).
26. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 9–10.
27. Roberts, Hardball on the Hill, 18; Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 12; New York Clipper, March 1, 1871; Rader, Baseball, 37. Determining when professional baseball began in the United States is a controversial task. For a sampling of this debate, see Melville, Early Baseball, 26–34.
28. Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 59.
29. New York Clipper, January 15, April 30, 1870.
30. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, September 29, 1872.
31. “Nicholas Young Clippings File,” Baseball Hall of Fame.
32. “Nicholas Young Clippings File,” Baseball Hall of Fame.
33. New York Clipper, February 19, September 10, 1870; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, January 29, 1871.
34. New York Clipper, December 17, 1870; Baseball Scrapbooks, newspaper clipping, Notre Dame Sports Collection.
35. National Republican, December 2, 1870.
36. On the issue of financial backing for black baseball, I found Lomax’s Black Baseball Entrepreneurs to be most helpful. Lomax makes a thorough examination of the economic side of black baseball that explains how black clubs functioned. See also Ruck, Sandlot Seasons.
37. Daily Patriot, March 20, 1871.
38. New York Clipper, April 15, 1871.
39. Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, January 29, September 10, 1871.
40. Sunday Herald, June 12, 1871; National Republican, June 11, 1871.
41. Washington Chronicle, June 13, 1871.
42. For more on the effects of professionalization, see Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 58–62. Seymour concluded, among other things, that professionalism made baseball a less noble and less honest game: “Its premium on winning changed the entire ethic of baseball from one of sport to one of victory by any possible method. It sanctioned if not outright violations of the rules at least taking all one could get within them.”
43. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 14, 1870.
44. Washington (DC) Evening Star, August 10, 1870.
45. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 4, 1870; Washington (DC) Evening Star, August 10, 1870.
46. Washington (DC) Evening Star, July 7, 1870; Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 14, 1870.
47. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 21, 1870.
48. New York Clipper, September 3, 1870.
49. Charles Douglass to Frederick Douglass, August 9, 1870, Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.
50. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 18, 1870.
51. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 18, 1870.
52. U.S. Congress, Governance of the Nation’s Capital, 42–43.
53. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, August 13, 1871. The connection between Washington’s baseball community and the Treasury Department was a close one. It was so tight, in fact, that a mild protest arose in the District in the 1870s regarding the perceived preference given to ballplayers within the department. As an example of these sentiments, see Washington Chronicle, February 9, 1871: “Promotions in Departments—to the editor of the Chronicle: The recent promotions in one of the bureaus of the Treasury Department have caused many speculations regarding the basis upon which they were made, from the fact that “base-ballers” were given preference over those who hold out no only more responsible positions, but were entitled to some consideration upon the ground of seniority alone. . . . The feeling of the clerks burns with indignation to contemplate with what force base ball matters are encroaching upon their rights and the best interests for the public service.”
54. New York Clipper, July 29, 1871.
55. New National Era, July 25, 1872.
56. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, June 25, 1871.
57. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, June 30, 1872.
58. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 14, 1873; Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times, August 24, 1867.
59. New National Era, April 17, 1873. When the publication officially incorporated in April 1873, Lewis Douglass, Frederick Douglass Jr., and Charles Douglass were all named trustees.
60. New National Era, July 24, 31, October 2, 1873.
61. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 21, 1873.
62. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 28, 1873.
63. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, October 5, 1873.
64. New National Era, October 23, 1873.
65. Green, Secret City, 96; Johnson, “City on a Hill,” 220.
66. New York Clipper, May 15, 1869; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, April 25, 1869. The phenomenon of geographically based social remembrance has moved, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the front yard of the White House to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The value of this public space has been validated repeatedly by public demonstrations, not the least of which was the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr. See Sandage, “Marble House Divided.”
67. New National Era, September 28, 1871.
68. New National Era, May 23, 1872.
69. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, June 30, 1872, September 6, 1874.
70. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 6, 1874.
71. Neither the origins of the Creighton Club nor the caliber of its men is known. The club’s name probably paid homage to one of baseball’s first great pitchers, James Creighton. Creighton played for the Excelsiors of Brooklyn. He perfected the fast-paced delivery, but died tragically, so the legend goes, when his bladder ruptured while hitting a home run, at the age of twenty-one. See Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 5–6.
72. Washington (DC) Sunday Herald and Weekly National Intelligencer, September 6, 1874.
73. New National Era, October 9, 1873.
74. New York Clipper, March 18, 1876.
75. New York Times, November 1, 1916.
76. New York Clipper, March 18, 1876.
77. The Washington Mutual Club was not designated by the New York Clipper, the paper that provided the most extensive coverage for the National Association of Amateur Base Ball Players convention, as “colored.” Thus, integration happened stealthily. Confirming that the club mentioned was indeed a black club (given the popularity of the “Mutual” name) requires careful cross-referencing, paying particular attention to the Mutual players with the last names Barlow, Bell, Brooks, and Smith. See New York Clipper, March 18, 1876, and March 24, 1877, for coverage of the conventions. Then see the following to confirm that the Mutual Club mentioned was indeed Washington’s long-standing black organization: New York Clipper, September 3, 1870, March 11, 1876; Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, August 23, 1874; New National Era, August 7, 1873; and Peoples’ Advocate (Washington DC), September 27, 1879.
78. New York Clipper, March 11, 1876, March 24, 1877.
79. New York Clipper, March 24, 1877.
80. Melville, Early Baseball, 102.
81. William Edward White, an African American, played in one National League game in 1879, “passing” as a white man. See Peter Morris and Stefan Fatsis, “Baseball’s Secret Pioneer,” www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2014/02/william_edward_white_baseball_s_first_black_player_lived_his_life_as_a_white.html. Accessed February 6, 2014.
Epilogue
1. That is not to say that baseball is dominated by “white” Caucasian players. Major League Baseball has significant diversity. American-born players share big league base paths with Latin players, many in particular from the Dominican Republic, and hurlers and position players from Asia, among other places. See Ruck, Raceball.
2. USA Today, April 16, 2012.
3. New York Times, October 10, 1999.
4. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 33–39.
5. Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years, 334–35.
6. Quoted in Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 40.
7. Zang, Fleet Walker’s Divided Heart, 57–64.
8. New York Age, February 23, 1889.
9. Walker, Our Home Colony.
10. Sporting Life, April 11, 1891.
11. Malloy, Sol White’s History of Colored Base Ball, xv.
12. Lomax, Operating by Any Means Necessary, 17278.
13. Posnanski, Soul of Baseball, 191.
14. “Report of the Delegate to the Convention of Baseball Players,” ANHS Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
15. New York Clipper, December 21, 1867.
16. New York Clipper, November 26, 1870; see also November 19, 1870.
17. New York Clipper, May 7, 1870.
18. Malloy, Sol White’s Official Base Ball Guide, 5.
19. For more on Sol White, see Jerry Malloy, “The Strange Career of Sol White: Black Baseball’s First Historian,” in Out of the Shadows, edited by Kirwin, 61–78.
20. Benson, Ballparks of North America, 419.
21. Peterson, Only the Ball Was White, 123.
22. Lanctot, Negro League Baseball, 3–7.
23. Kirwin, Out of the Shadows, 147–52.
24. Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 33–37.
25. Clark and Lester, Negro Leagues Book.
26. Benson, Ballparks of North America, 407–9; Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 2–11.
27. Thorn and Palmer, Total Baseball, 84–86.
28. Snyder, Beyond the Shadow of the Senators, 57–59.
29. “Roster Book,” Swales Baseball Collection, 1871–1930, New York Public Library; Thorn and Palmer, Total Baseball, 1898.
30. Daniel and Mayer, Baseball and Richmond, 20–23.
31. Gudmestad, “Baseball, the Lost Cause, and the New South,” 298–300.
32. Daniel and Mayer, Baseball and Richmond, 113–17, 133–36.