Cincinnati Reds

“ Louis club opened the April campaign among the leaders, and put up their stock to a premium, by ending the month's record tied with Boston and Cleveland for first place, each with a percentage of .750, the club's special rival—Comiskey's Cincinnati "Reds"—ending the April campaign tied with Baltimore for fifth place. ”

“ Watson in the hotel lobby one day. "I see the Boston Braves are about through training, the Phillies are said to be all primed, and the Giants are ready to eat up all the rest of us."
"Whom do we open with?" asked Joe.
"The Cincinnati Reds," answered the manager. "The exact date isn't set yet, but it will be around the last of April. We've got some hard games here yet. I'm going to play some exhibitions on the way up North, to break you in gradually." ”

“ By the time the Eastern inter-city games were over, the Giants had considerably bettered their team standing. They had passed the Brooklyns, who had let down a good deal and were now playing in-and-out ball. The Chicagos were still in the lead, with Pittsburgh three games behind them, but pressing them closely. Then came the Giants, two games in the rear of the men from the Smoky City. The Cincinnati Reds brought up the rear of the first division, but the conviction was strong in the minds of the Giants that it was either the Pirates or the Cubs they had to beat in order to win the pennant. ”

“ Then, with a long series on their home grounds in prospect, there was a good chance that the Giants could get so far out in the lead that they would never be headed.
Their first series was with Cincinnati, and here they struck a snag in Hughson’s rejuvenated team. The Reds were playing championship ball and ran away with three games out of four. This was a setback, but the Giants evened the score when they made a similar killing with the Pittsburghs as the victims. At St. Louis the team met with rain on one of the days scheduled, and were able to play only three games. ”

“ The score now showed the Cincinnati team two runs to the good, with two to tie and three to win as the demand from the Atlantics in their half of the eleventh. Brainard, of the Reds, who up to that innings had been pitching a great game, suddenly had a streak of ill luck, or something. At any rate, he let down in the quality of his work. The Atlantics, taking advantage of the fact and playing the game for all there was in it, began to bat fiercely. ”

“ When the team went south for the spring practice, the newspapers printed glowing reports of the possibilities of the club winning the pennant, but, when the club started to fall down in the race, they would knock the men, and it would take the heart out of the players. Almost enough good players have been let go by the Cincinnati team to make a world’s championship club. There are Donlin, Seymour, Steinfeldt, Lobert and many more. Ball players inhale the accounts printed in the newspapers, and a correspondent with a grouch has ruined the prospects of many a good player and club. ”

“ The Giants’ opponents that day were the St. Louis Cardinals, the last of the Western clubs to visit the Polo Grounds on the first round of the inter-sectional games.
Cincinnati, as has been said, had been able to make an even break of it with the Giants. The Pittsburghs had done even better, for the Smoky City boys had left the big town with three scalps hanging to their belts. ”

“ Look at the years that Chicago took it time after time in the days of Frank Chance and Pop Anson. And Cincinnati got it with Pat Moran leading them. Pittsburgh has had it too. And in the East, Brooklyn has copped it off more than once and so have the Bostons. As a matter of fact, every team has a chance. ”

“ Finally one club, actuated by the spirit that has characterized every pioneer movement in history, decided to blaze the way. Consequently, in 1869, under the management of Harry Wright, who had then been playing Base Ball for about ten years, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, formed in 1866 as an amateur team, now determined to organize as an out-and-out professional club, with a view of measuring skill with the heretofore invincible clubs of the East.
This club consisted of trained players, the best men procurable, and every one to receive a substantial salary. ”

“ We might wonder whether a town with a name like that would ever grow into a great city. It did not have to try, for it was not long before General St. Clair, who had come there, made fun of the name and insisted upon a new one. He and other officers of the American army had formed a society commemorating their experience in the Revolution, and in honor of the Roman patriot Cincinnatus had called themselves the Order of Cincinnati. St. Clair thought this a good name for the town, and Cincinnati it has been since that time. ”

“ For more than ten years preceding the Civil War the city was much disturbed by slavery dissension—the industrial interests were largely with the South, but abolitionists were numerous and active, and the city was an important station on the “Underground Railroad,” of which Dr Norton S. Townshend (1815 –95) was conductor, and one of the stations was the home of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who lived in Cincinnati from 1832 to 1850, and gathered there much material embodied in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. ”

“ Al Wright, the base ball editor of the New York Clipper, in its issue of February 15, 1895, had this noteworthy paragraph in its columns: "Frank C. Bancroft, the business manager of the Cincinnati club, in speaking about the equalization of the players of the major league teams, said: 'I am not a firm believer in the prevalent practice of selling the best men in a weak or tail-end team to one of the leading clubs, and register a vigorous kick against it. ”

“ Cincinnati is a very fine town, and elegantly (not only in the American acceptation of the word) situated on the banks of the river, nearly opposite to Licking Creek, which runs out of Kentucky, and is a stream of considerable importance. The country round the town is beautiful, and the soil rich; the fields in its immediate vicinity bear principally grass, and clover of different sorts, the fragrant smell of which perfumes the air. The town itself ranks next to Pittsburgh, of the towns on the Ohio, in point of manufactures. ”

“ To professional base ball, as governed by the existing National League, is mainly due the great popularity our national game has achieved within the past twenty years. Of course the amateur class of the fraternity greatly outnumber the professionals; but the game could never have reached its present point of excellence in field work but for the time and attention the professional clubs were enabled to devote to its thorough development from the year of Harry Wright's famous "Red Stocking" nine of Cincinnati, in 1869, to the existing period of model professional ball playing. ”

“ Up to 1868 the laws of the game forbade remuneration for players, but so great had become the rivalry that professionalism worked its way in, and the rule became a dead letter. At the convention of 1868 the district classes were made, and in 1869 the first regular professional nine, the famous Cincinnati Red Stockings, was organized, and signalized their appearance by playing clubs from Maine and California without a defeat. They won fifty-six games, tied one, and scored 2,389 runs to 574. ”

“ Cincinnati was born again,—began a new life. There is now prevalent among the rulers of the city that noblest trait of freemen, that supreme virtue of the citizen,—Public Spirit; the blessed fruits of which are already apparent, and which is about to render the city a true metropolis to the valley of the Ohio, the fostering mother of all that aids and adorns civilization.
Cincinnati, like New York, is a cluster of towns and cities, bearing various names, and situated in different States. ”

“ Here reside the families enriched by the industry of the low, smoky town. Here, upon these enchanting hills, and in these inviting valleys, will finally gather the greater part of the population, leaving the city to its smoke and heat when the labors of the day are done. As far as we have seen or read, no inland city in the world surpasses Cincinnati in the beauty of its environs. They present as perfect a combination of the picturesque and the accessible as can anywhere be found; and there are still the primeval forests, and the virgin soil, to favor the plans of the artist in "capabilities." ”

“ A volume might presently be filled with descriptions of our drives about the environs of Cincinnati. There are innumerable points of view whence the city, with its masses of building and its spires, may be seen shining through the limpid atmosphere, like a cloud-city in the evening sky. There are many spots where it is a relief to lose the river from the view, and to be shut in among the brilliant green hills, which are more than can be numbered. But there is one drive which I almost wonder the inhabitants do not take every summer day, to the Little Miami bottoms. ”

“ The leading Base Ball club of Cincinnati, seeing the inevitable, unwilling to be bound by rules which nobody respected or obeyed, holding in utter contempt an organization that had failed to uphold the dignity and integrity of a game of which it was the nominal executive head, threw down the gauntlet of defiance to the National Association of Base Ball Players—not by a flaming pronunciamento, but by manly declaration that henceforth it would be known as a professional organization. ”

“ Situated on a north bend of the Ohio where commerce breaks bulk, Cincinnati rapidly developed, attracting both foreigners and Americans, among whom were not a few Negroes. Exactly how many persons of color were in this city during the first decade of the nineteenth century is not yet known. ”

“ In things economic the Negroes were exceptionally prosperous after the forties. Cincinnati had then become a noted pork-packing and manufacturing center. The increasing canal and river traffic and finally the rise of the railroad system tended to make it thrive more than ever. Many colored men grew up with the city. A Negro had in the East End on Calvert Street a large cooperage establishment which made barrels for the packers. ”

“ When the Brotherhood League was formed and withdrew so many players from the National League the latter organization undertook to strengthen itself where it could and when Brooklyn and Cincinnati applied for membership in the circuit both were admitted.
The New York National League club had lost many of its players and, upon the substitution of Cincinnati for Indianapolis in the National League circuit, procured from Mr. Brush many players of note, among them Rusie, Glasscock, Buckley, Bassett and Denny. ”

“ Industries.—Although the second city in population in the state, Cincinnati ranked first in 1900 as a manufacturing centre, but lost this pre-eminence to Cleveland in 1905, when the value of Cincinnati’s factory product was $166,059,050, an increase of 17.2% over the figures for 1900. ”

“ There is no such street in Cincinnati, and for a reason which becomes apparent during the first long walk. When the stranger has panted up the slope on which the city is built, to a point one mile from the river, he sees looming up before him an almost precipitous hill, four hundred and sixty-two feet high, which has been dug into, and pared down, until it has about as much beauty as an immense heap of gravel. ”

“ They were a trifle luckier in Chicago, where they won two out of three, rain preventing the last game. Cincinnati yielded three straight, though the Queen Cityites took the fourth, and in Pittsburgh, where they wound up their first Western invasion, they broke even.
“Not so bad for a road trip, nine out of fifteen,” said Larry Barrett, as he was talking it over with Joe. “As a matter of fact it’s better than we did at home. But the Giants always have been a good road team. But now you’ve had a chance to size up every team in the league. You’ve seen their weak points and their strong ones. ”

“ He had never been to Cincinnati. Indeed, except on picnic days, he had scarcely ever been outside of Dexter. But Cincinnati was the great city of his State, the one towards which adventurous youth turned its steps when real life was to be begun. ”

“ I was virtually given the freedom of the city of Pittsburg, and sold my literature without hindrance; but not so when I came to Cincinnati. The mayor treated me with scant courtesy, but the automobile clubs of Cincinnati took action at once similar to that of the Pittsburg club. Again when I arrived in St. Louis, I received at the city hall the same frigid reception that had been given me at Cincinnati, although strenuous efforts were made by prominent citizens to bring out a different result. ”

“ In the following year, 1878, the Louisville, New York and Hartford clubs withdrew, but as Cincinnati had made good its shortage and been reinstated, and as Providence, Indianapolis and Milwaukee had been admitted, the circuit was again composed of six clubs, the championship season closing with the clubs in the following order: Boston, Cincinnati, Providence, Chicago, Indianapolis, Milwaukee. ”

“ Cincinnati is handsomely situated on a first and second bank of the Ohio, opposite Licking river. It is a flourishing town, has a rich, level, and well settled country around it. It contains about four hundred dwellings, an elegant court house, jail, three market houses, a land office for the sale of Congress lands, two printing offices, issuing weekly Gazettes, thirty mercantile stores, and the various branches of mechanism are carried on with spirit. Industry of every kind being duly encouraged by the citizens, Cincinnati is likely to become a considerable manufacturing place. ”