Season-long tribute planned for pioneering Red Stockings
CINCINNATI >> The Cincinnati Reds are fashionably celebrating the 150th anniversary of the professional baseball-pioneering Red Stockings team.
Joey Votto and crew will play games in 15 sets of throwback uniforms, including a navy blue and a redpants “Palm Beach” version, during a season-long celebration of the city’s baseball heritage highlighted by the undefeated 1869 Cincinnati team that barnstormed coast-to-coast in post-Civil War America. Baseball’s first openly all-salaried club, the Red Stockings popularized eye-catching uniforms with knicker-style pants and bright red socks while elevating the sports with a variety of innovations.
“From a historical point of view and in the evolution of baseball as the national pastime, the 1869 Red Stockings were the cornerstone,” said Greg Rhodes, the Reds team historian and co-author of “The First Boys of Summer.” “It’s hard to imagine the modern game of baseball without the Red Stockings.”
Six questions and answers about the anniversary:
WHO WERE THE RED STOCKINGS?
The powerhouse team grew out of the goal of a couple Cincinnati attorneys to build their local baseball club into one that could beat the best teams in the East. Baseball’s postwar popularity had swelled and paying players, often under the table, became more common in what had begun as a gentlemen’s game.
The Red Stockings became the first openly all-salaried team after a quest for talent Major League Baseball historian John Thorn compares to New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner’s free spending more than a century later.
“This is a team comprised of the very best players that could be found and induced to come to Cincinnati,” Thorn said.
The biggest coup was signing player-manager Harry Wright’s younger brother George, a star who had been team-hopping.
That first payroll totaled around $10,000 for 10 players.
HOW GOOD WERE THEY?
Thorn considers the 1869 squad among the best alltime teams. They averaged more than 40 runs a game and remain professional baseball’s only undefeated team after going 57-0.
Thorn says 19 wins came against teams also classified as “professional.” Rhodes says Harry Wright didn’t count in the win total more than a dozen other victories against teams that weren’t recognized by baseball’s national association.
His older brother’s records show George Wright batted about .630 with 49 home runs while averaging nearly six runs scored per game. Thorn compares George in all-around ability for his time to Alex Rodriguez at his peak; a feared hitter who was also a superb fielder (in the pre-glove era) with a powerful arm that allowed him to play unusually deep at shortstop.
With players under contract, Harry, an Englandborn cricket star, worked them hard on baseball technique and physical training. The Red Stockings developed calling fly balls, using relay throws, making defensive shifts, and intentionally dropping pop-ups to turn double plays (not allowed under today’s infield fly rule). They ran the bases more aggressively than opponents, and Harry Wright was a relief pitching innovator, coming in with his slow “dew drop” to disrupt batters’ timing after fastthrowing regular pitcher Asa Brainard.
HOW BIG A DEAL WERE THEY?
The Red Stockings took the nation by storm, playing coast-to-coast with swings through the East and a transcontinental railroad trip to California.
Wearing knickers with bright stockings instead of long pants gave the young (seven of the 10 were age 22 or younger), muscular players an eye-catching look that, the Chronicle of San Francisco observed, “shows their calves in all their magnitude and rotundity.”
Author Darryl Brock, who retraced their travels for his historical novel, “If I Never Get Back,” describes women greeting the players by lifting their skirts to show their own red stockings. The team arrived at games singing a ditty that concluded: “Red Stockings all will toss the ball, and shout our loud Hurrah!” They showed off their skills in crowd-pleasing warmup drills.
Before mass media, they became a national sensation through telegraph reports, newspapers and national weeklies.
“The nation had been so badly divided (by war),” said Brock. “They were kind of a bonding influence ... the enormous excitement they generated.”