History Awakens: February 2, 1876 and the Founding of the National League, Part 2
Dramatis Personae
PERHAPS surprisingly, I will write less here about celebrated individuals — such as Hulbert, Spalding, Chadwick, and Wright — than the figures you may not know. [This cast of characters is the second part of a series that commenced here: https://bit.ly/3HoGREu.] The big shots in the story of the National League’s founding will tend to receive links rather than capsule biographies. In alphabetical order:
N.T. Apollonio: Nicholas Taylor Apollonio (1843–1911) was president of the Boston Base Ball Club (known as the Red Stockings) in the National Association of 1874–1875 and was reelected despite the leaked defection of its stars to Chicago during the 1875 campaign. At the NL meetings in Cleveland in December 1876, the minutes reflect that “Mr. Hulbert nominated Mr. Apollonio for President of the League, but Mr. A. declined the honor, whereupon Mr. W. A. Hulbert was unanimously elected.” Good thing, too, as Apollonio learned upon his return home that he had not been reelected president of his own club. Arthur Soden replaced him for 1877 and well beyond. See: https://sabr.org/node/43174
C. Orrick Bishop: Campbell Orrick Bishop (1842–1929), a prominent lawyer and judge in St. Louis, graduated from Louisville Law School, LL.B., and was admitted to the bar in 1867. At about that time he was a player and subsequently an officer of the Union Base Ball Club, as well as a member of the board of directors of the 1875 Brown Stockings. In that year he spent a month in the East looking for exogenous talent, signing Dickey Pearce, Lip Pike, Herman Dehlman, and Jack Chapman for the club. A lifelong bachelor, Bishop died on August 26, 1929.
Morgan G. Bulkeley: Titular president of the National League in its inaugural season of 1876, although Hulbert made all the decisions, Morgan Gardner Bulkeley (1837–1922) left his mark on the insurance industry more than on baseball. Though he was the president of the Hartford club in the NA years of 1874–75, his more important presidency was that of the Aetna Insurance Company, a post he held from 1879 until his death. He was also Connecticut’s governor and served on the Mills Commission of 1905–1907 that anointed Abner Doubleday as baseball’s inventor. See: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/73d7237a
William H. Cammeyer: Famous in baseball history as creator and proprietor of the Union Grounds, the first ballpark enclosed for baseball (so that admission could be charged), William Henry Cammeyer (1821–1898) was the Mutuals representative at the epochal meeting of February 2, 1876. He is listed in reference works as manager of the ball club in what turned out to be its only year in the National League, but it is unlikely that he had any role on the field. With New York City real estate being swallowed up by commercial and residential interests, Cammeyer in 1861 leased “a big barren lot, which had been lying idle for years,” and made it his skating ground in the winter and ball field in the other three seasons. By 1867 it became home to New York’s Mutual Baseball Club, who gave up their former home field at Hoboken, New Jersey, and in 1876 under Cammeyer’s management reconstituted themselves in Brooklyn.
Henry Chadwick: The Father of Baseball was a nickname (shared with many of course) that was well earned even if in his later years some would apply the term acerbically. Henry Chadwick (1824–1908) was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938 and remains the only writer ever so honored. See: http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/436e570c and http://mlb.mlb.com/memorylab/origins/chadwick.jsp
Charles E. Chase: In a 1905 interview with the Brooklyn Eagle, Jack Chapman, the manger of the Louisville clubs of 1876–1877, was quoted as saying, “Charles E. Chase is still living, and is a wealthy resident of Louisville, where he is greatly respected.” Chase (1850–1920) was a vice-president of the Louisville Club of the National League in those years and a signatory to the agreement of December 17, 1875. He had been part of a wholesale liquor and distillery firm in Louisville (E.H. Chase & Co.) established in 1865 and enduring to 1917. He and Louisville club president Walter N. Haldeman had had to preside over the destruction of the Louisville club after a betting scandal uncovered late in the season implicated four players who ultimately were expelled: Jim Devlin, Gorge Hall, Bill Craver, and Al Nichols. Chase was a key figure in the National League’s formation with whom Hulbert corresponded in the summer preceding the fateful meetings.
Davy Force: In the words of my departed friend Joe Overfield, “Shortstop Davy Force (1849–1918) was a ranking player for 15 seasons, first in the National Association and then in the National League. But his role in baseball history was fixed by something he did off the field, not on it. Most baseball historians agree that his double contract signing in 1874 played a significant part in the demise of the National Association and the emergence of the National League in 1876….
“Force learned baseball as a youngster in New York City, first gaining attention as a catcher for the Unknowns of Harlem. When he was 18, A. G. Mills [future right-hand man to Hulbert and an NL president himself] persuaded him to come to Washington, D.C. to join the Olympic Club. The Olympics were ostensibly an amateur nine, but the suspicion is strong that sub rosa payments were made to its players. Force played for the Olympics from 1867 to 1871, the last year being the maiden season of the National Association.
“In the Association’s five seasons, Force played for Troy, Baltimore, Chicago and the Athletics in addition to the Olympics. His .412 average in 1872 for Troy and Baltimore led the league, and his overall Association mark was a healthy .326.”
After he left baseball in 1889 he once again went to work for Mills, who had become president of the Otis Elevator Company.
Charles A. Fowle: Secretary of the St. Louis Base Ball Club, Charles A. Fowle (1844–1883) became a Hulbert confidant and with him appeared at the meeting of February 2, 1876, having obtained full power to act on behalf of the four Western clubs (particularly those otherwise unrepresented, Louisville and Cincinnati).
Born in Eastport, Maine, he was educated in Boston but soon turned his attention to business, arriving in St. Louis in 1869, where he made a substantial fortune in the notions trade via the “St. Bernard Dollar Store,” which he established at №406 North Fourth Street. At the time of his death in 1883 he was engaged in an attempt to restore a National League team to St. Louis to rival the new Brown Stockings of the American Association.
William Hulbert: He was born not far from Cooperstown, in Burlington Flats, Otsego County, but took a long time in returning to the locale of his birth. William Ambrose Hulbert (1832–1882) was the genius behind the idea of a new league organized with a strict division between capital and labor. Spalding wrote of him, in America’s National Game (1911), “As in the history of nations, so in that of all enterprises of magnitude, there arise from time to time men cast in heroic molds, the impress of whose acts upon the issues at hand is felt for many years. At the time of the organization of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs such a man was present in the person of William A. Hulbert.”
In a personal aside, Hulbert attended, as I did, Wisconsin’s Beloit College (actually its preparatory school, the Beloit Academy, in 1850–1851). On June 18, 1851 “Hurlbut [sic] was reported as “on the course for discipline. Warning and letter home voted.” Beloit College archivist Fred Burwell further reports that “A final mention appears on June 25, 1851: ‘Voted that Hurlbut [sic] be cut off from the institution for irregularity in attendance and entire neglect of study.’”
Greatness is not always evident early. See: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/d1d420b3
Lewis Meacham: This unlikely fellow was Hulbert’s selection to serve as mouthpiece for his idea about a forming a new league, beginning with a historically important piece in the Chicago Tribune. An impecunious bachelor afflicted with chronic digestive ailments (from which he would die at age 32), Lewis Meacham (1846–1878) had previously failed in a brush factory in Vermont, a sheep farm in Colorado, and in the proofreading department of the Chicago Times. He had been on his latest job only three months, with no prior involvement in baseball, when on October 24, 1875, he miraculously came up with a plan for the National Association’s reorganization and saw it published in the Tribune.
From The Decennial Record of the Class of 1869, Amherst College. MacNamara Printers, New York, 1879, pp. 43–44, in a section entitled “Biographical Record of Non-Graduates”:
Lewis Meacham, son of James and Mary F. Meacham, was born at New Haven, Vt., March 8th, 1846. His preparation for college was begun at Farmington, Conn., where he remained one year, and completed at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. He left college Junior year, and we are indebted to the kindness of his sister for the facts of his subsequent history. After leaving Amherst, he was tutor for a few months in Christian College, Indiana. But his inclination leading him strongly to journalism, he went to Chicago, where he obtained a position upon the Tribune which he filled until after the great fire. He was then appointed by Mayor Medill as private secretary. In 1874, he returned to Vermont and became local editor of the Rutland Herald, but the following year went again to Chicago, to accept a position upon the editorial staff of the Tribune. This position he occupied until his death, October 2nd, 1878. While his death was terribly sudden, it was not altogether unexpected, as he had long suffered from a wound received in the army, and from ill health contracted there. While busily at work Tuesday morning he was taken sick, and suffered intensely until the next morning, when he died….
I expect I will return to Mr. Meacham at Our Game soon.
Al Spalding: Arguably the most influential figure in all baseball history, Albert Goodwill Spalding (1850–1915) was a great pitcher, sporting-goods magnate, the founder of one league (the National) and destroyer of another (Players’ League). He documented the game’s history in America’s National Game (1911); “made” history by backing the Mills Commission’s study into the origins of the game; ran for the U.S. Senate in California; married a long-term mistress by whom he had had a child, subsequently adopted; backed a religious sect; and in a profound way set the stage for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where he is of course an honored inductee. Spalding is the central figure in my Baseball in the Garden of Eden.(https://goo.gl/jPC1Li). See also: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/b99355e0
George W. Thompson: The delegate of the Athletic Club of Philadelphia to the meeting of February 2, 1876, he returned in that capacity when the League met at the Kennard House in Cleveland on December 7 of that year to expel not only Thompson’s Athletics but also Cammeyer’s Mutuals. Both clubs had declined to make their last Western road trips, which had been a common practice in the National Association and helped to weaken that circuit. The Mutuals, presuming their expulsion to be a certainty, sent no delegate to that meeting. (Cammeyer may already have known that his Union Grounds would be occupied in 1877 anyway, as the Hartfords would make Brooklyn their home field.)
On motion, the reading of the minutes of the last meeting was dispensed with. The Board of Directors submitted their report. On motion of Mr. Mills, the report was received. Mr. Keck moved that Mr. Thompson be heard in defense of his club. Mr. Thompson submitted a written statement in defense. Mr. Mills called for the reading of the communication from the four Western clubs and moved the adoption of the resolution therein recommended. Carried. Mr. Wright moved that when the vote upon expulsion is taken, it be by yeas and nays. Carried. Mr. Keck offered the following:
Whereas, the League having adopted the resolution of the Board of Directors of 1876, as follows: Resolved, that the Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia, Pa., and the Mutual Base Ball Club of Brooklyn, N. Y., have forfeited their membership in this League; therefore.
Be it resolved, that, in accordance with the adoption of said resolution, the Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia. Pa., and the Mutual Base Ball Club of Brooklyn, N. Y., be and the same are hereby, expelled from this League. Upon the roll being called the vote of every club was recorded in the affirmative.
Harry Wright: If Chadwick is a Father of Baseball, along with Doc Adams, Alexander Cartwright, and even Abner Doubleday, it is not too much to call Harry Wright the Father of Professional Baseball. Again, see Baseball in the Garden of Eden (https://goo.gl/jPC1Li). See also: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/eb17c14e
Nick Young: A largely neglected figure in professional baseball history, Nicholas Ephraim Young (1840–1916) was certainly present at the creation of the National Association and then lurked in the wings when the NL was formed, waiting for the call to action. Let Nick tell the story himself (from the New York Clipper, August 11, 1888):
Prior to 1871 there was no regular association of professional clubs. There was no regular system for the exchange of games. Early in that year it occurred to me that a meeting of representatives of the leading professional clubs of the country was very necessary to arrange as far as seemed at that time possible, a schedule of games. Accordingly I wrote a circular letter to each of the clubs and suggested that we meet in New York City on March 17. A favorable reply was received from all, and the meeting was held at the time and place named, and the National Association of Professional Baseball Clubs (of which the National League was successor) was duly organized…. I worked hard and single handed to get up that organization, but I succeeded, and you know how the game has grown since, and I hope it will continue.
After eight years as NL Secretary-Treasurer, Nick served as NL president from 1885 through 1902. He returned to private affairs thereafter and died in the home of his son, Robert.
Robert H. Young: Serving as secretary and statistician for the NL in the later years of his father’s presidency (1897–1902), Robert Hall Young (1874–1956) was a successful patent attorney who never lost his love of the game. He spoke at the banquet for the 40th anniversary of the NL in 1916 and, at the kickoff event of the “jubilee year,” presented the current volume of documents from February 2, 1876 (“1876 NL”) which has excited so much interest. In between, in 1920, he even secured a patent for a catcher’s mitt:
Major Robert H. Young, of the United States Air Service, has invented a baseball glove that swallows this compressed air, creating a partial vacuum in the glove and eliminating the tendency to rebound. There are air holes in the padded palm to which flexible tubes are attached. These tubes have their outlets in the sides of the glove. There are valves at the end of the tubes that prevent air from entering.
As his father’s right-hand man, Robert would have preserved those papers that Nick Young regarded as personal and thus did not turn over to his successor, Harry Pulliam, at their meeting in late December 1902.
Next: the National League Constitution and Playing Rules of 1876, transcribed: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/constitution-and-playing-rules-of-the-national-league-of-professional-base-ball-clubs-b79ee1eef3b3.
