[tm1681]

THE “APBL” IS BORN AT SPECIAL MEETINGS IN NYC
SEVEN CLUBS ADDED TO THE FIVE MEMBERS OF THE “PENTAGON”; LEAGUE BEGINS PLAY NEXT YEAR

NEW YORK CITY (June 13-15, 1870) – At the beginning of June, an “Extraordinary Meeting” of the National Base Ball Organization Executive Committee was called, with the topic being the final steps in the creation of the first fully professional baseball league ever to exist. The meetings were scheduled for the NBBO’s historic meeting place, the St. Nicholas Hotel, and they would last three days.

These were the days everyone had been waiting for since the five biggest clubs in the sport made their intentions known last autumn, and while even those with scarce knowledge of the sport could probably figure out what most of the roster of twelve clubs would be, there were still some questions to be answered after all of the applications were considered.

As talks wore on and plans were finalized, the roster of baseball’s first twelve professional clubs was sent out early on Wednesday evening via series of announcements, shortly after the completion of that day’s games.

The first announcement: the new league would be known as the American Professional Baseball League – the APBL – and it would consist of a dozen clubs from the ranks of the NBBO.

The second announcement: the five members of the “Pentagon” were introduced as the “Five Founders” of the APBL.

• ST. JOHN’S BC – 12x New England champions; 4x TWC winners; 640-300 (.681) record – The most successful club in the sport: no debate necessary. They’d been the New England champs in every season but one, they won the first two Tucker-Wheaton Cups, and then they won the first two Round Robin TWC’s after other clubs complained they had it too easy in a traditional playoff format. St. John’s also finished 2nd in the Round Robin twice, so with a bit more luck they would be six-time champions in the 48-team NBBO over just thirteen years.

St. Johns’ continuity was the model for every club to follow. They’d had the same President (owner), General Manager, Manager, Scouting Director, & Trainer since the creation of the NBBO in 1857. They employed the famous “Hydra” of outfielders Jensen, Johnson, & Townsend, who’d started nearly every game together since the beginning of the 1862 season. Their success came via unorthodox tactics that drive opposing teams mad, and above all, they won large amounts of games with incredible consistency.

• SHAMROCK BC – 8x Coastal champs; 2x TWC winners; 595-345 (.633) record – Boston’s most prominent club dominated what, in theory, should be the most cutthroat region of the six in the NBBO. Instead, Shamrock began their Coastal supremacy in the NBBO’s inaugural season and it never stopped, with the team finishing either 1st or 2nd in Coastal every season except 1864, when a 34-36 record saw then finish in 5th place.

Shamrock’s 1866 team that went 53-17 and then 9-1 in the cup is regarded as one of the 3-4 best in NBBO history, and the club had always found ways to bring new talent into the fold. Ex: after falling from 1st to 5th in the previous year’s TWC over the final three days, they let three prominent players go including the legendary Anthony Mascherino, replaced them with three Greenhorns and a change of position for James Burke, and Shamrock was 22-8 to start 1870.

• KINGS COUNTY BBC – 8x Brooklyn Champs, 2x TWC winners, 576-364 (.613) record – K.C. dominated Brooklyn, taking the pennant six times in seven years during a run lasting from 1858 to 1864. They had finished out of the top half of the Brooklyn Championship standings exactly once – 1866 – and they responded to that embarrassment by moving up from last to 2nd place the next season. Their cup-winning 1860 team was one of the most dominant ever.

K.C. was a club always known for its ability to find premier outfield talent, employing the likes of 1x BotY John Francis, 5x All-Star & 3x Golden Glove winner Declan Brice, 2x All-Star Soren Thomsen, 3x All-Star James Hoyt, 2x All-Star Carlton McShane, over the opening weeks of the 1870 season they had a Greenhorn CF named Charles Foster who looked like he just might be made out of All-Star material.

• KNICKERBOCKER BBC – 5x New York City champs, 2x TWC winners, 589-351 (.627) record – The oldest member of the Five Founders, Knickerbocker BBC dated back to 1845 and their President, Doc Adams, wrote the rules of the sport that the NBBO’s member organizations played its games. It took some time for the much-respected club to find its footing in the NBBO, but once they did the rest of NYC didn’t stand a chance. Over the previous five years they’d taken the NYC pennant four times, won the TWC twice, fielded the single-best team in NBBO history, and finished with W-L marks of 57-13, 45-25, 54-16, 42-28, & 50-20 while enjoying a 23-7 record after six weeks in 1870.

Knickerbocker was most famous for its home venue: The Elysian Fields, the most revered grounds in the sport, and a place where some of the first informal contests were played well over a generation prior. However, they were also known for their organizational consistency and scouting work. Knickerbocker was on year number seven with the same coaching & front office staff, and scout Bryan Stevenson had been able to discover talent like current NYL Batsman of the Month Louis Dyke when the rest of the NBBO wasn’t aware of him at all.

• ALLEGHANY BC – 8x Inland Champs, 1x TWC winners, 557-384 (.592) record – Alleghany’s dominance of Inland had never been in question. Aside from a terrible two-year stretch in which the team finished in Inland’s bottom two (1863-64) before righting the ship, Alleghany was 1st or 2nd in the Inland standings every other season. It took much longer for the team to find Tucker-Wheaton Cup glory, but it finally arrived when they clinched the TWC on the final day of competition last year.

Since the club’s two-year low in the early 60’s Alleghany had been focused on pummeling teams into submission with offense. They had enjoyed the services of all-time Hits leader Arthur Waltrip, single-season Batting Average record holder & 2x BotY Royal Altman, 11x All-Star 3B Samuel Kessler, 4x All-Star & 1869 MVP Collin Henderson, & 2x All-Star infielder Arran Duffy. That philosophy saw the team win at least two-thirds of their games in four of the past five seasons.