1871 re-imagined

[Lord Byron]

I wonder what'll happen as this enters the 1900s--there's a league for every radio network when radio (and then television) is created: CBS, NBC, and NBC Blue (the predecessor to ABC, which formed in 1943)...

I also wonder where Babe Ruth, Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, etc. will wind up...

Anyway, keep it up...

[RMc]

That's not even counting Mutual radio (which toyed with the idea of a TV network briefly) and DuMont television!

I suspect that baseball in this universe will look very different in the 20th century than it does in 1887...

[RMc]

CENTENNIAL CUP

Boston 6, Baltimore 3 (BOS: Galliker HR, 4 RBI)
Baltimore 5, Boston 1 (BAL: Lew Brown 3 hits, 2B, RBI)
Boston 5, Baltimore 1 (BOS: Jim Devlin 6-hitter)

Brooklyn 7, Newark 3 (BKN: Bob Caruthers 3 hits, 2 RBI)
Newark 12, Brooklyn 5 (NWK: Fred Pfeffer 3 hits, 2 RBI)
Brooklyn 5, Newark 4 (BKN: Fred Carroll go-ahead RBI triple in 8th)


Boston 9, Brooklyn 8 (BOS: Joe Kelly 3 hits, 3B, 2 RBI)
Boston 14, Brooklyn 1 (BOS: 8-run 8th)
Brooklyn 10, Boston 9 (BKN: Caruthers 4 hits, 5 RBI)
Boston 6, Brooklyn 5 (BOS: Andy Summers pinch-hit walk-off single in 9th)

[RMc]

The first Cup Final series in the great state of Indiana was a split for the Indianapolis Hoosiers. The opener went back and forth, until Indy's Thomas Tinney settled matters with a bases-clearing triple in a 9-6 Hoosiers win. But Rochester bit back in Game 2, when every starting batter hit safely in a 10-4 victory.

The Cup Final headed to upstate New York for the next three contests, but it was Indianapolis who made it to the cusp of the title with two straight wins. Hurler John Ward was brilliant in Game 3 with a three-hit shoutout as the Hoosiers won, 5-0, and then the Hoosiers scored four times in the top of the first and held on for an 8-7 victory in Game 4. But the Red Wings stayed alive by winning the fifth game, a wild contest that featured 17 runs, 29 hits and nine errors. Trailing 7-4 in the eighth and 8-7 in the ninth, Rochester came back to tie twice, then sent the series back to Indiana on John Kiley's walk-off single in the thirteenth.

It was a chilly, overcast day in Indianapolis for the sixth game, but the home team turned up the heat with ten runs in the first four innings off Red Wings starter Charlie Parsons. John Ward had two hits, two runs, two RBI...and also held Rochester to eight hits and two earned runs in the Hoosiers Cup-clinching 11-5 win.



In the battle for the Union Cup, the Chicago Colts almost stole the opener from the Kansas City Cowboys. Trailing 4-0 in the bottom of the ninth, Chicago's John Grady socked a two-run homer, then watched as two of his teammates got on with two out. Up stepped Cap Anson, the 35-year-old star who was shockingly cashiered by Rockford Forest City this June, after 17 years of service with the club. After signing with the Colts, Anson picked up where he left off, batting .405 in 38 games...but he grounded out, and KC took Game 1. But Anson was ready in the second game, as he homered and drove in three in a 8-3 Colts victory.

The Cup headed to the wildest place in all of pro ball: the Cowboy Bowl, a circular stadium on the outskirts of Kansas City. It had all the hallmarks of a wild west show, with Chicago leading 7-4 after scoring twice in the top of the ninth. But the Cowboys blasted back with two runs of their own, cutting the lead to 7-6 with Frank McCarton on third and nobody out. But Charlie Robinson popped up, and opposing pitcher Dave Foutz lined into a double play to give the Colts the victory and a 2-1 series lead.

But the wild KC crowd would not be disappointed, as the Cowboys took a 5-4 win in Game 4 behind McCarton's three RBI, then Foutz, wearer of the goat horns in the third game, lashed a two-run double as Kansas City won, 5-2. Back to Chicago!

In the sixth game, it looked like baseball's most westerly outpost would grab their second Union Cup, as they took a 5-4 lead into the bottom of the ninth. After Ed Andrews flew out, up came Anson, who hit a deep fly to center that...just...kept...going...until it landed in Lake Michigan! Tie game!

After Bobby Lowe flew out, Patrick Larkins drew a walk and stole second. On a hit-and-run, Tom Lee blooped a single to center, and Larkins came all the way around to win the game, 6-5, for the Colts, and force a game seven!



John Roache, then the Mayor of Chicago, would later refer to Game 7 of the 1887 Union Cup Final as "the greatest game of ball ever played in our fair city". It started out with two quick Cowboys runs in the first off Colts starter Sam Kimber, but the Chicago offense came alive with a trio of markers in the bottom of the inning, followed by six more runs in the next five frames to take a 9-3 lead. But KC wasn't done, as five straight singles and an error in the seventh led to five Cowboys runs, making it 9-8. Trailing 10-8 in the ninth, Charley Jones hit a towering blast to make it 10-9, then Lou Bierbauer doubled and went to third on a groundout. Up came Jumbo Davis, who worked a 3-1 count then sent a Jack Quinn fastball deep to right-center. Tom Lee, winner of 23 games on the mound in '87 but manning center field that day, went back, back, back to the wall...and gloved it, winning the Colts their first Cup!

[RMc]

For the sixth year in a row, the Cincinnati Red Stockings won the National Association pennant, and thus got a bye to the Centennial Cup Finals. And their opponent, for the second straight autumn, was the Tri Mountain Club of Boston. Sellout crowds at the Palace of the Fans in Cincinnati saw the Reds win the first two games by one run apiece.

Game 1 was a pitcher's duel between Bob Black of Cincinnati against Tri Mountain's Jim Devlin. Dennis Casey had two of the Reds' six hits, including an RBI single in the second -- which was all they needed in a 1-0 win. Casey also figured in Game 2, blasting a two-run homer, but the game was all even at four after nine innings. In the tenth, Jim O'Rourke led off with a triple, then Arlie Latham singled him home for a 5-4 victory and a 2-0 series lead.

Tri Mountain needed to win in Boston, and they did. In the third game, Thomas Gorman drove in four runs, including two on a double in the seventh that snapped a 7-7 tie, and Boston held on to a 10-7 win. In Game 4, Henry Galliker -- the 39-year-old veteran whose career began with the amateur Oriental club in New York way back in 1869 -- was the star, with an RBI double in the sixth and a reaching on an error by Cincy 2B William Johnson in the tenth to give Boston a 6-5 win. Series tied!

At the fifth game at Fens Way Park, "Nef Ced" McGreevey and the Royal Rooters were in full evidence as the largest crowd ever to see a ballgame in Massachusetts -- a ballpark-busting 28,359 -- saw not one but two ageless wonders at work. First, there was Galliker, who in the last of the eighth and Boston trailing, 3-2, smashed a home run to tie things up. Then up stepped the 44-year-old Sam Woolverton, who lined one into the gap in right-center for a triple. Woolverton, whose career began way back in '66, came home on Curtis Chapman's single, giving Tri Mountain a 4-3 win and a 3-2 Cup lead.

At the celebration at the Third Base bar, McGreevey made what he later called the most painful decision of his life: he served the ballplayers...sarsaparilla. Also, there was no music, dancing, or women in the bar that night. The players howled, but McGreevey merely yelled, "Until that Cup is up on the shelf, you're all going to be choir boys! Nuff said...!"

So, the Tri Mountain club found themselves in exactly the same spot they were in a year ago: leading the Cup Final three games to two, but needing a win in the Palace of the Fans: unfriendly territory to say the least. But from the first pitch, the Red Stockings seemed off: they would commit five errors in the contest, including two on dropped balls by the usually sure-handed Dan Brouthers at first. Again, it was the old men who led the way: Galliker led off the game with a home run, and Woolverton hit a two-run double in the third inning. Even 40-year-old George Sanderson got in on the fun, with a double of his own that would make the score 6-0, Boston. (He got his start with Tri Mountain in 1870.) Brouthers tried to make up for his earlier miscues with a two-run blast in the sixth, but it was too little, too late, as Boston claimed their first Cup with a 7-3 triumph.



The day after Tri Mountain's return to Boston, Nef Ced McGreevey was incensed by a front-page article in the Globe: BASEBALL CUP TO RESIDE AT KELLY'S BAR. "We want the Cup at Kelly's, because that other barkeep was so mean to us," claimed an "unidentified player". Nuf Ced stormed over to the team offices, threatening to "tear them all limb from limb", only to see the whole team waiting for him, laughing their heads off. Team captain Woolverton promptly thrust the Cup in McGreevey's hands. "Of course it's going to your place," he roared, "where else?"

If you go to Boston, you'll find the Third Base bar has long been replaced by a museum of baseball paraphernalia. And there, on a high shelf, you can see the first-ever Centennial Cup won by the Tri Mountain Baseball Club of Boston.

Enough said.

[RMc]

"Parisian' Bob Caruthers has already been called "The New Creighton" after being awarded the MVP trophy now named for the legendary star. And what a season Caruthers had, not only with the bat, but by winning twenty games on the mound!



Meanwhile, Bill Black of the Reds won 26 games and the Pitcher of the Year:



In the AA, Ed Crane of American Cup champion Indianapolis won the MVP -- he and the rest of the Hoosiers will be plying their trade in the NA in '88 -- while Buffalo's Alex Voss won pitching honours. Finally, Bill Boyd of Kansas City was voted MVP of the Union, while Toronto's Mark Baldwin was awarded Pitcher of the Year.

[Lord Byron]

IRL, John A. Roache was the mayor of Chicago in 1887, not Monroe Heath (he was the mayor from 1876-1879)...

Good set of updates, though...

[RMc]

John A. Roache was the mayor of Chicago in 1887, not Monroe Heath (he was the mayor from 1876-1879)

Thanks, fixed.

So what do you all think of this timeline? Has anybody downloaded and used the 1871 quickstart and XLS files of the 1857-70 players?

[RMc]

From NA to AA: Middletown, Jersey City and Washington Olympics.

From AA to NA: Indianapolis, Providence and Rochester.

From AA to UA: Paterson, Scranton and Richmond.

From UA to AA: Chicago Colts, St. Paul, New York Giants.