Professional baseball was born with the formation of the Cincinnati Red Stockings on this day in history, March 15, 1869.
“The onset of professionalism was no small step for baseball: players received a small but increasing degree of financial stability, and fans enjoyed an increasingly higher level of play,” the Baseball Almanac writes.
“The cradle of this innovative practice was Cincinnati, where the first openly professional baseball team was founded.”
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Baseball had evolved from earlier sports such as cricket and rounders over the previous three decades.
Its evolution dates back to its appearance, as reported by Abner Doubleday, in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839; to the proliferation of recreational “baseball” clubs in New York City in the 1840s; and to the formalization of the rules of the game we know today, including nine men per side and nine innings per game, in 1857.
The Red Sox turned reenactment into a whole new ball game.
The 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team, appear on the front of a sporting goods trading card from Peck & Snyder of New York City. Pictured is captain Harry Wright, front row, center, George Wright, back row second from the left, and in the back row, second from the right, is catcher Cal McVey. (Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, Getty Images)
They played their first official game on May 4, defeating cross-town rival Great Western Base Ball Club, 45-9.
They never let up the rest of the year.
And never lost.
“The arrival of professionalism was no small step for baseball.” — Baseball Almanac
The Red Sox left on May 31 for what the National Baseball Hall of Fame calls “the greatest road trip in baseball history.”
The team departed by train from the former Little Miami Railroad Depot, located less than a mile east of the current Great American Ball Park, home stadium of the National League's Cincinnati Reds.
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“The Red Stockings' 32-day trip was more like a rock 'n' roll tour than a baseball trip,” the Hall of Fame reports.
“Huge crowds turned out to see the handsome young men in their crimson tights and white panty uniforms in Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC, where the Red Sox received an audience with the President. Ulysses S. Grant.”
The first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, is celebrated in this sheet music published in 1869 in New York City. (Photo Reproduction, Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images)
The 1,821-mile trip included 20 games in the month of June alone.
The epic US tour brought the game to the Pacific coast, a trip that would have been nearly impossible just a year earlier.
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“They capped a 57-0 inaugural season with a 4,764-mile voyage to San Francisco and back aboard the Transcontinental Railroad, completed just the previous May with the striking of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah,” the National Hall said of baseball. of fame.
The players were quite young, most between 18 and 23 years old. They apparently enjoyed the good life on the road, as their tour began to generate widespread national interest.
“Large crowds came to see the handsome young men in their crimson tights and white panty uniforms.” — National Baseball Hall of Fame
“A group of young women walked past the Red Sox hotel” the night before a big game in Philadelphia, the Hall of Fame reports.
“Long skirts were lifted to avoid the mud on the streets, and many of them revealed a flash of red stockings.”
A wood engraving from Harper's Weekly shows the “Presentation of a Champion Bat to the Red Stocking Baseball Club…on Their Return Home,” Cincinnati, Ohio, 1869. The team finished the regular season with a perfect record of 57-0. . (File montage/Getty Images)
The Cincinnati Red Sox lived only briefly. The organization closed in 1870.
But it forever changed the face of American sports.
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The National Association of Professional Baseball Players, the first professional sports league, was created in 1871 and survived until 1875.
The National League of professional baseball was founded with eight clubs in 1876. The American League followed in 1901. Both leagues still compete today in Major League Baseball.
“The triumphs over all the big clubs of the East made them the center of attention of the sports press.” — Society for American Baseball Research
The champions of each league met in the first World Series in 1903.
The Red Sox and their distinctive crimson socks are still seen today on the fields of Major League Baseball.
The Cincinnati Reds of the National League and the Boston Red Sox of the American League trace their lineage back to the Cincinnati Red Sox.
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Both cities also adopted the sport early in baseball history, and still have enthusiastic fans today.
“Cincinnati is crazy about baseball!” wrote sportswriter Bugs Baer 50 years later, in 1919. “They should call this city Cincinnutty!”
Baer, among other famous things, nicknamed Babe Ruth the Sultan of Swat.
The red socks of Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox have their roots in the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team. When the Red Stockings folded in 1870, a Boston businessman hired manager Harry Wright to bring baseball to the city. The Red Sox name and uniforms are a tribute to the Red Sox legacy. (G Fiume/Getty Images)
The Cincinnati Red Sox's impact on American sports was profound: it helped popularize from coast to coast a sport that would soon be known as America's pastime.
Two Red Sox are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Shortstop George Wright was added in 1937; His brother, center fielder and manager Harry Wright, was added in 1953.
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Greg Rhodes writes for the Society for American Baseball Research:
“Not only were they undefeated, but the novelty of their fully salaried status, their distinctive uniform style with long red socks, and wins over all the major clubs in the East had made them the center of attention in the sporting press.”
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