Hoss Radbourn was profane and cantankerous; that’s his finger in a posed team shot from 1886
Charles Radbourn earned the nickname “Hoss,” signifying endurance, by winning 60 games for Providence’s National League champions. Working virtually every day for the last two months of the season, he started 73 games, hurled 679 innings, compiled an ERA (calculated long after his death) of 1.38, and won 18 consecutive starts. The greatest number of wins in one season since 1968 is 27.
Frank Bancroft, who managed the club, later declared, “Morning after morning upon rising he would be unable to raise his arm high enough to use his hair brush. Instead of quitting he stuck all the harder to his task, going out to the ballpark hours before the rest of the team and beginning to warm up by throwing a few feet and increasing the distance until he could finally throw the ball from the outfield to home plate.”
But the pennant race and Radbourn’s heroics were not all that made 1884 an epic year in baseball: (1) it was one of the four MLB seasons that uniquely presented three major leagues; (2) it introduced racial integration, via the Walker brothers of Toledo’s American Association club; and (3) two league champions faced off in the postseason in a forerunner of today’s World Series.
Emboldened by the financial success of the American Association and denied a franchise in the National League, Henry V. Lucas of St. Louis spearheaded a rival that, unlike the NL and AA, paid no heed to the reserve clause. Though his Union Association collapsed after its only campaign, Lucas wound up with an NL franchise in St. Louis for 1885.
As to Fleet Walker, who performed well in his 42 games with Toledo, Manager Morton released the following letter to the press:
Richmond, Virginia. September 5, 1884.
We, the undersigned, do hereby warn you not to put up Walker, the Negro catcher, the days you play in Richmond, as we could mention the names of seventy-five determined men who have sworn to mob Walker, he comes on the ground in a suit. We hope you will listen to our words of warning so there will be no trouble, and if you do not, there certainly will be. We only write this to prevent much bloodshed, as you alone can prevent.
Walker did not catch on September 13 in Richmond, Tug Arundel, a recent acquisition, going behind the bat. Eight days later, On September 21, manager Morton received another such letter from Richmond, advising him not to use Walker in the coming series with the Virginians … at Toledo. Again Walker was not used, and eight days later Walker was released. Thus ended the major league career of the last African American to play major-league ball until Jackie Robinson.
The Images:
Wright & Ditson made the ball for the upstart Union Association; George Wright backed its Boston franchise.
Very little pictorial evidence of the Union Association survives; here, a scorecard.
John B. Sage’s lithographic company turned out generic posters in the 1880s; this was filled in for a Union Association contest at Philadelphia vs. Boston.
When the Providence franchise folded after 1885, Hoss Radbourn moved to Boston, where he continued to extend his middle finger.
No image of the 1884 AA champion Metropolitans survives, but they shared the Polo Grounds (above) with their NL counterparts, who would soon be known as the Giants. When both clubs had home dates, the Mets would play at the earlier time, or move to the less desirable Southeast Diamond, formed with raw garbage as landfill. Mets’ pitcher Jack Lynch said you could get malaria there by just fielding a ground ball.
Mets manager Jim Mutrie challenged Providence to play a series of games “for the championship of the country.” Manager Bancroft did not relish the idea, but reluctantly went along, scheduling all three games in New York to boost the gate. As it turned out, Radbourn shut the Mets out in the opener before 2500 paying customers, then won Game 2 handily to clinch baseball’s first “World Series.” With nothing at stake, Game 3 was played in the October cold before a crowd of 300.
Harry Wright had left the Providence Grays after 1883 to take the helm in Philadelphia. Here, at their home field of Recreation Park, are his bedraggled Quakers of 1884, who finished sixth in the NL with a record of 39–73.
An early baseball novel — long thought to be the first — was issued in 1884: “Our Base Ball Club and How It Won the Championship” by Noah Brooks, with an introduction by Albert G. Spalding and colorful pictorial boards.
“Baseball on Ice” had been a craze since its introduction in 1861 but by 1884 it was no longer attempted by top-rank boys of summer but instead by businessmen. Reintroduced in the early 1990s, no one alive could testify to how it was played.
Here is an early Greenhood & Moran club, promoting a clothing store of that name. It preceded their entry in the newly formalized California League of 1886, when they would be known as Oakland’s G&Ms and would compete against clubs from San Francisco and Sacramento.
Baseball in Los Angeles in 1884 was multicultural and its players wore parade-style tunics and cowboy neckerchiefs that reflected the team’s western roots.
Fleet Walker appears to have been excluded from the 1884 Toledo club’s team picture (though he had been included in 1883).
With the NL and the AA excluding African Americans after 1885, and the International League after 1887, the color line was drawn, though an occasional black player would find his way onto an integrated team in Organized Baseball until 1899. Talented young players like Sol White, shown above with the Globes of Bellaire, Ohio in 1884, realized that all-black traveling clubs were the only avenue to professionalism.
