History Awakens: February 2, 1876 and the Founding of the National League
An Amazing New Discovery
REMEMBER the “Laws of Base Ball,” the stunning discovery that came into view last year? That trio of documents from 1857, in draft and formal states — defining baseball, for the first time, as a game of nine men, nine innings, and ninety-foot basepaths — had languished in the desk of a Knickerbocker Base Ball Club descendant for nearly a century and a half. When bidding closed at SCP Auctions, the winning sum for this improbable survivor (no one could have imagined that it existed) was $3.26 million. [For more, see: https://goo.gl/sFCNvd.]
I was lucky enough to have had a consulting role on what was, for any baseball prospector, the find of a lifetime. Yet now, remarkably, the market success of the “Laws of Base Ball” appears to have prompted another attic to yield up a long-held treasure: the founding documents of Major League Baseball from 1876. This “first draft of history” was unknown to me and, I expect, to everyone else. Once again, SCP invited me to dust off my deerstalker cap and magnifying glass.
Wednesday, February 2, 1876 is a hallowed date in baseball history: it marks the beginning of the National League and thus Major League Baseball, both structurally and statistically. The first League game was played a few months later, on April 22, between the Boston Red Stockings and the Philadelphia Athletics, two of the new circuit’s eight clubs. [For more on that game, see: https://goo.gl/T4rwRv.]
And yet, the story of how a player-based professional organization (the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 1871–1875) gave way to one that was club-based (the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, 1876 to date) did not take place all on one day; it had commenced earlier, with considerable stealth. A flummoxed Henry Chadwick termed this revolutionary idea — which is the very genesis of all of today’s professional sports leagues — a “coup d’état,” and he was right.
Following the 1875 season, the National Association (NA), was in ruin, brought down by a combination of noncompetitive play (Boston had run away to a fourth consecutive pennant), clubs that entered the annual lists with no intention of completing their schedules, plus rampant gambling and drunkenness. But most of all, the death of the NA was caused by the birth of a bigger idea. That great notion was a capitalist consortium of stock companies dreamed up by William Ambrose Hulbert, the game’s largely uncelebrated hero not welcomed into the Baseball Hall of Fame until 1995. [For Hulbert and other figures mentioned in this story, brief bios, often with links to longer ones, will be found below.]
This is a big, exciting story that cannot be fully told in a single essay. Spurred by the recent discovery, I have unearthed several new aspects to a tale that has been told in largely the same way for a century: a moralistic Hulbert deciding to create a new league that would rid itself of the scourges of drunkenness, gambling, Sunday ball, and unenforceable contracts, schedules, and regulations. Here is a truncated “walkup” to the meeting of February 2, 1876:
· In September 1874 Chicago signed shortstop Davy Force to a renewal contract for 1875; then they learned that, because the season was still in progress, the contract was invalid by National Association rules. Chicago signed Force to another contract in November, but the organization blundered by backdating the contract to September, thus voiding it once again. In December the Philadelphia Athletics offered Force a contract, and he signed it. The NA Council, led by an Athletics official, upheld Force’s deal with that club.
· Within a few months, Hulbert gave the Easterners a taste of their own medicine. During the 1875 campaign, he secured commitments from Boston’s “Big Four” — Al Spalding, Ross Barnes, Deacon White, and Cal McVey — to play with Chicago in 1876. From the hated Athletics he took Cap Anson.
· When word leaked in the summer of 1875 that Chicago had denuded Boston of its stars for the following season, Hulbert had real cause for concern. Because his club’s contracts had been signed, yet again, in midseason, the NA could invalidate them and, perhaps, expel Chicago for gross misconduct.
· Then Hulbert came up with a brainstorm. “Spalding,” he said to his Rockford-born ally in revolution, “I have a new scheme. Let us anticipate the Eastern cusses and organize a new association before the March [1876] meeting, and then see who does the expelling.” Emphasizing high principle — no betting, no drinking, no “revolving” from one club to another in midseason, respect for scheduled playing dates and the judgment of umpires — Hulbert took the high road, at least publicly. But his brilliant mix of propaganda, obfuscation, and bought-off news sources would supply his cohort Spalding with a lifelong lesson in bluff, bluster, and bravado.
As with my report on the “Laws of Base Ball,” I will focus on the newfound documents, resisting the temptation of further backstory (I will not be fully successful). In the coming days I will write several additional posts … I have learned a lot lately.
What I have examined is a leather bound-volume with a gilt-stamped cover reading:
Before we review its contents, let’s examine what that simple titling reveals.
First, that the book was given to someone at the Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of the National League’s founding. This would set the date of the gift at either February 2, 1925, the beginning of the NL’s “Jubilee” year with a banquet luncheon at the old Grand Central Hotel — where the league had been founded — or the culminating banquet held on February 2, 1926 at the Hotel Astor. Evidence tilts toward the earlier banquet, where Robert H. Young, son of pioneer Nicholas E. Young, “paid an eloquent tribute to the founders, who, with his father, have all passed away.” His speech followed those of NL president John A. Heydler (“in which the spirits of Hulbert, Spalding, and Young were invoked”), Heydler’s predecessor John K. Tener, and onetime Brotherhood rebel John M. Ward; concluding addresses were by Barney Dreyfuss and Christy Mathewson.
Second, that the presenter of the volume (henceforth “1876 NL”) was Robert H. Young, who had been the league’s statistician, with a desk just outside his father’s office in Washington, DC, for several years, roughly 1897–1902. As an attorney he had long since gone off in other professional directions.
At the meeting of February 2, 1876, Nick Young was not present, though he likely knew beforehand that he would be appointed Secretary - Treasurer of the new league. Instrumental in founding the prior circuit, the National Association of 1871, and the president of the Washington club in its early years in the NA, he was not, for 1876, attached to any of the eight charter clubs in the new league. This was an essential feature, as described in the new league’s Constitution:
The Board shall also elect a gentleman of intelligence, honesty, and good repute, who is versed in base ball matters, but who is not, in any manner, connected with the press, and who is not a member of any professional base ball club either in or out of the League, to be the Secretary of the Board and of the League.
Nick Young would go on to serve as NL president from 1885 through a contentious removal from office in 1902.
Third, seemingly obvious but crucial: The volume (or, rather, its contents) had resided with the Young family, not the National League, ever since 1876.
Why did Nick Young retain these drafts? I believe they were used to create setting copy for the authorized inaugural publication, now exceedingly scarce, by Reach & Johnston of Philadelphia titled Constitution and Playing Rules of National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs; Official; 1876. I believe, further, that the drafts were too rough, and written by too many hands, to form an enduring monument to the new experimental League, especially once Young created a legible consolidated version in his own fine Spencerian script. This elegant version, recited in part by President Heydler at the 1925 banquet, was in the possession of Major League Baseball from 1876 until it was given to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2004. I have seen this document, written solely in Nick Young’s hand, at the Giamatti Research Center in Cooperstown but it has not yet been digitized for offsite access. (See: https://goo.gl/tzkIH1.)
Now let’s flip through the pages of the volume, noting the separate sections and a few items of particular interest. First is a water-stained label reading: “Records of the 1st meeting of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs held [at] the Grand Central Hotel New York Feb. 2, 1876.” A Google search for a document with this name yields nothing. While I am not a handwriting expert, this label looks to me to be in Nick Young’s hand, which could signify that following the meeting of that date he was entrusted with the entire draft volume, or rather its contents, for consolidation and transmission to Reach & Johnston for typesetting.
Next is an astonishing document, not known to have survived in other form, labeled “Copy of resolution at meeting of Western clubs at Louisville,” dated December 17, 1875. That this meeting was held was widely known in baseball circles, but at the time everyone assumed that these clubs were meeting to solidify their places in the NA of 1876, not to discuss the formation of a new league; this charade was attested to in the document presented, on letterhead of the Louisville Hotel.
Copy of resolution at meeting of Western clubs at Louisville:
Louisville, Dec. 17th 1875
On motion it was resolved at a meeting of the delegates of the following clubs viz: Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Louisville Base Ball Clubs that W.A. Hulbert and Chas. A. Fowle be appointed delegates to visit the Boston, Hartford, Mutuals and Athletic Base Ball Clubs and present the views of this meeting looking towards the reform of rules and regulations of the present National Association, and the said committee be empowered to act for the said clubs above named, and the said clubs here represented agree to abide by the action of said committee.
[SIGNED]
Jno. [John] P. Joyce for Cincinnati BB Club
Chas [Charles] E. Chase, VPrest, Louisville BB Club
Nathl [Nathaniel] Hazard for St. Louis BB Club
A.G. Spalding Sec’y, Chicago Base Ball Club
[From the next page] Messrs. W.A. Hulbert [of the Chicago club] and Chas A. Fowle [of the St. Louis club] were authorized to sign the foregoing for the Western clubs as will be seen by the following document.
Despite the polite language expressed herein, these men had been plotting for some months to create a solid block of four Western clubs that could secure a new league with four strong Eastern clubs. Spalding and Hulbert had put their heads together at the latter’s home and cobbled together a document of sorts. Hulbert had shared details of his plan not only with Spalding but also with Lewis Meacham, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune who on October 24 had “channeled” Hulbert in spelling out the problems with the forthcoming 18-club NA and the need for a new streamlined and reformed circuit.
The remedy is not difficult, and it lies in the hands of a few men…. The adoption of these restrictions would limit the contestants next year to Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Louisville in the West; Athletic, New York, and Mutual in the Middle States ; and Hartford and Boston in the East; and with such an association the game would be prosperous, and the people who attended championship games would have a guaranty that they were to see the best clubs and the best games possible. It may be doubted whether the professional association will be willing to vote the restrictions proposed, and, if they do not, it will be the plain duty of the nine clubs named to withdraw from the association as it now stands, and form an organization of their own — a close corporation, too. [Note the citation of nine clubs above — the eight that would populate the National League plus an unnamed additional club from New York that never took form .— jt]
I would speculate further that Spalding in particular, who was going to Boston in November to marry Josie Keith, lined up Harry Wright’s backing while there, and perhaps that of Hartford’s Morgan Bulkeley as well. When Spalding and his bride returned to the Rockford area for a bit of a honeymoon in the groom’s hometown, Meacham’s interview with him produced further specifications about what a new league might look like. On November 28 in the Chicago Tribune, Meacham quotes Spalding as saying:
It is the intention of the larger clubs to make some rules about contesting for the championship, so that clubs that have no earthly chance to win will not be allowed to play with first-rate clubs. . . . The leading clubs are going to do something for their own protection, and thereby root out the small fry. Unless this was done, at least twenty clubs from different cities are about to apply for admission to contest for the [1876] championship. . . . It was especially desirable to keep out all gamblers and jockeys if possible, and unless we do this . . . I have not much hope for a healthy revival of the good old-fashioned, honest base-ball. On some of the grounds, especially in Philadelphia and New York, pools are sold on the ground, and a base-ball match is an occasion for all sorts of evil practices. It is to be hoped the West will set the East an example this year. . . .
Here was a sticking point. The Mutuals had long held a reputation for game-tossing and the Athletics were Hulbert’s sworn enemy, going back to the Davy Force case, yet the Western clubs could hardly envision a new league without stalwarts in New York and Philadelphia. Pleasingly for Hulbert, the Mutuals disbanded as a cooperative club (gate-sharing) in New York and reorganized in Brooklyn — at that time a separate city from New York — as a stock company paying salaries; also Charles Spering, the Athletics’ officer who had made a hometown ruling in the Davy Force case, had been expelled from the club for financial shenanigans.
Well before the December 17, 1875 meeting in Louisville, Hulbert had visited St. Louis — perhaps during Chicago’s playing dates there (October 7–8) — to meet with Fowle and St. Louis Brown Stockings director C. Orrick Bishop, a former ballplayer but, more significantly, an attorney, who would draft the formal Constitution from the notes prepared by Hulbert and Spalding. It stands to reason that Bishop also devised the standard NL player contract, but to my knowledge not a single example of a standard contract survives from that inaugural year of the League. In December Hulbert had corresponded with Bishop and with Fowle.
To Bishop, Hulbert wrote on December 4 “that the best, in fact the only, [way] to bring about better organization, is for the leading respectable clubs, to … form a New Association…. We should knit the Western clubs together … form close connections with each other and with Louisville & Cincinnati!” To Fowle he wrote, days before the Louisville meeting: “You and I can carry the day for everything we want. Then, firmly established with four powerful clubs welded together, we can easily influence such of the remainder that we wish to join us.”
So, when Hulbert sent a letter on January 23 to four Eastern clubs — Boston, Hartford, Mutual, and Athletic (but not the White Stockings, the other Philadelphia ball club to have survived the 1875 campaign) — inviting them to a meeting at the Grand Central Hotel on Broadway in New York City, he had laid his groundwork deliberately. I believe that the Eastern clubs that would join with the West to form the NL were unsurprised to read:
ST. LOUIS — Jan. 23, 1876.
The undersigned have been appointed by the Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville and St. Louis Clubs a committee to confer with you on matters of interest to the game at large, with special reference to the reformation of existing abuses, and the formation of a new association, and we are clothed with full authority in writing from the above named clubs to bind them to any arrangement we may make with you. We therefore invite your club to send a representative, clothed with like authority, to meet us at the Grand Central Hotel, in the city of New York, on Wednesday the 2d day of February next, at 12 M. After careful consideration of the needs of the professional clubs, the organizations we represent are of the firm belief that existing circumstances demand prompt and vigorous action by those who are the natural sponsors of the game. It is the earnest recommendation of our constituents that all past troubles and differences be ignored and forgotten, and that the conference we propose shall be a calm, friendly and deliberate discussion, looking solely to the general good of the clubs who are calculated to give character and permanency to the game. We are confident that the propositions we have to submit will meet with your approval and support, and we shall be pleased to meet you at the time and place above mentioned.
Yours respectfully,
W.A. HULBERT.
CHAS. A. FOWLE.
The next portion of the volume consists of ten sheets of Grand Central Hotel stationery on which Harry Wright, Secretary Pro Tem, recorded the amazingly perfunctory minutes. That the Articles of the Constitution and Playing Rules could be ratified in such short order — all in one day, with a break for supper — testifies to me that substantial agreement had been obtained on nearly all points beforehand.
The legend attaching to the meeting of February 2, 1876 has Hulbert providing a staggered start time — from noon to half-past — for each of the four Eastern club representatives, allowing a brief preview of what was about to happen. This was ostensibly followed by Hulbert locking the door to the room and delivering a peroration of about an hour, upon which the cowering officials fell into line. Spalding wrote, in America’s National Game, that Hulbert
went to the door of his room, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and, turning, addressed his astonished guests something after this manner:
“Gentlemen, you have no occasion for uneasiness. I have locked that door simply to prevent any intrusions from without, and incidentally to make it impossible for any of you to go out until I have finished what I have to say to you, which I promise shall not take an hour.”
He then laid before the assembled auditors the Base Ball situation in all its varied interests. He pointed out the evils of gambling that were threatening the very life of the game, reducing receipts, demoralizing players.… He closed his remarks by producing a constitution which we had prepared in advance [emphasis mine — jt] for adoption by a new organization, to be then and there formed under the title of “The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs.”
Despite Harry Wright’s contemporaneous notes at the meeting, the prepared Constitution may have produced some spirited discussion, as the penned annotations and deletions are numerous. Article II, the high-toned “OBJECTS,” however, was passed without alteration:
The objects of this League are:
1st. To encourage, foster, and elevate the game of base ball.
2d. To enact and enforce proper rules for the exhibition and conduct of the game.
3d. To make base ball playing respectable and honorable.
4th. To protect and promote the mutual interests of professional base ball clubs and professional base bull players; and
5th. To establish and regulate the base ball championship of the United States.
Following passage of the perfunctory Article XIV, “Amendments,” we arrive at last at the ringing statement of principle, signed by the delgates present, by which the National League was formed. In these words are echoed the five Objects presented above. Other pages follow, including the extensive Playing Rules (largely unchanged from 1875), but it is at this moment that the National League is born.
We, the undersigned, Professional Base Ball Clubs of the United States, by our representatives in convention assembled, in the city of New York, this second day of February, A. D. 1876, lamenting the abuses which have insidiously crept into the exposition of our National Game, and regretting the unpleasant differences which have arisen among ourselves growing out of an imperfect and unsystematized Code, with a view of relieving ourselves from the incubus of such abuses, of promoting harmony and good-fellowship among ourselves, of elevating and fostering our national sport, and of protecting the interests of our players, hereby pledge each other that we will withdraw at once from the “National Association of Professional Base Ball Players,” and we hereby announce that we have this day organized ourselves into a “NATIONAL LEAGUE OF PROFESSIONAL BASE BALL CLUBS.”
ATHLETIC BASE BALL CLUB of Philadelphia, Pa. By George W. Thompson.
BOSTON BASE BALL CLUB of Boston, Mass. By N. T. Apollonio, Pres’t.
HARTFORD BASE BALL CLUB of Hartford, Conn. By M. G. Bulkeley, Pres’t.
MUTUAL BASE BALL CLUB of Brooklyn, N. Y. By Wm. H. Cammeyer.
CHICAGO BASE BALL CLUB of Chicago, Ill.
CINCINNATI BASE BALL CLUB of Cincinnati, O.
LOUISVILLE BASE BALL CLUB of Louisville, Ky.
ST. LOUIS BASE BALL CLUB of St. Louis, Mo.
[Four above clubs] By W. A. Hulbert and Chas. A. Fowle.
Harry Wright noted that Morgan G. Bulkeley had been appointed Chairman of the Board of the new league’s directors and then noted that “on motion it was resolved that the first name drawn in electing the Board[,] Mr. M.G. Bulkeley of the H club[,] be declared Pres of the League in 1876.” There was said to be sentiment for Hulbert in the room, but he insisted that the process be followed because the NL, as an initiative of the Western clubs, needed a strong counterweight from the East.
Next: “On motion of WHC [William H. Cammeyer of the Mutuals, proprietor of the Union Grounds in Brooklyn] the salary of the Sec & Treas was fixed at $400 per annum & that he be required to give bonds in the sum of $1000 for the faithful discharge of the duties to the Pres of the League.” This fellow turned out to be Nick Young, whose occasional notes dot the volume but were not made on February 2. For instance:
Extract from the minutes of the “L” held in N.Y. Feb. 2, 1876 (See Res)
Wash DC
Feb 15, 76
By the authority vested in me by virtue of the above resolution I hereby certify that Messrs Reach & Johnston of Phila Pa have been granted the exclusive right to publish the official book containing the Con & P Rules of the N.L. of PBB Clubs as revised and adopted at a meeting held at the Grand Cen Hotel in the city of N.Y. on the 2d day of Feb AD 1876, and that the foregoing is a true copy of the same
[signed] N.E. Young
Sec’y.
Nicholas Taylor Apollonio of the Boston club resolved that the eight clubs of the new organization take the name cited in the Constitution, which was just then being presented for review. Harry Wright noted, “Mr. F presented a Con, which, amended, was adopted as follows.” This a key bit: Fowle did not write the Constitution; he brought it from St. Louis, where it had been drawn up by the man who appears to have attended neither the December 17 meeting nor this one: C. Orrick Bishop, who with Hulbert is the largely unsung hero of Major League Baseball’s earliest moments.
The very last page of the volume, however, testifies to his importance, though it is the only time his name comes up:
Copies of proofs to be sent to Appolonio [sic, this was Harry Wright’s repeated misspelling] Fowle & Hulbert & Bishop.
This concluding note appears to be in Harry Wright’s hand, not Nick Young’s, and if so was penned on February 2, 1876.
There were no press reports of the meeting on February 3 but on the following day Lewis Meacham of the Chicago Tribune offered a fairly full, triumphant account under the heading:
Other New York papers followed, from the Daily Graphic to the Brooklyn Eagle, the Herald, the Sun and — in an article by the stunned Henry Chadwick (how could they start a new league without him?) — the New York Clipper.
Hulbert’s coup d’état swept away the opposition. The Philadelphia White Stocking and New Haven Elm City clubs of 1875, feeling particularly aggrieved because their exclusion implied crookedness, called for a convention of the semiprofessional clubs for March 1, 1876. This meeting produced nothing more than another meeting, one month later, at which time a schedule of play was proposed but not enacted.
The National Association was now but a puff of smoke. The National League would endure hardships in the years to come — and very nearly evaporate itself, as Philadelphia and New York were expelled after the 1876 season and the NL would struggle without clubs in those crucial cities until 1883. Yet it was the league that lasted, and that supplied the model for all professional sports leagues to follow: NHL, NBA, NFL, and the myriad European football leagues.
Hulbert’s ingenious response to injustice, his brilliance as the architect of a thoroughly new idea, cannot be denied. And to see how he and a handful of allies stitched together a dream from the simple handwritten documents, now dramatically revealed, is simply awesome.
Next, discussion of the principal players in this drama, from Hulbert and Spalding to Bishop and Fowle: https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/history-awakens-february-2-1876-and-the-founding-of-the-national-league-part-2-510e67150771
