The Cincinnati Red Stockings: The Birth of Professional Sports

On March fifteenth, eighteen sixty nine, a local attorney in Cincinnati wanted his baseball team to be the best, so he hired a former cricket player to put together the best baseball team that money could buy, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Here's this story on how this happened today on Daily Sports History. Welcome to Daily Sports History. I'm Ethan Reese, your guide to a rapid deep dive into sports history every day now. Prior to eighteen's, baseball was mostly a amateur game, and it was the most popular game in America at the time, as popular games such as basketball and volleyball hadn't even been invented yet and football was just starting to gain traction, but baseball was king. But in Cincinnati, there was a love for baseball that started to turn the sports world into a money making machine. Local lawyers in the area were starting to gradually pay players to join their teams so they could have better chances of beating their friends and colleagues, and the Cincinnati Baseball club, starting in eighteen sixty six, started to pay players to join their team, and the team later became known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings due to them wearing shorter pants called knickers and high red socks. But it really started to take force when Attorney Aaron Champion, an interesting sporting name, hired former cricket player Harry Wright to organize, manage, and play for the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The attorney Aaron Champion wanted to have the first professional team where every player was getting a salary, and this hell happened shortly after the National Association Baseball Players started to allow for professional life in the sport. In eighteen sixty eight, the cricket player Harry Wright was given ten thousand dollars roughly about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars today to assemble the best team he could buy. He first hired his brother George as the team's highest paid player, getting about fourteen hundred dollars for his salary roughly about thirty six thousand dollars today. He would play shortstop and be considered the best player, as during that year he had a six hundred and thirty batting average and hit forty nine home runs. Then Harry hired himself, giving twelve hundred dollars as the second highest player and would play outfield and they would fill out the rest of the team with the remaining money, having a total of ten players on their whole team, all getting a salary. But they wouldn't only play in Cincinnati. They started to tour similar to the Harlem Globetrotters, playing in different locations every week your every day. But between eighteen sixty nine in eighteen seventy they were on a terror and really lived up to the best team that money could buy, as they had won one hundred and thirty straight games without a defeat until eighteen seventy when the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn beat them for the first time. That didn't stop them from continuing their terror, as they continued their winning streak after that until they faced the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn again the following year, when they were defeated for the second time. But unfortunately, their team could not last as other teams were proaching them as they were starting their own professional teams, and they continued to lose players, and they went on to move their own team to Boston, a precursor to the Boston Red Sox, a nod to their Red Sox that they wore. But new teams would pop up in Cincinnati and being called the Cincinnati redis Stockings, which led to the Cincinnati Reds and to be a founding member of the American Association, a rival baseball league, which would lead them into Major League Baseball. Now. Harry Wright was part of the group that went to Boston and he helped lead the Boston club while he was there and help usher the team into the major leagues. It would continue growing other baseball teams throughout the remainder of his life. Without the eighteen sixty nine Red Stockings, who knows where major League Baseball would be today and all the professional sports that followed. Thank you for listening to today's Daily Sports History. If you enjoyed it, go tell a friend, hey, listen to this great show with me so we can be great sports historians together. And come back tomorrow for more Daily Sports History.