Memorial Days Past (Long Past)

Looking backward it's hard to appreciate how much holiday baseball games meant to major league club owners.  Today, or at least in the pre-pandemic today, night baseball allows anyone who can afford it, to attend almost any local home game.  Back in the nineteenth century, however, Sunday baseball was largely prohibited and day games the rest of the week were not an option for the average working person.  No wonder holiday dates became known as "plums" which were often the cause of long and acrimonious debates among club owners.  Of the three summer holidays, Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was first known, is the one that "grew up" with major league baseball.  Originally held on May 30th, the first Decoration Day took place in 1868 when grateful citizens placed flowers on the graves of the Union dead.  In Brooklyn that first day of remembrance started out in "drizzling rain and cold mists," but "patriotic hearts were not dampened."  Representatives of various Grand Army of the Republic posts visited the then independent city's cemeteries with the main observation at the Cypress Hills cemetery.  The only national cemetery in New York City, Cypress Hills, according to an 1870 report, was then the final resting place of 3170 Union soldiers and 461 Confederate Prisoners of War.

 Cypress Hills National Cemetery, Brooklyn 

Base ball was also on tap that same afternoon at the Capitoline Grounds, although not as part of the day's observations.  Trying to get some game experience for Rynie Wolters, their new pitching acquisition, the Mutual Club scheduled a "social game" with the Star Club of Brooklyn.  The Brooklyn Daily Union took a dim view of the game, claiming that the "social" characterization was simply a ploy to circumvent the rule requiring Wolters to complete a 30 day waiting period before playing for the Mutuals in a match game. The paper believed that some of the Star Club members demonstrated their own disagreement with the idea by not showing up, leaving their team two short when the game got underway.  The contest did give the Mutuals some experience with Wolters although not the kind they anticipated because he didn't show up, a not uncommon occurrence with the difficult pitcher.  However his absence allowed the two clubs to abandon the pretense of a "social" game and play a true match game.  While the Star Club quickly filled the vacancies in their lineup, their weakened team was no match for the Mutuals and the Brooklyn team was probably fortunate to lose by only a 28-6 margin.

Brooklyn Daily Union - June 1, 1868

When the National Association, baseball's first professional league, got underway just three years later, in 1871, one game was played on Decoration day, a contrast in opponents that illustrated one of the new league's major weaknesses.  Hosting the game were the Boston Red Stockings, who, while they didn't win the first Association pennant, dominated the rest of the league's brief existence winning all four remaining flags.  The opposition was provided by the short lived Rockford Forest City's who lasted only one year, compiling a forgettable 4-21 record.  On that day however, the Rockford team more than held their own even though they were up against future Hall of Fame pitcher Albert Spalding.  The game at Boston's South End Grounds was tied 10-10 going to the ninth when Boston, batting first on this occasion, pushed across one run and kept Rockford off the board to avoid an embarrassing defeat.  Fortunate on this occasion, Boston apparently didn't learn anything about not taking such teams for granted.  Two years later, this time on July 4th, in professional baseball's first doubleheader, they lost to the Elizabeth Resolutes in what has to be the biggest upset in the Association's five year history.

Chicago's National League 1876 Championship team included Ross Barnes, Cal McVey and Hall of Fame members Deacon White and Albert Spalding all of whom were recruited from the Boston Red Stockings

While the National Association was probably doomed anyway, its demise was hastened when William Hulbert lured the core of the Boston team to Chicago and then helped create the National League.  Whoever made up the schedule for the league's inaugural 1876 season knew what they were doing, scheduling the first return visit of the former Boston stars for the Decoration Day holiday.  The game attracted a crowd of 10-12,000, which the Boston Globe claimed was the largest ever in Boston and perhaps in any city in the country.  Nor was it a passive audience as the "interest and anxiety" in the park was "as if the fate of the nation had depended upon it."  So large was the turnout that the crowd quickly filled the seats and spilled on to the field delaying the game for about a half an hour.  And the huge throng was not there to verbally assault their former heroes as the four were greeted with "shouts of welcome."  Although Chicago prevailed 5-1, the Globe felt there was no disgrace in what it called "a plucky and brilliant losing game."  Anticipating cartoonist Walt Kelly's classic line in his Pogo comic strip almost a century later ("We have met the enemy and he is us"), the paper ran the below headline:

Boston Daily Globe - May 31, 1876

As major league baseball developed in the 1870's and 1880's it wasn't long before someone decided to copy Harry Wright's 1873 idea of a morning-afternoon, separate admission, holiday doubleheader.  In 1884, the Brooklyn and New York clubs in the American Association gave the idea a different twist.  In the morning, the Brooklyn team, called "the Brooklyn's" by the local media, played the Indianapolis club at Washington Park while in East Harlem, the Metropolitans, or Mets, hosted St. Louis at Metropolitan Park (aka - "The Dump").  Then instead of repeating the match ups in the afternoon, the visiting teams switched cities (Brooklyn was an independent city at the time) so St. Louis played in Brooklyn while Indianapolis moved over to New York.  After a year's lapse, the practice was resumed in 1886 for what was apparently the last time giving those who attended both games in either city a unique experience.  It's not that difficult to see four major league teams play in person on the same day, Paul Zinn and I did it in 2000. Those nineteenth century fans, however, have the distinction of seeing three different major league teams play on the same day in the same ball park.  Sadly, this Memorial Day, we will have a different distinction, the dubious one of being the first fans since 1880 to experience Memorial Day without baseball.