What most of those enthusiasts don’t know is that Ludlow was once the town where the storied franchise opened the season.
This happened in 1875, five years after the mythical Cincinnati Red Stockings team that dominated the game was disbanded. During his absence, the Ludlow and Covington amateur baseball groups attracted so many enthusiasts on both sides of the Ohio River that they joined the professional ranks in 1874. .
This prompted an organization in Cincinnati to form a new Red Stockings organization in the summer of 1875.
“Cincinnati businessmen were saying, ‘You know, with all those dollars partly going to Kentucky, that means baseball is still in vogue,'” said Cam Miller, a local baseball historian who works for the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame. and Museum. ” So they opened their checkbooks and were given all the most productive players they could locate who weren’t yet taken and rebuilt the Reds. “
Ludlow’s professional team played its games at the Ludlow Base Ball Grounds, a box located on a hillside overlooking the Ohio River. Cincinnati enthusiasts were to take a steam ferry that would take them directly to the box.
The land for the new Red Stockings franchise was still under construction in Cincinnati, so the owners reached an agreement to use the land in Ludlow. It was here that the team’s first game took place on Monday, August 9, 1875, and they left. with a 13-5 win over the Chicago White Sox, who would later become the Chicago Cubs.
Miller said Ludlow’s box had a capacity of 1,200 people, but the return of the Red Sox attracted twice that number, priced at 50 cents.
A reporter who covered the afternoon game for the Cincinnati Enquirer said a ferry “crossed the river after Array, carrying a bunch of other people each time toward the Kentucky coast. “
“Once they knew the Reds were coming back, they all had pictures of the undefeated 1869 team dancing in their heads,” Miller said of the giant crowd. “For that shining moment, with another 2,500 people in that little park, it’s funny how so many other people piled up there. “
The citizens of Cincinnati who didn’t make it to the big game had to stick to the scoreboard as they went along.
According to the Enquirer article, a guy sitting atop the center court fence had red and white flags that he raised and lowered to indicate the score after every half-inning. Someone across the river telegraphed each of the counts to a downtown hall where the scoreboard was posted.
The Red Sox broke a 3-3 tie by scoring 3 runs in the seventh inning. The next time the “home” team came to bat, they scored seven runs to take a 13-3 lead over Chicago.
At the time, the Chicago White Stockings were one of the groups of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), the first fully professional baseball league. The most productive team in the league that season, the Boston Red Stockings, under the player-manager command. Harry Wright.
Wright, the guy who combined the Cincinnati Red Sox pro teams that toured the country in 1869 and 1870. After that team disbanded, Wright and several players continued their careers in Boston and won 4 consecutive NAPBBP league titles from 1872 to 1875.
Wright returned to dominance with his talented Boston team in June 1875 to play a match against the Ludlow Base Ball Club. When the visiting team took the field, all the players wore T-shirts with Boston stitched on the chest, with the exception of Wright. He was extremely cheerful in the crowd dressed in his 1869 Cincinnati T-shirt with the old English “C” design.
Boston beat Ludlow, 17-5, with Wright and his younger brother, George, leading in three. They are two members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame who played at the Ludlow Base Ball Grounds, which is now a business district.
“When you figure all this out, it’s unbelievable,” Miller said of Ludlow’s adventure in professional baseball. “The history they’ve had with this peloton and this team is incredible. “
After the 1875 season, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs formed with Cincinnati as one of eight teams. The league followed the five-mile clause prohibiting gambling against other conflicting parties within five miles of any of the league’s members.
Miller said Cincinnati was the team that proposed the five-mile clause to protect its business interests. This is what ultimately led to the demise of the Ludlow Base Ball Club and the Covington Stars, as they could no longer compete against the more productive groups of that era.
“It’s been a business and it’s going to be a business,” Miller said of Major League Baseball. “But at least we can say that we had something special about this domain that contributed to this amazing hobby that we have today. “
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