On May 4, 1869, the Cincinnati Redstockings defeated the Great Western Base Ball Club, 45-9. It was the Redstockings’ first game as an all-professional team. They went on to a perfect season in 1869, going 57-0. Baseball was America’s game, and the Redstockings, for a brief time, were America’s team.
Professional baseball clubs would become the norm, with a history stretching from the opening months of President Ulysses S. Grant’s first term through the creation of the National and American leagues to today’s Major League Baseball.
Other sports have surpassed it in popularity in the 20th and 21st centuries, but baseball remains “America’s game” in the most important sense. Firstly, it remains the sport most tied to our broader history. Its origins come from older base- and ball-focused games dating back to colonial times. Soldiers in the Civil War played baseball…
