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EXCELSIOR OF CHICAGO (PRE-WAR)
Chicago may be known as the
second city, but its sports fans are quick to grow impatient with second-rate
performances. As much as that it the case today, it was much more so when the
city’s first notable baseball clubs emerged. It was the misfortune of the
Excelsior Club to be Chicago’s best club during those years and to be saddled
with the weight of expectations that they could not meet.
Chicago’s
earliest known ball club, the Union Club, was organized on August 12, 1856,
while the city was in the midst of its extraordinary transformation from tiny
outpost to major metropolis. (History of Chicago, vol. 2, p. 613;
Chicago Tribune, October 19, 1919) According to sportswriter John Kelley,
baseball and like games had been “played long before this by schoolboys, but
there was no regularly organized club until the Unions, a west side aggregation
of prairie players, challenged ‘any and all comers for money, chalk or
marbles.’” (Chicago Tribune, October 19, 1919)
As far as
we can tell, that gauntlet was not picked up until 1858. On July 7, 1858, the
Union Club hosted a club from Downer’s Grove, Illinois, and were beaten by the
“country boys” in the first known match game played in Chicago. (Chicago
Press and Tribune, July 8, 1858) The loss did nothing to diminish interest
in the new game, and a couple days later the rules of the New York version were
published in the Chicago Press and Tribune along with the announcement
that a convention of Chicago baseball clubs would be held on the 21st.
(Chicago Press and Tribune, July 9, 1858; Baseball in Old Chicago)
The Union
Club no doubt expected a challenge from one of the new clubs, but none was
forthcoming. So Chicago’s oldest club took the initiative and sent a challenge
to the Excelsior Club. The members of the Excelsior Club met on August 14,
1858, and authorized secretary John R. Floyd to commit the club to playing a
match game on the 26th. Chicago’s very first intracity rivalry was
ready to start!
While the
Excelsiors had only recently adopted the New York rules, they had more
experience at playing bat-and-ball games. According to one early resident, the
club initially played with five bases on grounds located “in the middle of a
bleak prairie, and except when used by the Indians for an occasional sun dance
they practically belonged to the Excelsiors and were rent free.” Then in 1857,
the club adopted the New York rules. (“Baseball in Days Gone By,” Davenport
Tribune, August 24, 1888)
How and
why they made that decision is not known. Many of the early members would later
call G. Charles Smith the father of the club, but Smith maintained that the club
was already organized when he joined. In any event, the club never regretted
adopting the New York rules: “after the alteration was made in the style of play
and the boys got some new bats the game picked up fresh interest.” (“Baseball in
Days Gone By,” Davenport Tribune, August 24, 1888)
Excitement mounted as the date for the historic showdown between the Union and
Excelsior clubs approached. A newspaper account on the day of the match gushed,
“The Nines comprise the flower of each Club, and have been in rigorous training
for some time past.” Despite the fact that the match was being played at two
p.m. on a Thursday, a big crowd was anticipated. The setting was at the Prairie
Cricket Club grounds on Madison Street between Loomis Street and Ogden Avenue.
To ensure that spectators could get to the site, which was located at Chicago’s
western city limits, arrangements were made for the Madison Street omnibus to
run to and from the ground every half hour. In addition, a committee had been
organized to make sure that all attendees were accommodated and to prepare
special tents for female spectators. (Chicago Press and Tribune, August
26, 1858)
Unfortunately, as would happen 130 years later at the first night game at
Wrigley Field, rain spoiled all of the planning. The match was eventually
played on the following Monday and the Excelsiors’ victory by a 17-11 score
received only brief mention in the local press. It was a portent of things to
come for a club that would repeatedly find its triumphs overshadowed by its
failings.
Chicago’s
first cross-town rivals played a rematch a couple weeks later, and the Excelsior
Club again emerged victorious, this time by a count of 30-17. Following the
match, all of the players from both clubs “returned to the Union Park House to
partake of a collation, and adjourned at a late hour, the time being spent in
speech making, pleasant repartee, merry jokes, and singing.” (Chicago Press
and Tribune, September 14, 1858) It was a fitting end to the season that
had witnessed the birth of formal baseball competition in Chicago.
The
following spring, the Excelsiors kicked off the new season by holding their
annual meeting on April 12, 1859, and electing Dr. W. C. Hunt as club president,
James Malcomb as vice president, W. W. Kennedy as secretary, and G. Charles
Smith as treasurer. By then, their first rivals, the Union Club, had passed
quietly out of existence. Several new Chicago clubs, however, had emerged and
the presence of the Olympic, Columbia and Atlantic clubs ensured that the 1859
season would witness heightened local interest in the game that was already
being hailed as the “national pastime.”
A few
weeks later, the Excelsiors’ secretary wrote to the New York-based Spirit of
the Times and predicted that all of the new teams would make the 1859
baseball season a “lively one.” The letter boasted, however, that theirs was
still Chicago’s “most prominent” club and added that the players would “make a
nice appearance on the ball field in their new uniforms, which consist of long
white pants and white shirts made of English flannel.” (Spirit of the Times,
exact date not provided but letter dated May 1, 1859, reprinted in Alfred
H. Spink, The National Game, 63)
Despite
the initial enthusiasm, to judge from coverage in the Press and Tribune,
the Excelsiors’ activity in 1859 consisted mostly of the practices they held on
Tuesdays and Fridays at their new grounds on West Lake and Ann Street. (Spirit
of the Times, exact date not provided but letter dated May 1, 1859,
reprinted in Alfred H. Spink, The National Game, 63. This letter did not
mention the site of the grounds, but three accounts placed them at this
location, while a third had them playing at the corner of West Lake and May)
Practices occurred at least occasionally, and the club even staged a match
between married and single members. (Chicago Press and Tribune, June 3
and August 8, 1859)
The
Excelsiors also defended their local supremacy against a couple of new
challengers. They beat the Columbia club handily and no rematch appears to have
been played, but the Atlantic club proved another matter. In early June, the
Excelsiors beat the Atlantics by a 31-17 score in front of “some five hundred
spectators, not a few of whom were ladies.” (Chicago Press and Tribune,
June 13, 1859) But the Atlantics evened the best-of-three series in July to
force a deciding game. That match took place in August at the Prairie Cricket
Grounds, and the Atlantics squeaked out an 18-16 win to wrest away the honor of
being considered Chicago’s top baseball club. (Chicago Press and Tribune,
August 12, 1859)
The
Excelsiors reorganized for the 1860 season in late April. G. Charles Smith
remained the club’s treasurer, but Dr. Hunt stepped down as club president, so
James Malcomb assumed that role and Kennedy became vice president, while a new
officer, Abraham Voorhies, became the club’s secretary. The club’s first nine
was reportedly strengthened by the addition of several players who had formerly
belonged to the Columbia Club. (Chicago Press and Tribune, August 24,
1860) But it was hard to tell that from the club’s level of activity, as the
Press and Tribune contained more accounts in 1860 of the doings of the
club’s second and junior nines than of its first nine.
The first
nine did again challenge the Atlantics for local supremacy, but the results were
the same. After splitting two games, the rubber game at the Prairie Cricket
Club on August 26, 1860, and the Atlantics won by a convincing 23-12 margin in
front of “a much larger crowd than has heretofore attended during a match.” (Chicago
Press and Tribune, August 27, 1860)
A likely
explanation for the lack of match play by the Excelsiors’ first nine in 1860 is
that the city’s attention that summer was consumed by the presidential election,
which featured Illinois natives Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln and was
further enlivened by the threat of Southern cessation. Emblematic of that, the
most notable game played by the Excelsior Club in 1860 was an intrasquad contest
between nine club members who favored Lincoln and an equal number of Douglas
supporters. The Douglas partisans won, prompting the fiercely pro-Lincoln
Press and Tribune to predict: “Never mind, Lincoln boys, there’s a victory
in store where Douglas will make no ‘runs.’ He is a lame ‘short stop,’ and has
been ‘caught out.’” (Chicago Press and Tribune, July 25, 1860)
Lincoln
did indeed win that fall’s election, and by the time the following spring the
country was headed toward disunion and war. One later account claimed that most
of the club’s members enlisted and, as the accompanying roster shows, many of
them did indeed either become soldiers or found some other way to help the Union
cause. As a result, by the time the Excelsiors played their next match game,
both Lincoln and Douglas were dead and the United States had been changed
forever by a long, devastating civil war.
MEMBERS
OF THE PRE-WAR EXCELSIORS
F. H.
Bostock: Bostock played for the first nine in 1859 and the only possibility is
Frank Bostwick, a druggist, who was listed on the 1860 census as being born in
1830 in England. He enlisted in the 65th Regiment, Illinois Infantry (Scotch
Regiment) under the name F. H. Bostock, but it’s not clear what happened to him
after that.
Simeon
Farwell: Simeon Farwell played for the first nine in 1858 and 1859. Born around
1831 in New York state, he was the younger brother of Charles B. Farwell, a U.S.
Senator from 1887 to 1891, and John V. Farwell, one of Chicago’s best known dry
goods merchants. The family moved to Ogle County, Illinois, in 1838, which was
still so rural that the county seat was described as “the great city of Oregon
City, three houses and a smoke house.” Eventually, the family moved to Chicago
and John V. Farwell became a partner of Marshall Field until he formed his own
dry goods business in 1865. Farwell would eventually take three of his brothers
on as partners and the firm became highly successful. It would later sponsor
one of Chicago’s best-known company baseball teams. (Freedman) Simeon Farwell
joined his three older brothers as a partner in the dry good firm in 1870 and by
1880 he and his wife and two children had moved to Evanston. Widowed in 1905,
he died in Evanston on February 12, 1911.
John R.
Floyd: Floyd was the club secretary in 1858. The 1860 census shows that he
had been born in Pennsylvania around 1837 to Scottish-born parents and was
working for the penny post. He and his wife Sarah were living with the family
of a Joe Malcomb, so he may have been related by marriage to fellow club member
James Malcomb. On March 1, 1862, he enlisted in the 65th Regiment, Illinois
Infantry (Scotch Regiment), serving with fellow club member F. H. Bostock. He
became a captain in Company E and served until September of 1864. After the war
he became a cashier for the American Express Company. Floyd died in Chicago on
January 8, 1900.
John J.
Gillespie: Gillespie first belonged to the Union and Columbia clubs, but had
joined the Excelsiors by 1860, as he played with the Lincoln men in the
intrasquad game on July 24, 1860. Once joining the Excelsiors, however, he
became one of the club’s most prominent members and served as club president
after the war. Another early ballplayer recalled in 1888 that the early members
of the Excelsiors were “all natural ball players, as a matter of fact, and chief
among the ancient veterans was John J. Gillispi [sic], who at one time was
president of the club. Mr. Gillispi was a veteran ball player when Al Spalding
was in the care of a nurse.” Gillespie was born in Scotland in 1833 and was
assistant fire chief of Chicago’s volunteer fire department by 1860. After the
demise of the Excelsiors, like other members, he moved on to other pursuits. In
1875, the Tribune reported that the Excelsiors’ former president and first
baseman was now the vice president of the Chicago Gun Club. The new interest
also provided him with a livelihood, as Gillespie, who had formerly worked as a
lime burner, became a clerk at a gun store. Around 1889, Gillespie suffered a
paralytic stroke. He died on the last day of 1901, without ever having left his
room during the last twelve years of his life.
W.
Hartshorne: Hartshorne played in 1858 and 1859 but no man by that name has been
found in Chicago.
J. A.
Hays/Hayes: Hayes has not been identified.
William
Haughton or Houghton: Haughton/Haughton played in 1858. He is probably W. B.
Houghton, who was listed on the 1860 census as a twenty-six-year old
Massachusetts-born bookkeeper, living with his wife Hattie.
Dr.
William C. Hunt: Dr. Hunt served as club president in 1858 and played in 1859.
The married thirty-eight-year-old New York-born physician enlisted as a surgeon
in Company S, 51st Infantry Regiment on October 21, 1861, serving for six
months. He died in Chicago on February 28, 1891.
William
Wallace Kennedy: Kennedy served as club secretary in 1859 and vice-president in
1860. He does not appear to have played for the first nine, but he was probably
a member of the second game as he did play in the Lincoln-Douglas game. Alec
Kennedy, later a member of the first nine, was a relative, probably a cousin
once removed. W. W. Kennedy was born in Alabama in 1830, at the cross-roads
country store on the Tombigbee River operated by his Scottish-born father.
Around 1847, his father William sold the store and bought a wagon and headed
north with his wife and eight children – by the time they arrived in Chicago in
June, a ninth child had been born. W. W. Kennedy opened a hardware store at
Lake and Wells street along with brother George but eventually sold it and
joined the city police force in 1860. By 1868, he had risen to the command of
the West Side station and the following year he was appointed Chicago’s Chief of
Police by Mayor Roswell Mason. During the fall of 1869, he served as acting
Mayor and Controller while those men were away on vacation. His three-year
tenure as chief of police was an eventful one that included the Great Fire, but
it came to an abrupt end in 1872 when he was fired by Mayor Joseph Medill.
After his firing, Kennedy remained in Chicago but faded out of the limelight
entirely. He never married and served quietly in a position in the mailing
division of the Chicago post office to which he was appointed in 1880. He was
still held that position when he died at his room at McEwen’s Hotel on September
20, 1900. The then police chief, Joseph Kipley, commented, “During the last few
years I have heard little of Kennedy. His time on the police force was just
before I joined the department, but I knew of him by reputation. I knew that he
resided on the West Side, but he appeared to be of a reticent disposition and we
seldom heard of him. There are few men connected with the Police department now
who will remember Kennedy.” (Chicago Tribune, September 21, 1900)
James
Malcom/Malcomb/Malcolm: Malcolm played for the Excelsiors from 1858 through
1860, serving as vice president in 1859 and president in 1860. In 1888, G.
Charles Smith stated that “James Malcolm was president of the club in his day,
and that all the old Excelsiors recall what a wonderful player Mr. Malcolm was.
He continued to play with the club long after Mr. Smith and ‘Sim’ Farwell
retired, and was famous as a pitcher. There is not much in Mr. Malcolm’s
picture, which was taken long ago when Baby Anson was in short clothes, to
indicate that he was at one time the star twirler of Chicago. That’s what he
was, though. On days when a big match was to be played Jim Malcolm himself
alone would attract two-thirds of the crowd’s admiration, for he was a born ball
player, and in those days the game was played for fun – no sordid motives such
as at present govern the game and make it a mere financial speculation.”
Despite being so well remembered, Malcolm remains a mystery. Various spellings
of his name have been cited, and the only census listing for him is in 1850 when
he is listed as James Malcom, age 25, engineer, born in Illinois to
Scottish-born parents. A James Malcomb died in Chicago during the 1893 World’s
Fair as the result of an accident. He was a visitor from California and his
reported age was quite a bit off from that of the ballplayer. Since he was
traveling alone, however, that age was likely an estimate and it’s possible that
the one-time ballplayer had returned to his former home for the great event.
W. C.
Nichols: Nichols played in 1858 and 1859 but no strong candidate appears on the
censuses.
N. F.
Ousterhout: Ousterhout played in 1859 but nobody by that name has been found.
M. F.
Prouty: Prouty played in 1858 and 1859. The name is so unusual that it’s very
likely he was Merrick Franklin Prouty, who was born in Spencer, Massachusetts,
on March 27, 1829 and lived almost his entire life in the Boston area. If he
was indeed the ballplayer, his stay in Chicago was a brief one, as he was back
in Chicago by the time the 1860 census was taken and subsequently served for
three years in Company C of Massachusetts’s 25th Infantry.
G.
Charles Smith: Smith played in 1858 and 59 and was treasurer in both 1859 and
1860, a position he again held in 1866. He was still in Chicago in 1888, when a
newspaper account reported, “Many of the old members say G. Charles Smith was
the father of the Excelsior base ball club. Mr. Smith shakes his head at this
and modestly declares that the nine was already organized when he became a
member. He gives a reflective tug to his gray mustache, runs his hand through
the thick, silvery locks on his forehead, and becomes pleasantly reminiscent.”
Stephen Freedman, in “The Baseball Fad in Chicago, 1865-1870,” identifies Smith
as being George C. Smith, a prominent banker. The basis of this identification,
however, is not clear, and while this banker was frequently mentioned in the
newspapers, he was always referred to as George C. Smith, while the member of
the Excelsiors was also referred to as G. Charles Smith. For that reason, I
suspect that he may be a man who died a few months after the above article was
published and whose obituary described him as G. Charles Smith, age 61, and one
of the oldest cutters in Chicago. (Chicago Inter-Ocean, September 22,
1888)
A.
Voorhies: Voorhies was the secretary of the club in 1860. The only candidate in
that year’s census was a lawyer named Abraham Voorhees who had been born in 1832
in New Jersey. This man died in Chicago on July 23, 1898.
Other
club members: Charles Burgess, Byron (first name not given), G. C. Carpenter,
Davids (first name not given), R. D. Hughes, A. Kennedy (presumably Alex, then a
teenager, who became a regular after the war), G. H. Kennedy, W. Lowe (probably
William Lowe, secretary after the war), Prime or Prince (first name not given),
L. Quick, Ed Simonds, George Simons or Simonds (also a member of the Union
Club), George Throop.
Note: According to the Atlanta Constitution of March 14, 1909, the
Pullmans were charter members of the Excelsiors. I have found no evidence to
support this claim, and since the Pullmans were involved in the founding of the
professional Chicago White Stockings in 1870, I believe this to have been a
mistake.
Click
here for the club's postwar
history.
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