America's National Game. Albert G. Spalding
making use of whatever skill I possessed as a ball player to gain a competence, made her shrink at first. She had looked upon the game as a means of health-giving exercise, and had rejoiced in it. She had followed the early victories of our club, and, like a loyal mother, had gloried in them. But, to make a business of ball playing! That was altogether different; it required consideration; perhaps advice. Finally, the problem reduced itself — as have so many problems in other Rockford households in the last half century and more — to an appeal to Rockford's Grand Old Man, Hiram H. Waldo, to whom I here pay the homage of man's sincere tribute to man. I held him in honor in the days of my youth. I esteemed him in my early manhood, and now, in my maturer years, I count him as one of the noblest, purest, most unselfish men I have ever known.
Mr. Waldo was at that time, President of the Forest City Club, and yet we laid the severing of my connection with that organization before him, assured that his advice would be fair, honest, unbiased; as, indeed, it proved. I remember well how we received the announcement of the offer made to me to go to Chicago; how we placed before him the situation in all its bearings; how I rather earnestly pleaded the opportunity it presented for my advancement in life. He heard the case quite patiently and then said:
" You know, my boy, that, as a citizen of Rockford, I don't want you to go; and perhaps, as President of the Forest City Club, I ought to urge you to stay; but, as a friend to whom you have come for advice, I must say to you, accept the offer and go; but," he added, smiling, "you needn't tell that I advised it."
And so, in the fall of 1867, I went to Chicago, ostensibly to accept a clerkship in a wholesale grocery, but really to become a member of the Chicago Excelsior Baseball Club. It may interest some to know that I never played but one game with the Excelsior team. Before the next springtime had rolled around the great wholesale house with which I had become connected failed — not entirely on account of the size of my salary, I trust — and a few days later saw me back at Rockford, again a member of the Forest City Club, where I was warmly welcomed, having received employment in the insurance office of A. N. Nicholds, Secretary of the club, and on the Rockford Register, at moderate salary, under the management of E. H. Griggs, who had meantime been elected Secretary of the National Association of Baseball Players.
As to the question of my agreeing to accept a semiprofessional position on the Excelsior team of Chicago at a time when professionalism of every kind was " tabu," I have this to say: Although at this date there was no strictly professional club in existence — the Cincinnati Red Stockings not being organized as such until 1869 — the rule prohibiting salaries was nevertheless a dead letter. Most clubs of prominence, all over the country, had players who were either directly or indirectly receiving financial advantage from the game. Some held positions like that proffered me; others were in the pay of individual lovers of the game. I believed that I foresaw the day soon coming when professional Baseball playing would be recognized as legitimate everywhere. I was not able to understand how it could be right to pay an actor, or a singer, or an instrumentalist for entertaining the public, and wrong to pay a ball player for doing exactly the same thing in his way. I did not like the roundabout schemes that were being worked in all large cities to secure good players, by giving them nominal employment in stores, warehouses, etc. It seemed to me to be educating young men in a school of false pretense. I felt that the only right thing to do was to come out openly and honor the playing of the game as a legitimate avocation, and this position I have ever since consistently maintained.
From the time Barnes and I became connected with the Forest City Club, that organization had an almost uninterrupted succession of victories. No team in the Northwest was able to win from the Rockford nine until the tournament in July, 1867, when the Chicago Excelsiors took two games by close scores — and these games were subsequently offset by a series, best two out of three, played the following season for the championship of the Northwest, in which the Forest Citys were victorious by scores of 20 to 18 and 36 to 27, respectively.
It is not the scope or purpose of this work to publish records. Those interested in statistics will find voluminous tables in the annual Baseball Guides. But in the case of the Forest City Club, whose story is unique among amateur organizations, I feel that I owe it to that club to make public its remarkable achievements:
1866
Forest City 123 to 8, Mystic , Belvidere , Illinois .
37 to 23 Shaffer , Freeport , Illinois .
13 to 14 Cream City , Milwaukee , Wisconsin .
39 to 16 Clipper , Rochelle , Illinois .
50 to 11 Sinissippi , Rockford , Illinois .
24 to 10 Cream City , Milwaukee , Wisconsin .
42 to 3 Badger , Beloit , Wisconsin .
1867
Forest City 56 to 0 Phoenix , Belvidere , Illinois .
59 to 4 Byron , Byron , Illinois .
41 to 45 Excelsior , Chicago , Illinois .
24 to 16 Phoenix , Belvidere , Illinois .
25 to 29 . Excelsior , Chicago , Illinois .
29 to 23 National , Washington , D . C .
33 to 57 Bloomington , Bloomington , Illinois .
63 to 8 Star , Marengo , Illinois .
1868
Forest City 43 to 25 Byron , Byron , Illinois .
73 to 7 Harvard , Harvard , Illinois .
20 to 18 Excelsior , Chicago , Illinois .
13 to 94 Athletic , Philadelphia , Pennsylvania .
29 to 31 Atlantic , Brooklyn , New York .
36 to 27 Excelsior , Chicago , Illinois .
28 to 9 Capitol City , Madison , Wisconsin .
13 to 12 Capitol City , Madison , Wisconsin .
88 to 6 Mutual , Janesville , Wisconsin .
1869
Forest City 110 to 11 Harvard , Harvard , Illinois .
37 to 9 Beloit College , Beloit , Wisconsin .
103 to 6 Stillman Valley , Illinois .
49 to 6 Beloit College , Beloit , Wisconsin .
76 to 1 Clipper , Monmouth , Illinois .
32 to 4 Amateur , Chicago , Illinois .
25 to of Aetna , Chicago , Illinois .
13 to 32 Cincinnati , Cincinnati , Ohio .
31 to 10 Garden City , Chicago , Illinois .
43 to 9 Garden City , Chicago , Illinois .
11 to 15 Cincinnati , Cincinnati , Ohio .
40 to 1 Buckeye , Cincinnati , Ohio .
83 to 14 Independent , Mansfield , Ohio .
32 to 10 Detroit , Detroit , Michigan ,
32 to 53 Cincinnati , Cincinnati , Ohio .
7 to 28 Cincinnati , Cincinnati , Ohio .
47 to 2 Clipper , Monmouth , Illinois .
52 to 7 Occidental , Quincy , Illinois .
44 to 11 Union , St . Louis , Missouri .
70 to 6 Empire , St . Louis , Missouri .
66 to 3 Relic , Jacksonville , Illinois .
101 to 13 Liberty , Springfield , Illinois .
34 to 22 Picked Wine , Chicago , Illinois .
41 to 10 Illinois , Morris , Illinois .
Early in the spring of 1870 , the business men of Rockford , proud