Before Dayton-born Orville and Wilbur tested the first airplane in 1903, Ohio was home to another pair of Wright brothers whose creativity extended far beyond their years.
In 1869, George and Harry Wright — shortstop and player/manager, respectively — helped lead the Cincinnati Red Stockings to a perfect 57-0 season thanks to their innovative spirit. That inaugural year birthed the concept of the first fully-professional baseball team of salaried players, as any good Cincinnatian knows, but it also acted as the blueprint for the game as it’s known today. While George churned out a now-inconceivable .633 batting average and helped pioneer the newly-created shortstop position, Harry earned the title of “baseball Edison” from the Cincinnati Enquirer by being the first manager to keep detailed statistics, acting as an early advocate for relief pitching and developing defensive fundamentals like the double play.
It’s no wonder that John Erardi chose the title Baseball Revolutionaries for his book about the inaugural Red Stockings season. Subtitled How the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings Rocked the Country and Made Baseball Famous, the former Enquirer sports writer outlines the Red Stockings’ dominant winning streak, while placing a special emphasis on just how groundbreaking the original team really was.
“Everything about Harry was just so out there, you know?” Erardi says. “He was almost the forerunner of modern-day analytics, where you’d have guys batting certain positions in the order. He’d have George bat first, which might have seemed backward because as recently as three or four years ago, the best hitter would bat third. But in the case of today’s Reds, they’ve got Joey Votto hitting second.”
Assisted by Reds team historian and co-author Greg Rhodes and former Turner Broadcasting executive and co-author Greg Gajus, Erardi was able to obtain coverage of the season thanks to the Cincinnati public library’s archive of 19th-century newspapers. Most of these first-hand accounts were reported by Harry Millar, a sports columnist for the now-defunct Cincinnati Observer who accompanied the Red Stockings on their East Coast tour — the trip made him the first to journalist to travel with a team.
This relationship between the Red Stockings and the local press makes for one of Baseball Revolutionaries’ most integral conflicts. Over the course of just two years, Erardi’s book traces the team’s initial media buzz — peaking in an ebullient parade that spanned eight city blocks — and their rapid fall from grace thanks to more intense scrutiny from the papers.
“One of the challenges doing the research for the book is that the writing back then was more stilted,” Erardi says. “There were points where several of the writers would be really critical of the players. They’d feel like they weren’t taking instruction well, or that they were dogging it too much. But, from a critical standpoint, I think the writing was really good — the reporters would really get into it.”
Coinciding with the 1869 season’s 150th anniversary, Erardi, Rhodes and Gajus will lead a discussion about Baseball Revolutionaries at 7 p.m. April 3 at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Rookwood. The trio has put together a presentation connecting the original Red Stockings with the Reds of today — they’ll also be available to sign books and sell a large print of the map that appears in the book’s center spread.
Painted by Erardi’s daughter Gina, the map shows where current Cincinnati landmarks stand in comparison to spots mentioned in the book. The Cincinnati Museum Center? That’s where the Red Stockings played ball. Want to know where in the city each team member lived? The spots are conveniently marked with a calligraphic letter “C”.
Just Northeast of Union Terminal marks the spot of Erardi’s favorite story from the book. There, on Liberty Street, a Bohemian-born seamstress named Bertha Bertram stitched the Red Stockings’ signature uniforms. Her Prussian-born husband fought in the Civil War as part of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, returning home with American citizenship.
“It’s crazy, because I was driving around town one day taking Gina somewhere,” says Erardi. “And she says, ‘Look, there’s a building that says Cincinnati Presse on it.’ I’d never even noticed the place, but it turned out Bertha Bertram’s husband was actually editor of that newspaper. The building’s still in town, and the label is on the building.
“Our clothes have changed and our architecture has changed, but as people, we have the same emotions, wants and needs. The history changes, but the city is still set the same way it was in the 1860s — it’s very real. I wanted to bring that to life, and that turned out to be the map.”
John Erardi, Greg Rhodes and Greg Gajus will discuss and sign Baseball Revolutionaries at 7 p.m. April 3 at Joseph-Beth Booksellers (2692 Madison Road, Norwood) in Rookwood. More info: josephbeth.com.
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 3, 2019.