Who were the players on the very first baseball teams like the 1876 Cubs? Not the 2nd season, but the very first season? What are the stories back then? The National League formed in 1876 with the Chicago Cubs (then called the White Stockings) winning the league with a record of 52-16.
Here’s a funny story of the best player, Ross Barnes, in that first year of the National League:
Barnes was an early batting star who played from 1866-88. He mastered the old ‘fair foul’ rule of the day which said that a hit ball was fair if it first hit fair no matter where it went after that. For example, today’s bunt that rolls foul past the first base line would be a fair ball. Fielders did a lot of running after Barnes’ strategically angled hits.
In 1877 the rules were changed so that a ball had to stay within the foul lines like today. Barnes’ career fell apart after that.
He musta crapped his trousers when he heard of this rule change, because his batting average dropped from .429 in 1876 to .272 in 1877.
sources:
crapping one’s trousers for any reason is never good.
That’s too funny. He was probably telling people for years in bars, “Yeah baseball was never the same after they started messing with the rules…”
part of his obituary reads: “The then new game of baseball appealed to him and by devoting to it the same keen brains which his brothers displayed in mechanics he advanced so rapidly in this profession that by 1870 he had become a national diamond celebrity” http://www.thedeadballera.com/Obits/Barnes.Ross.Obit.html
Here’s very heated debate if ross barnes should be in the Hall of Fame. They even talk about putting him in a time machine to play today! http://www.whatifsports.com/forums/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=1&TopicID=33002&PagePosition=1