St. Louis Brown Stockings
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The St. Louis Brown Stockings of 1875-1877 were a professional baseball club in St. Louis, Missouri. Joining the National Association (NA) in the final season of that first professional league, the "St. Louis Browns of 1875" were the first team to represent St. Louis in a "regular baseball association" and the city's first "real professional nine" (Spink 1911). The original "Browns" or "Brown Stockings" helped found the National League in 1876 and completed the first two NL seasons, thus playing two or three seasons in the majors depending on whether one counts the NA as a major league.
Like the White Stockings in Chicago (est. 1870), the Brown Stockings in St. Louis (est. 1875) adopted uniforms and acquired a nickname by descent with variation from the famous Red Stockings of Cincinnati (est. 1869), the first professional baseball team, which garnered much public interest due to an undefeated streak during a barnstorming tour in 1869-1870.
[edit] Brown legacy
A few years later, a new baseball club in St. Louis reused the Brown Stockings colors and nickname. The new Brown Stockings, soon called Browns, were a charter member of the American Association in 1882 and they survive today as the National League St. Louis Cardinals.
The "brown" tradition in St. Louis was revived again in 1902 when the newly major American League established its own club in there. The NL club had abandoned its brown color for red two years earlier, and with it acquired the nickname Cardinals (with a famous "red" tradition well-established in Cincinnati). The AL St. Louis Browns challenged the NL Cardinals for the St. Louis market for more than fifty years before moving to Baltimore in 1954 and taking up the local "oriole" tradition.
St. Louis Brown Stockings
* A true professional team with players recruited nationally * Played the full 1875 season (68 games) * Joined the newly formed National League in 1876 * Played home games at Grand Avenue Grounds, later called Sportsman's Park * Dropped out of National League following 1877 season, due to a gambling scandal * Played as an amateur team during 1878-1881 * Folded when a new St. Louis Brown Stockings professional club was organized in 1882
[edit] Sources
* The Baseball Encyclopedia, MacMillan, various editions beginning in 1969 * Green Cathedrals, by Philip J. Lowry * Ballparks of North America, by Michael Benson * St. Louis' Big League Ballparks, by Joan M. Thomas
[edit] References
- Spink, Alfred H. ([1911] 2000). The National Game: Second Edition. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2304-4. (The first edition was 1910. This is one of the first baseball histories. In "The Game in St. Louis" (p35-54), the founder of The Sporting News is covering baseball in his adopted city.)
