Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Empire Club Plays The Winner

A number of friends of the Empire and Morning Star Base Ball Club collected on the Laclede grounds on Twenty-seventh and Biddle streets, yesterday morning, to witness a match game between the two clubs.  Each club displayed a great deal of skill during the three hours they played, at the end of which the Empire Club was declared victorious.
-St. Louis Daily Bulletin, July 18, 1860

The score of the game, which one has to assume was the second match game played in St. Louis, was 41-33.  Playing for the Empires was John Barrett, John Williams, William Henley, B.J. Higgins, James Fitzgerald, John Waltour, Dan Coyle, John Reynolds, and Pat Cooney.  Playing for the Morning Star was Robert Henry, Charles Scudder, David Naylor, Joh Henry, Case, Martin Burke, William Henry, R. Wilson, and Finney.

The Laclede Grounds, according to Tobias, was the home of the Laclede Club "an early club made up from master mechanics." 

What really stood out to me when I first read this game account was the fact that the match lasted three hours, which is pretty much how long a baseball game lasts today.  Of course if two modern clubs scored seventy runs between them, the game would last about thirty hours.      

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