The 1876 Brown Stockings: A Monody For The White Stockings

[From the Chicago Tribune.]

Something more than a year ago the writer sat in a chair in the Tribune office and wrote from memory:

Westward the course of empire takes its way;

the four first acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama with the day;

Time's noblest offspring is the last.

At that time the Chicago Club had been beaten in St. Louis by decisive scores, and, though the season ended with an even score as between the clubs, yet the balance of victory lay with the gentlemen from the bridge, because they had taken a better position in the championship race than Chicago could get.

When the season of 1876 opened, the Tribune did not expect to be obliged to knuckle down to St. Louis in matters concerning base ball, but now that the ninth game between the clubs has been

played, and in view of the fact that the White Stockings have lost five and been cheated out of one, as against three which they have won, it is quite time to take off a dilapidated hat, and say to the Great Bridge City that we acknowledge the corn; and, basing judgment on results, are willing to allow that their nine is a better one than Chicago's when opposed to it, and that, so far as the championship of the West is concerned, it will rest with St. Louis until another year.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 27, 1876