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When did the Cincinnati Reds really start? It wasn’t in 1869, the year widely celebrated

Jeff Suess, Cincinnati Enquirer
·3 min read
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A mural inside Great American Ball Park shows the 1869 Cincinnati Reds.
A mural inside Great American Ball Park shows the 1869 Cincinnati Reds.

The Cincinnati Reds celebrated the team’s 150th anniversary in 2019, tracing its history to the 1869 Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team. But the Cincinnati club had been around for a few years by that time. For that matter, there have arguably been three different franchises called the Cincinnati Red Stockings. So, when did the current Reds begin?

It’s a bit complicated.

Baseball became popular directly after the Civil War. The first Cincinnati baseball team was formed in 1866 by a group of attorneys who met in the law offices of Tilden, Sherman and Moulton on W. Third Street. The team was called the Resolutes, but was better known as the Cincinnati Base Ball Club.

This was a slightly different, but recognizable game. Pitchers tossed underhand and no one wore gloves yet, resulting in smarting pain in the hands of catchers and first basemen.

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Named for their exposed stockings

In 1868, the team debuted new uniforms, white flannel jerseys and knickerbocker pants that exposed their vivid red legwear, which caused a sensation in the day. Newspapers started calling them the “Red Stockings.”

The club leaders decided to field a team of nine athletes rather than amateurs, and in 1869 made the Red Stockings the first openly paid, all-professional team, with a payroll of $9,300 ($210,000 in 2022).

And what a team it was.

Player-manager Harry Wright brought in his brother, George Wright, as an all-star player, and they recruited the best talent around. The team drew crowds, traveling to the East Coast and out to California, notching 57 wins and no losses. The high-scoring Red Stockings averaged 42 runs a game. The 1870 team was nearly as good, but payroll escalated and a bit of the luster wore off, so the club ended the professional experiment after two seasons.

With the Cincinnati team dissolved, stars Harry and George Wright, Cal McVey and Charlie Gould headed to Boston to play for the new Boston Red Stockings in 1871. That ball club became the longest continuing team in American sports – not the Boston Red Sox, but the Boston Braves, now playing in Atlanta.

Cincinnati was kicked out of the National League

Cincinnati fielded another Red Stockings team in 1875. The following year they were inaugural members of the National League. In 1880, the league adopted stricter rules that prohibited playing games on Sundays and selling beer – two things the Red Stockings needed to appeal to the city’s many German fans. The team refused to abide by the new rules and were expelled from the National League at the end of the season.

A third Cincinnati team formed in a new league

The Queen City wasn’t out of baseball for long. In a meeting at Cincinnati’s Gibson House in November 1881, Enquirer sports writer O.P. Caylor (the man who coined the baseball term “bull-pen” in a May 9, 1877, Enquirer story) helped organize a new league, the American Association, one that allowed beer sales and Sunday games.

A new Cincinnati Red Stockings team won the league’s first championship title in 1882 with a .688 winning percentage, still the highest in club history. The Red Stockings rejoined the National League in 1890 (the American Association folded the next year), accompanied by a name change to the Cincinnati Reds.

The 1882 Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team won the American Association title in its first year. The franchise became the modern-day Cincinnati Reds.
The 1882 Cincinnati Red Stockings baseball team won the American Association title in its first year. The franchise became the modern-day Cincinnati Reds.

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Sports statistics sites like Baseball Almanac and Baseball Reference list the Cincinnati Reds as starting in 1882, which was the third iteration of the team.

So, what is the official beginning of today’s Cincinnati Reds?

It all depends on whether you consider the Reds all one team, dating back to the 1866 amateur club, or three separate teams with the same name. Either way, 1869 is more a symbolic birthday rather than a true origin date.

Additional sources: “Redleg Journal” by Greg Rhodes and John Snyder, Our Game baseball blog, BaseballReference.com, Enquirer and Cincinnati Post archives

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: When did the Cincinnati Reds start? The team's complicated history