![]() The result was the founding of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. Louis Brown Stockings, and the Louisville Grays, Hulbert held a meeting with the Eastern clubs of the Mutual of New York, the Athletic of Philadelphia, the Boston Red Stockings, and the Hartford Dark Blues on February 2, 1876, at the Grand Central Hotel in New York City and sold them on his vision for a new league founded on the principles of square dealings, recognition of contracts, and business integrity, along with a more orderly game on the field through prohibitions on drinking, gambling, and Sunday baseball, and more definite organization of it through limiting membership to cities of 75,000 inhabitants or more, giving clubs exclusive territorial rights, and mandating teams to complete a predetermined schedule. The signings were made while the 1875 season was in progress, but Hulbert decided to anticipate league disciplinary action by establishing his own league.Īfter enlisting the support of Western clubs including the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the St. To do so, he convinced Illinois native and star Boston pitcher Al Spalding to sign with Chicago for the 1876 season and also signed Boston stars Cal McVey, Deacon White, and Ross Barnes and Philadelphia stars Cap Anson and Ezra Sutton, though Sutton later backed out of his deal. Hulbert became convinced that the Eastern ballclubs were conspiring to keep the Western clubs second-class citizens and plotted to overthrow the might of the Boston Red Stockings, which won each association pennant between 18. ![]() The Association Judiciary committee originally awarded Force to Chicago, but at a second meeting in early 1875, after a Philadelphia man had been elected president of the association, the decision was reversed. In December, Force signed a second contract with the Philadelphia Athletics, and Hulbert protested. ![]() Determined to keep his shortstop, Hulbert signed him to a contract for the 1875 season in September, before the 1874 season had concluded, a violation of league rules. Force, the shortstop of the White Stockings that year, was a notorious "contract jumper", a common occurrence in the National Association in which players would move from team to team each year selling themselves to the highest bidder. He was particularly disgusted by the Davy Force case in 1874. In his brief tenure as a club president in the National Association, Hulbert soon became fed up with the circuit's lack of definite structure, organization, and integrity. A backer of the Chicago White Stockings baseball club of the National Association from its inception in 1871, Hulbert became an officer of the club in 1874 when it resumed play after being forced to sit out two seasons due to the Great Chicago Fire and assumed the presidency the next year. When he returned to Chicago from school, he married into the family of a successful grocer and expanded the business into the coal trade. William Ambrose Hulbert (Octo– April 10, 1882) was one of the founders of the National League, considered as baseball's first, true major league, and was also the president of the Chicago White Stockings franchise.īorn in Burlington Flats, New York, Hulbert moved with his family to Chicago two years later where he lived the rest of his life save for a stint at Beloit College beginning in 1847.
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