Why haven’t we had a cowboy movie or series about baseball? It did occur in the old and wild west. We know that Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp refereed boxing matches and Bat Masterson went on to NY to be a sports writer. But who talks about baseball in the old west?

Baseball spread throughout the Old West around the late 1840s, and in 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings—America’s first professional team—departed westward from St. Louis on a rail tour. In describing their game with the local Eagles the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in terms no modern sports page would use: “It is easy to see why they adopted the Red Stocking style of dress, which shows their calves in all their magnitude and rotundity. Everyone of them has a large and well turned leg and everyone of them knows how to use it. https://truewestmagazine.com/sports-in-the-wild-west/

In 1845 Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. began to accumulate his reputation that would lead to a dubious place in the baseball HOF. He was among the organizers of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, and with some associates published a set of rules and regulations that became the foundation of modern baseball.

Cartwright, who had worked as a bank clerk, bookseller and volunteer fireman in New York City, joined the 1849 California Gold Rush and despite rumors did not spread his rules of baseball wherever he went.

In Minnesota Territory in 1857 (the year before statehood) Minnesota staked its claim in professional baseball. An organized ball club formed in Nininger City (now a ghost town in Dakota County).

During the Civil War, soldiers—mostly Yankees, though some Rebels—played baseball. “The New Orleans boys also carried base balls in their knapsacks,” Will Irwin wrote in a 1909 Collier’s Weekly article. “A few of them found themselves in a Federal prison stockade on the Mississippi. They formed a club.”

Union soldier George Putnam recalled that once during a baseball game in Alexandria, La., enemy troops attacked, placing the outfielders in mortal danger. The left fielder and right fielder managed to get back to the dugout, but the Rebels shot and captured the center fielder before the Yankees could repel the attack.

At some point in his career famed gambler/lawman Wild Bill Hickok reportedly rooted for the Kansas City Antelopes. Legend has it he even umpired one of their games while wearing a pair of six-shooters.

General George Armstrong Custer was a baseball player and fan – his brother was the better player and in the 7th Cavalry was Captain Fredrick Benteen who had played for the St Louis Cyclone club. At that time, for reasons I cannot explain, the game was considered a northerners game, but it really was universal. Not that Benteen’s family could prove it. His father said it was useless and a waste of time and when Benteen went on to a successful union career his father said, “I hope you are killed by the first bullet fired, and that the bullet will be fired by one of your Benteen cousins who will be fighting for our glorious cause!”

During the war the game was played both north and south (and by the way was not created by the Union officer Doubleday despite some erroneous rumors. Union Private Alpheris Parker of the 10th Massachusetts wrote “the parade ground has become a busy place with the officers and men playing the baseball game with such ardor that it borders on mania.” Confederate Private Maynard Dial of Virginia wrote “we were playing the bat ball game with such intensity that we didn’t notice the musket fire. All of sudden, the Federals rushed us and we had to jump for our weapons. In so doing we lost the only baseball in camp.”

This mania for baseball followed General Custer and his brother Tom Custer who was considered one of the best pitchers in the Union Army.

We also know that in 1874 Custer had a baseball team play in SD when he broke the treaty with the Lakota over the Black Hills and came in to the area now known as Custer SD. While in Dakota Territory between 1873 and 1876, the club played other military squads as well as civilian teams. On July 31, 1874, during Lt. Col. George Custer’s Black Hills Expedition, the Fort Lincoln Actives defeated the Fort Rice Athletes, 11–6, at the site of what is now Custer, S.D. “The enlisted men,” according to historian Brian Dippie, “whiled away the long summer day playing a game of baseball—a genuine Black Hills ‘first,’ including a dispute over the umpire’s impartiality.”

A fascinating convergence of dates is 1876 where the baseball players of the seventh infantry died at the Little Bighorn in the same year that the National Baseball League was formed. In February of 1876, eight teams left over from the National Association of Professional Baseball Players banded together to form the new league and professional baseball was on its way.

To prove the baseball connection, we know that Company H Sargent Joseph McCurry was the Benteen Club’s pitcher and considered the 7th’s best player and was critically wounded and would never play ball again., Private William “Fatty” Williams had signed a contract to play with Pittsburgh at the end of his hitch. http://weeklyview.net/2013/04/18/baseball-and-the-little-bighorn/

Early pro ball could be found in the west in 1884 when the Kansas City Cowboys played in the Union Association. In 1886 a team using the same nickname played a one-year trial in the National League, finishing with just 30 wins and 91 losses (36 of the latter by a single pitcher, Stump Wiedman).

The league dumped the Cowboys in favor of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys (today’s Pirates) the next season.

“Most baseball played out West in the 19th century remained amateur or semipro, including the barnstorming games of the Nebraska Indians. Founder and promoter Guy W. Green recruited several of his players from the Omaha and Winnebago reservations; nine of the 12 players on his first club in 1897 were Indians. On June 25 of that year the squad traveled to Lincoln and trounced the University of Nebraska team, 18–12, before an enthusiastic crowd. Through 1914 (Green left in 1907) the Nebraska Indians played across the country, often calling to mind the atmosphere of a Wild West show. The team was good, too, reportedly posting a record of 1,237 wins, 336 losses and 11 ties.” http://www.historynet.com/baseball-in-the-west-2.htm

“In the coal-mining town of Krebs, Indian Territory, on July 4, 1882, players used sacks of hay and cans for bases as 300 people watched the home team defeat nearby Savanna, 35–4. In 1889 future Hall of Fame pitcher Joe “Iron Man” McGinnity starred for Krebs and helped spread interest in the game to places like Tahlequah, Muskogee, Eufaula, Checotah, Vinita and Wagoner. The land rush that prompted the formation of Oklahoma Territory in 1890 (Indian Territory remained the eastern part of what in 1907 would become the state of Oklahoma) also scattered baseball diamonds in new places, including Guthrie, Stillwater, Kingfisher and Oklahoma City. Clothing merchant Seymour C. Heyman started Oklahoma City’s first professional baseball club in 1902, but it was another two years before the Mets, part of the Southwest League, became the first team there to play a full season of organized baseball. Subsequent minor league teams in Oklahoma’s capital city have included the Indians, Senators, Boosters, 89ers and RedHawks.”

In Minnesota we continued our baseball tradition with the North Star Club of St. Paul with another team across the river in Minneapolis. One of the most interesting notes from this era was captered in Homer Croy’s 1949 book Jesse James Was My Neighbor, which told how the Cole-Younger gang “went out to see a baseball game between the St. Paul Red Caps and the Winona Clippers. September 7, the gang made the very unwise choice of robbing the bank in Northfield, Minn., that landed the three Younger brothers—Cole, Bob and Jim—in Stillwater Penitentiary.

“In 1875 the all-white Winona Clippers fielded a black pitcher/second baseman named W.W. Fisher. And in 1883 John “Bud” Fowler, a black player who hailed from Cooperstown, N.Y., saw action at various positions for the Northwestern League team in Stillwater (presumably not within sight of the imprisoned Younger brothers’ cells). Minnesota claimed its first major league team in 1884, when St. Paul played nine games in the Union Association (a league that lasted just one season). But the state didn’t host another team in the majors until 1961, when the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis and became the Minnesota Twins.”

Around Tombstone in 1882, , a civil engineer from Massachusetts named George S. Rice had baseball on his mind. While Wyatt Earp chased the “cowboys” Rice started a “team called the San Pedro Boys at his Boston and Arizona Mill, following that up with the Tombstone Base Ball Association squad. After much practice, his “tossers” opened their season on May 12 with a loss to a Tucson club.”

Chick Gandil and Buck Weaver of the 1919 black sox played for Douglas, AZ in 1925.

By the 1870s soldiers were playing ball at Wyoming Territory forts, and towns like Laramie and Cheyenne had organized teams. The latter sported such names as the Black Stockings, Nonpareils, Benedicts, Eclipse, Bachelors and Indians.

There are more teams and more stories, but the fact is – baseball was part of the old wild west.