1871 Preview - Cleveland Forest Citys

This team actually simply went by Forest Citys, not "Cleveland" or "Cleveland Forest Citys." Modernly, they have been called the Cleveland Forest Citys to distinguish them from the Rockford club, which was also known simply as the Forest Citys. It definitely gives you a sense of a different time - I don't think forests are typically what people associate with Cleveland these days. The Forest Citys were an independent professional club in 1870, although they were somewhat lower in quality than the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the Brooklyn Atlantics, or the Chicago White Stockings. Historically, this continued in 1871, as the Cleveland club didn't do too well in the new National Association and only survived for two seasons.

The 1871 Cleveland club has some good players, but they tend to be guys like Ezra Sutton and Deacon White, who were at the beginning of their careers rather than mid-career stars. It seems likely that if teams from Cleveland and Rockford had survived, they would have furnished teams from bigger, richer cities with star players in the same way that small-market teams today tend to furnish mid-career talent to the Yankees and Red Sox.

P - Al Pratt - I found this excellent bio of Pratt, who lived an interesting life. He served in the Union Army at age 15, then played for several base ball teams in western Pennsylvania and Ohio before ending up with the Forest Citys. After being washed up as a pitcher by the mid-1870s, he became a bartender and a key figure in the creation of the outlaw "Beer and Whiskey League" in 1881.
C - Deacon White - White started playing for the Forest Citys in 1868, before there really was any kind of professional base ball. He played against the 1869 Cincinnati club, and is expected to be the star of this club.
1B - Jim Carleton - Not a lot is known about him - he looks like a decent player, although in real life his professional career ended when the Forest Citys left the National Association.
2B - Caleb Johnson - He's another player with a short career who never played for anyone other than the Forest Citys.
3B - Ezra Sutton - Sutton's first top-level base ball team was the Rochester Alerts in 1869. He played against the Forest Citys and they evidently liked what they saw, because they lured him to Cleveland in 1870. He would go on to be probably the best third baseman of the early days of base ball, and his career would last until the late 1880s.
SS - John Bass - He seems to be a pretty good hitter, who in reality had short stints with three different professional teams before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 40. One of the first ball players born in the South, although it's not clear whether he actually grew up there.
LF - Charlie Pabor - This New Yorker was the player-manager of the 1871 club, and was one of the mainstay players of the National Association. He also had one of the oddest nicknames in base ball - "The Old Woman in the Red Cap." (I haven't been able to find anything explaining this, although I love it.) He left professional base ball when the National Association disbanded and became a police officer in New Haven, CT.
CF - Art Allison - He played professional base ball for several years in the 1870s, but doesn't seem to have left much of an impression. Also played first base.
RF - Gene Kimball - He was from Rochester, NY and evidently lived there after his playing days - he died in Rochester in 1882. He only played one season in the National Association. I wonder if he came to the Forest Citys the same way Ezra Sutton did.

Although Cleveland has some interesting characters, this team probably won't fare too well; they certainly don't seem to have the talent that some of the eastern clubs have.