1871 Preview - Washington Olympics

The first thing to remember about the Olympic Club of Washington is that their name had nothing whatsoever to do with the modern Olympic Games because Baron de Coubertin, the guy who created the Olympics, was nine years old in 1871. So the "Olympic" reference in the club's name would either be to the ancient Olympic games, where dudes ran around in the nude, or to the Greek gods - a lot of literary references from 1700-1900 use the adjective "Olympic" to refer to Zeus & pals, when modernly we'd usually use "Olympian." I can't find anything that explains which it is, but it always boggles my mind that we're talking about a time so long ago that the Olympics didn't exist. My mind wants to associate this baseball team's name to the modern Olympic Games.

Anyway, they were one of the few top-level amateur teams in the 1860s that was not from the New York area - Chicago, Rockford, and the Cincinnati-Boston Red Stockings were all outstanding but all of them either openly or secretly paid their players. Atlantic, Excelsior, Eckford, and Mutual were the big New York teams, and only Athletic (Philadelphia) and Olympic (Washington) were able to play at that level.

With the advent of a professional baseball league in 1871, Olympic decided to make a run at the title. When Harry Wright's Cincinnati Red Stockings was broken up after the 1870 season, Olympic tried to hire his best players, which resulted in half of the team going with the Wrights to Boston and half going to DC to play for Olympic. The result was increased competitiveness, as both teams were good but neither was dominant. (Indeed, one important thing to remember about the history of baseball is that the more mercenary the game has become, the more competitive balance has been retained. We'll see this throughout the history of the game.)

Olympic was the less strong of the two teams made from the remnants of the Red Stockings, and following the 1871 season most of those key players left for other teams. This left them in serious trouble both competitively and financially, and the club did not survive the 1872 season as a professional baseball team.

P - Asa Brainard - Again, SABR has a great bio for him. Many sources say that his name is the source of the term "ace" pitcher, although I admit to being skeptical; the word "ace" to denote a skilled person was in common usage in the 19th century. SABR seems equally skeptical, saying that it would be decades before "ace" was used to talk about a team's best pitcher. (These seem mutually exclusive, but I don't think they are; whenever "ace" came to be used for pitchers, it was likely because the term was pervasive in society rather than because of one player. Furthermore, it's used to denote the best pitcher on a team; in the 1870s the same guy pitched every game so there'd be no need to distinguish between multiple pitchers.) Brainard played for top teams all the way back in the late 1850s, and was a teammate of the legendary James Creighton with the champion Excelsior club. After the Civil War, Excelsior never regained its dominance, which ultimately led Brainard to head west to play for Harry Wright's Cincinnati Red Stockings. After the breakup of that team, he was part of the contingent to head to Washington. He was a drinker and ladies' man, and after leaving organized baseball in the late 1870s he ran a pool hall in Philadelphia. He married a banker's daughter in the early 1880s and ultimately moved to Denver to run the billiard hall of a fine hotel there. He died of pneumonia in Denver in 1888.
C - Fred Waterman - He played third base for the Cincinnati Red Stockings, then went with the Washington contingent in 1871. He was a native New Yorker who played for some of the top New York teams in the 1860s - Empire and Mutual - before heading west. His career did not last long after his time in Washington, and not much is known beyond that, other than the fact that he died in Cincinnati in 1899.
1B - Everett Mills - He was from Newark, NJ, and was a solid infielder throughout the 1870s. His 1908 obituary mentions him playing with the Eurekas and the Red Stockings when those teams were among the best - not sure if that's an error or if he played with them in the 1860s.
2B - Harry Berthrong - There's some great information here which was evidently provided by a descendant of Berthrong. He was a Civil War veteran who played for the top Washington baseball teams from 1865 through the early 1870s. He gained fame as a portrait painter, particularly painting the portraits of political candidates in the late 1800s for use in their campaigns. He died in 1928 at the age of 84.
3B - Davy Force - He was a solid professional infielder throughout the 1870s and through the mid-1880s. His biggest claim to fame was probably his contract controversy in 1874 that exposed the eastern-western split in professional base ball. In the 1874-75 offseason, Force signed contracts with both the Chicago and Philadelphia clubs. When the Association ruled that Force belonged with Philadelphia, Chicago president William Hulbert determined to create a new baseball organization where the club owners held the power and the western teams were in control. And that's how the National League came to be.
SS - Andy Leonard - Leonard was born in Ireland and raised in Newark, NJ, and he was an outfielder on the Cincinnati Red Stockings club. He signed with Washington in 1871, but rejoined Harry Wright after the season and was a star outfielder for Wright on the powerhouse Red Stocking teams of the 1870s. Failing vision forced him from the game in 1880, and he worked for a sporting goods company owned by George Wright until his death in 1903.
LF - George Hall - He was one of the best-hitting outfielders of the 1870s, and was still one of the top players in the game when he was banned for life after the 1877 season for his involvement in the Louisville scandal. He, like the other implicated players, admitted to conspiring to throw some non-league games, for which he received a lifetime ban. (The strong suspicion was that the players had thrown the pennant as well, since Louisville suspiciously fell apart after an early-season lead.)
CF - Henry Burroughs - Not much known about him. He played in the big leagues for a couple years, and died in Newark, NJ in 1878 at the age of 33.
RF - John Glenn - No, not the astronaut. He was a solid outfielder from 1871-77 for several teams. His death is one of those stories that raises a lot of questions. On November 10, 1888, the 38-year-old Glenn allegedly "attempted to assault a little girl." Based on the 19th century reporting style this could mean anything, but given the fact that a lynch mob formed to kill him, presumably we're talking about some kind of sexual assault. While the police were holding the mob at bay, an officer's gun accidentally (?) went off, killing Glenn. Here is the obituary; if only there were some way to find out more.

Look for Washington to be reasonably good but not a real contender in 1871, just as they were in reality.