Final Standings, Awards for 1871

The final 1871 standings for the NA simulation:

Mutual 23 wins, 10 losses
Athletic 18 wins, 9 losses
Forest City (Cleveland) 16 wins, 13 losses
Chicago White Stockings 14 wins, 14 losses
Olympic 13 wins, 17 losses
Boston Red Stockings 12 wins, 18 losses
Kekionga 11 wins, 7 losses
Forest City (Rockford) 9 wins, 16 losses
Haymaker 8 wins, 20 losses

Thus Mutual wins the first all-professional base ball championship. The Mutual nine ended up being:

Frank Fleet, pitcher
Dick Higham, catcher
Joe Start, first base
John Hatfield, second base
Bob Ferguson, third base
Dickey Pearce, shortstop
Steve King, left field
Dave Eggler, center field
Tom Patterson, right field

The awards given out this first season will be the Most Valuable Player award, Cartwright Award (meant to mimic the Cy Young Award, which in reality didn't start until the 1950s), the Rookie of the Year, the Gold Glove Award, and the Old Timer of the Year (for players 35 and older). The MVP is currently up for a vote and it appears the voters are about evenly split between Hatfield of Mutual and Ezra Sutton of Forest City. However, the other awards can and will be given out.

The Cartwright Award for the game's best pitcher will go to Dick McBride of Athletic, one of the game's best veteran pitchers. He was the winning pitcher in all 18 of Athletic's game (while Mutual divided up the pitching duties), so his victory is no surprise.

For Rookie of the Year, the challenge is figuring out who wasn't part of the base ball scene in 1870. All five of the nominees for MVP seem to have been, so we need to look at the near-miss nominees. Among them, we have Rockford's Chick Fulmer, a Philadelphian about whom little is known. In 1871, he was 20 years old, and in the simulation he played shortstop for Forest City and batted .374. Even though I suspect he might have been a prominent player in 1870 (otherwise why would a Philadelphian be playing ball in the wilds of Illinois?), he'll do as our first Rookie of the Year.

The Old-Timer of the Year is pretty easy, since there were hardly any 1871 professional players age 35 or older. Since professional ball was only a couple years old, only very young men were likely to spend that much time playing. (Interestingly, and contrary to widespread belief, playing baseball has always been a pretty decent living for players, particularly given the fact that few of them were educated men before the mid-20th century. At any rate, the best old-timer was none other than Harry Wright himself. Although his team disappointed, Wright was a solid center fielder and captain for the club.

We'll look at the Gold Glove winners in an upcoming post.