Louisville Grays

Win-Loss Record: 65-61-3

Ballpark: Louisville Baseball Park (April 25, 1876-September 29, 1877)

The Louisville Grays were Louisville’s first major league team. They were one of the founding members of the National League when the league was formed in 1876. Managed by outfielder Jack Chapman, the Grays opened the season at Louisville Baseball Park on April 25th, with a 4-0 shutout loss to the Chicago White Stockings, thus becoming the first NL team to be shut out. The team would lost its first three games before defeating the St. Louis Brown Stockings, 11-0. It finished the season in 5th place with a 30-36-3 record. The 1877 Grays team was an improvement over the previous year's. As with the past season, the team lost its home opener and opening day game, this time to the Cincinnati Red Stockings, by a score of 12-5. It would bounce back for its first win two days later against the same opponents, winning 12-8. By the end of July the team had reached first place, and remained there for the next 42 days. However by the middle of August, the team’s fortunes began to change. The Grays went on an eight-game losing streak and lost its next 11 games out of 14, dropping out of first place and down to third. It ended the season in second place with a 35-25-1 record. The team's play raised suspicions amongst fans, writers and club officials when a series of articles written by John Haldeman, the son of club president Walter Haldeman, eventually led to the lifetime ban of four players on the charge of fixing games: Pitcher Jim Devlin, outfielder George Hall, utility player Al Nichols and shortstop Bill Craver. This became known as the Louisville Grays Scandal.

According to the younger Haldeman, Devlin, Hall and Nichols were in league with gamblers to throw games. Craver was included due to his previous run-ins with gamblers, although whether or not he actually threw games like his teammates is harder to determine. The popular theory that the players threw games so that the Boston Red Stockings would win the league pennant is not true. Most players, if not most teams, did not know where they stood in the standings. League membership was also unstable: the Cincinnati Red Stockings dropped out during the season, and then reappeared with new owners, causing some confusion amongst other teams. The Courier-Journal, Louisville's main newspaper, ran three NL Standings. In one, the standings had the Red Stockings as two separate teams; in the second, the Cincinnati club was combined as one; finally in the last one, all the other teams were listed, excluding Cincinnati. At the annual league meeting, it was decided to throw out the results of all the games that Cincinnati played. This gave the pennant to Boston, with a three-game lead over Louisville. Both Louisville and St. Louis were expelled from the league: The Grays due to their four players with ties to gambling, and the Brown Stockings for signing Devlin and Hall. Both cities would return to the major leagues for the 1882 season as members of the American Association, and then later in 1892 would rejoin the National League.

It should be pointed out that modern references to the 1877 season do include the Red Stockings' win-loss record, giving Boston a seven-game lead over Louisville.

Further Reading

• William A. Cook: The Louisville Grays Scandal of 1877: The Taint of Gambling at the Dawn of the National League, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2005. ISBN 978-0-7864-2179-4

Source:

• Peter Filichia: Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebrations of All 273 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present, Addison Wesley Publishing Company (March 1993)
• Philip Von Borries: “The Louisville Baseball Almanac” Arcadia Publishing, Jul 16, 2010
• John E. Kleber: “The Encyclopedia of Louisville” University Press of Kentucky, Jan 13, 2015
• Louisville Four