The Cincinnati Red Stockings Become Baseball's First Professional Team

On March 15, 1869, Cincinnati attorney Aaron Champion hired Harry Wright to organize the Cincinnati Red Stockings as the first openly all-professional baseball team. Champion put up roughly $10,000 to fund the venture, and Wright assembled a roster of ten salaried players, paying himself $1,200 as player-manager and his brother George $1,400 as the club's highest-paid star.

Professional players had existed before 1869, but always alongside amateurs on mixed rosters. The Red Stockings dispensed with the pretense. Every man on the field drew a salary. The National Association of Base Ball Players had permitted player compensation only after the 1868 season, and Cincinnati was the first club to go all the way.

The results were overwhelming. The 1869 Red Stockings went undefeated, winning somewhere between 57 and 64 games depending on how exhibition and non-club matches are counted. They barnstormed from coast to coast, playing before crowds in cities that had never seen organized baseball at that level. The tour proved that professional baseball could draw paying spectators and generate enough revenue to sustain itself.

The Red Stockings' unbeaten run ended on June 14, 1870, when the Brooklyn Atlantics beat them 8-7 in 11 innings. The club disbanded after the 1870 season, but its legacy was permanent. Within a year, professional clubs were forming across the country, and by 1871 the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players had launched as the first professional league.

Harry and George Wright are both in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The team they built in March 1869 turned baseball from a gentleman's pastime into a business.