The Brooklyn Atlantics, one of the Eckford Club’s early rivals. Photo via Wikimedia.

Baseball fans in North Brooklyn might not realize that a team of amateur shipwrights from Greenpoint was once a title contender

GEOFFREY COBB | gcobb91839@Aol.com

Author, “Greenpoint Brooklyn’s Forgotten Past

Some people might feel it’s Spring when they see flowers bloom; others might feel that Passover or Easter signal the arrival of Spring, but for me the surest sign of Spring’s arrival is the start of the professional baseball season, which since 2023 is the last Thursday in March. Even baseball fans living in North Brooklyn probably do not realize that much of the early history of the development of baseball took place here in Brooklyn and that a team composed of amateur Greenpoint shipwrights, The Eckford Club, wrote one of the glorious chapters in the sport’s early history.

Though it’s the subject of intense debate, most baseball historians agree that the first game of what we would recognize as baseball was played in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1846. Though it was born in New Jersey, the game really took off here in Brooklyn, which had more teams than anywhere else in the country.  Henry Chadwick, a Brooklyn resident known as the “Father of Baseball,” invented the box score and baseball statistics, while promoting the “fly rule” (catching the ball on the fly rather than one bounce) during the 1860s to improve the game’s skill level.

Most baseball players then were the sons of well-to-do families who could allow their sons the leisure to play the game. Greenpoint formed a team, but it was not composed of rich kids’ sons. It was made up of shipwrights, whose 60-to-72-hour workweek left them little time to practice. The grueling nature of their work, though, made them very strong and fit, making the team successful.

In 1860, The Eckfords were good enough to contend for the New York title against the champion Brooklyn Atlantics. The Eckfords were leading the first game of the three-game series going into the ninth inning when the Atlantics scored four in the ninth to win seventeen to fifteen. Fan interest grew and several thousand people showed up for the second game of the match. The Eckfords were losing nine to six in the fourth inning when their player coach said, “Now, boys just think that you are playing a common club and forget that those fellows are the Athletics.” The team went on to score four runs in the inning and won twenty to fifteen. Several thousand people came out to see the rubber game of the match, but the Eckfords sloppy fielding led to a twenty to eleven defeat. Even though they lost, the team had shown it could be a contender.

Henry Eckford helped build the navies of both the United States and the Ottoman Empire. Photo via Turnstile Tours.

Few teams played many baseball games in 1861 because of the outbreak of the Civil War, but in 1862 the Eckfords met the Athletics again for the championship. The series was held in the first-ever enclosed baseball ground, the Union Grounds in Williamsburg. The enclosed field allowed the owner to charge admission, but fan indignation led the owner to donate the proceeds to charity. The Eckfords won the first game of the October series twenty-four to fourteen, but lost the second game thirty-nine to five, setting up the decisive game of the series of October 18th. There was huge excitement surrounding the game and a record crowd showed up whose huge size frightened the heavily outnumbered police. The ten thousand fans that showed up were more than had ever watched a baseball game before. The police feared a riot that never occurred. The Eckfords won the championship game eight to three and a huge joyous crowd returned with the players to the Mansion House to celebrate their victory. The Greenpoint team won the championship the following year, but the huge crowds meant the beginning of the end of amateur baseball.

Players began to inexplicably jump from one team to another. In reality, they were lured by money under the table many teams now offered. The Eckfords made baseball history when their first baseman, Al Reach, jumped to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1864, openly admitting that he was paid to do so. He is considered the first acknowledged professional baseball player.

In 1865, the Eckfords would be involved in a scandal that would foreshadow the Black Sox scandal that nearly ruined professional baseball. The Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the Eckfords beat the Mutuals with the help of professional gamblers who paid some of the Mutuals a hundred dollars to throw the game.

It was merely a question of time until the game became fully professional, which occurred in 1869 when the National Association was formed, but even before the formation of the pro league many of the Eckford’s best players had left lured by teams offering money.

The Eckford’s entered the league with amateur players and despite their obvious handicap had great initial success. In 1869, they won the New York title before losing to another team in the national championship. Their best players, however, wanted money. One of their stars Jimmy Wood not only left for the Chicago White Sox but also enticed many of the top players to join him. By 1872, the team had folded.

Today there is a huge case of gilded baseballs won by the Eckford Club displayed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. There is also a monument in Cooperstown to Reach, who would go on to partner with A.J Spalding starting one of America’s first sporting goods company and would also start the Philadelphia Phillies club and became of the hall’s first inductees.

Sadly, even here in Greenpoint, few fans realized that local ball players wrote a glorious chapter in the history of our nation’s pastime.