Harry Wright
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William Henry Wright (January 10 1835 – October 3 1895) was an English-born American professional baseball player, manager, and developer. He assembled, managed, and played center field for baseball's first fully professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. There he is credited with introduction of backing up plays in the outfield and shifting defensive alignments based on hitters' tendencies. He is in the Baseball Hall of Fame classified as a manager, a role that he virtually defined.
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[edit] Specifications
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- Team(s) = Boston Red Stockings (1871-1875), Boston Red Caps (1876-1877)
[edit] Background
Born in Sheffield, England, the first son of professional cricketer Samuel Wright, "Harry" was not yet three when the family emigrated to the U.S. for a job as bowler, coach, and groundskeeper at the St. George Cricket Club in New York. Both Harry and George, twelve years younger, assisted their father, effectively apprenticing as cricket "club pros". Both played baseball, too, for some of the leading clubs during the amateur era of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). George grew up with the "national game" and he was barely in his teens when the American Civil War curtailed its boom; Harry was already twenty-two when the baseball fraternity convened for the first time and thirty when the war ended.
[edit] Cincinnati
When baseball boomed in 1866, the first full peacetime season, Harry Wright was 31, probably past his athletic prime. He moved to Cincinnati on salary at the Union Cricket Club. Less than a year later he became, in effect, club pro at the Cincinnati Base Ball Club, although he is commonly called simply a baseball "manager" from that time.
Cincinnati fielded a strong regional club in 1867. With Wright working as the regular pitcher, and still a superior player at that level, the team won 16 matches and lost only to the Nationals of Washington DC on their historic tour. For 1868 he added four players from the East and one from the crosstown Buckeye club, a vanquished rival. The easterners, at least, must have been compensated by club members if not by the club.
When the NABBP permitted professionalism for 1869, Harry augmented his 1868 imports (retaining four of five) with five new men, including three more originally from the East. No one but Harry Wright himself remained from 1867; one local man and one other westerner joined seven easterners on the famous First Nine. The most important of the new men was brother George, probably the best player in the game for a few years, the highest paid man in Cincinnati at $1400 for nine months. George at shortstop remained a cornerstone of Harry's teams for ten seasons.
The Red Stockings toured the continent undefeated in 1869 and may have been the strongest team in 1870, but the club dropped professional base ball after the second season, its fourth in the game. As it turned out, the Association also passed from the scene.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Alvarez, Mark (1996). "William Henry Wright (Harry)". Baseball's First Stars. Edited by Frederick Ivor-Campbell, et al. Cleveland, OH: SABR. ISBN 0-910137-58-7
- National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Harry Wright (Hall of Fame biography)
- Retrosheet. "Harry Wright". Retrieved 2006-08-29.
- Wright, Marshall (2000). The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0779-4
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