Category: Commercials - This Game Of Games

The Commercials Play The Cyclones

2/22/2016

There will be a friendly match of Base Ball between the Commercial and Cyclone Base Ball Clubs, on Wednesday, September 4th, at 4 o'clock, P.M., on the Empire's Ground. The game will be according to the United States Convention rules, now so extensively played in all our principal cities, and will undoubtedly be very interesting to many of our citizens who have never seen the game. Were there a suitable ground in some of our public parks, it would be much more agreeable to lady spectators, and it is to be hoped our Common Council, or Park Commissioners, will give this their early attention. Players will take the market street cars at a quarter after three o'clock and go to Twenty fourth or Twenty sixth street, thence south five blocks.

-Missouri Republican, August 26, 1860

This is the first reference I have to a game involving the Commercials and, interestingly, one of only two contemporary references I have to a game involving the Cyclones.

The point I'm really trying to make here is that the Commercials were one of the important pioneer clubs in the history of St. Louis baseball. Taking a quick look at my notes, I only see one reference to a St. Louis baseball club in a St. Louis newspaper prior to the one I posted yesterday that mentioned the Commercials. They were one of the earliest St. Louis clubs and deserve to be mentioned along with the Cyclones, Morning Stars, Empires, and Unions.

For some reason, they just seem to be the forgotten club among the St. Louis pioneer baseball clubs. The reason is most likely that they don't have anything really interesting to hang their hat on. Unlike the Cyclones and Morning Stars, they didn't play in the first match game in St. Louis and, unlike the Empires and Unions, they didn't have a great post-war history. Put there really is several interesting things about the club. They were one of the very few St. Louis clubs to play throughout the war years and they had several prominent members like E.C. Simmons and E.H. Tobias.

But they weren't the first (as far as I can tell) and they didn't win a championship in the post-war years, so they are the forgotten among the forgotten.

The Earliest Reference I Have To The Commercial Club

2/19/2016

The Commercial Base Ball Club was organized on Thursday evening and the following officers elected: W.W. Sanford, President; B. Davidson, Vice-President; Eugene Karst, Secretary and Treasurer. Directors-David Hutcheson, John Cross, John Scott. The ground selected is on Ham street, between Chouteau avenue and Hickory street. The Club will play on Tuesday and Friday evenings at 5 o'clock, and Thursday mornings at 4 1/2 o'clock.

-St. Louis Daily Bulletin, June 16, 1860

The Commercials were, as E.H. Tobias wrote in TSN in October 26, 1895, "(among) the very first of regularly formed clubs in St. Louis" and the above squib from the Bulletin certainly proves that. Tobias also happened to have been a member and officer of the club during the war years.

A Biographical Sketch of E.C. Simmons

2/18/2016

Edwards C. Simmons

Born in Frederick, Maryland, on the 21st of September, 1839, [Edward C. Simmons] is a son of Zachariah T. and Louise (Helfenstein) Simmons and was but seven years of age when brought by his parents to [St. Louis], where he pursued his education in the public schools, completing his studies in the high school, which was located on Sixth, between St. Charles and Locust streets. Who would have thought as they watched him serving his apprenticeship at the hardware trade with Childs, Pratt & Company, on Main street, near Vine, having entered their employ at the age of sixteen years, that he was one day to become the foremost exponent of that line of business in the world. His term of indenture continued three years, at the end of which period he entered the employ of Wilson, Levering & Waters, a recently organized firm that had just established business at No. 51 North Main street. There his ability, close application and fidelity enabled Mr. Simmons to steadily work his way upward, and at the end of four years, on the retirement of Mr. Wilson from the firm, he was admitted to a partnership under the style of Levering, Waters & Company, thus becoming one of the proprietors of the business on the 1st of January, 1863. When Mr. Levering died, a year and a half later, the business was reorganized under the firm name of Waters, Simmons & Company, and so continued successfully until 1872, when Mr. Waters retired. He was succeeded in partnership by Isaac W. Morton, and the firm name was changed to E.C. Simmons & Company. In 1874 this partnership was succeeded by the corporation of the Simmons Hardware Company, soon to control the largest hardware business in the world. Mr. Simmons was one of the first business men of St. Louis to appreciate the advantage of the liberal provisions of the Missouri laws as applied to corporations, and was one of the pioneers in the entire United States in incorporating mercantile concerns, thus setting an example that has been most extensively followed since. He was led to this step by the purpose and desire to give his worthy employees an opportunity to invest in the stock of the company and thus reap the more direct reward of their labors. The name of the Simmons Hardware Company has become synonymous with the hardware trade of the country, and the growth of this mammoth concern is attributable in large measure to him whose name introduces this record...

On the 1st of January, 1898, Mr. Simmons, together with his friend and associate, Mr. Morton, retired from active business...He was an important factor in bringing to St. Louis trade from remote sections, his salesmen having covered every state and territory in the Union. He had always believed St. Louis to be the most favorably located of the large cities as a jobbing center and has been enthusiastic on the subject of its commercial possibilities. He has witnessed its development from a small and inconsequential town with but limited industrial and financial interests into the fourth city of the Union, and to this result has largely contributed. It would be impossible for a man of his resourcefulness to confine his efforts alone to one line. His activities have covered a wide range, and at all times the city has been either a direct or indirect beneficiary. In addition to his mercantile enterprises he has largely interested in banking, having been at different times and for long periods a director of the Boatman's Bank, the St. Louis National Bank of Commerce and the St. Louis Trust Company.

In 1866 Mr. Simmons was married to Miss Carrie Welch, a daughter of George W. and Lucy Welch, and their three sons are: Wallace D., now the president of the Simmons Hardware Company; and Edward H. and George W., who are vice presidents of the company...

...Mr. Simmons has never been neglectful of his duties of citizenship and feels that each individual owes his community a service according to his abilities and opportunities. In 1880-1 he was a member of the St. Louis police board, which is given credit for the permanent closing of every public gambling house in a single night. He is a member of the Episcopal church and his Christianity has ever been of that practical character which recognizes that religion is largely a matter of personal service to one's fellowmen. He belongs to the St. Louis, Noonday, St. Louis Country and Commercial Clubs. He has manifested a philanthropic spirit that gives ready response to a call for needed aid from individual, organization or municipality, and St. Louis acknowledges her indebtedness to him along many lines.

-St. Louis, The Fourth City: Volume 3; pp 104-107

Simmons was, as I mentioned yesterday, the field captain of the Civil War-era Commercial Base Ball Club. He died in St. Louis on April 18, 1920, and, interestingly, an obituary that I've read states that he was born in 1829 and not 1839, as the above biographical sketch states. I have no evidence that supports either date but the 1839 date of birth makes a bit more sense, given that he would have been in his twenties during the war years and in the athletic prime of his life.

E.C. Simmons

2/17/2016

Edward C. Simmons is one of the most underrated figures of the pioneer baseball era in St. Louis. I know that I've never written much about him or the Civil War-era Commercial Club and even scrapped a piece on the club that I was thinking about writing for the Base Ball Pioneers book. But Simmons was the field captain of one of the very first baseball clubs in St. Louis and he went on to become a prominent member of the Union Club after the war.

I think I need to address this. So, to that end, I'm going to spend the next few days talking about Simmons and the Commercials. Once done with that, I'll get back to Von der Ahe and wrap up the Baldwin Affair.

Wallace Delafield

2/12/2016

Mr. Chester presented the petition of the "Cyclone Base Ball Club," praying the Council to grant them the privilege of using for their playground the vacant space formerly reserved for the military at Lafayette Park, and also the right of leveling and smoothing the same for that purpose...

[Mr. Wells] presented petition of C.L. Kretschmar, W. Delafield, et. al., members of the Commercial Base Ball Club, asking permission to use the grounds in Lafayette Park, as petitioned for by the Cyclone Club.

-Missouri Republican, March 5, 1861

Commercial Base Ball Club - There will be a meeting of the members of this Club at their room (Gas Company's Building) No. 21 Pine street on Thursday, 17th March, 1862. A full attendance is requested, as business of importance will come before the meeting.

Wallace Delafield, Secretary.

-Missouri Republican, March 12, 1862

Wallace Delafield, a member of the Commercial Base Ball Club of St. Louis, was born in Cincinnati on May 1, 1840. At some point his family moved to St. Louis and the young Delafield was educated at Edward Wyman's school. In 1854, he went to work as a clerk for F. A. Hunt & Company and then for William N. Newell & Company. By 1857, Delafield was working as a clerk for Pomeroy & Benton, a wholesale dry goods store, and after the Civil War he returned to work for William Benton until 1869. That year he entered the general insurance business with Lewis Snow and the company they formed, Delafield & Snow, was still operating in St. Louis at the time of Delafield's death on August 8, 1915.

This Fine Game

11/12/2015

The above article comes from the September 18, 1860 issue of the St. Louis Daily Bulletin and is one of my favorites. I found it about six or seven years ago and posted the information at the old blog back then. As far as the early history of St. Louis baseball is concerned it's a rather significant source as it gives us a lot of information about what was really the first baseball season in the city's history.
I have absolutely no idea when or where I got a digital copy of the article. Just kind of stumbled across this in one of my files while looking for something to post. I first found the article when looking at the actual, original, physical copies of the Bulletin from 1860 at the St. Louis Public Library. Still, to this day, I can't believe that I had those issues in my hand and remember just being terrified of touching them and harming them in some way. They didn't even give me gloves to handle them with. I just asked for them and they gave them to me. Crazy.

Having said that, I'll never forget that day. It was one of the best and most productive days of research I ever had and looking at these one hundred and fifty year old documents was an amazing experience. It's rare for me to have my hands on original source material. You usually get microfilm or a digital copy, which is great. But there's nothing like having the fragile original in your hands.

St. Louis Baseball and the Civil War: Invited To The Field

9/15/2014

The Commercial Base Ball Club have their regular field exercise on Gamble Lawn this Saturday afternoon. Members are requested to be prompt in attendance, and Base Ball players generally are invited to the field.

-Missouri Republican, June 18, 1864

Here we have another notice from the Commercials. If I had realized that this one was so similar to what I posted Friday, I would have just posted them together. It's certainly repetitive but let's try and be positive here and say that this shows how active the Commercial Club was in 1864, specifically, and during the war years, generally.

Also of note is that the Petersburg campaign began on June 9, 1864, and on the day that this notice appeared in the Republican, the Second Battle of Petersburg ended, with little having been achieved. When that battle ended, the two sides dug in and the seige of Petersburg began. It would end in April of the following year.

In St. Louis, on June 18, a number of Copperheads escaped from the Gratiot Street Prison. Several were shot and killed while trying to escape but some actually made it all the way to Canada. I find it ironic that these men had to run to Canada to gain their freedom, just as slaves in the South, using the Underground Railroad, had to escape to Canada to gain theirs.

St. Louis Baseball and the Civil War: Field Exercise

9/12/2014

The members of the Commercial Base Ball Club are notified to meet on Gamble lawn this (Saturday) afternoon, 28th, at 4 1/2 o'clock P.M., for field exercise.

W. Kiselhorst, Secretary.

-Missouri Republican, May 28, 1864

This is the first reference to the senior Commercial Club in 1864 and shows that the Commercials were active throughout the war years. That's rather significant. I'll do all the math when I'm done with this series but, of the top of my head, I think the only clubs that were active in every St. Louis baseball season from 1860 to 1864 were the Commercials, Empires, and Unions and I'm not totally sure about the Unions. This puts the Commercials in pretty good company and is another reason why I always say how underappreciated the club is in a historical sense. The Commercials were one of the most significant pioneer baseball clubs in St. Louis history and nobody ever talks about them.

On May 31, 1864, the Battle of Cold Harbor began. You would think, by 1864, people would have figured out that you didn't attack, up-hill, an entrenched enemy position. But both Grant and Lee made that mistake during the Civil War and their troops paid the price. Grant, to his credit, realized his mistake at Cold Harbor and regretted it.

Grant at Cold Harbor

St. Louis Baseball and the Civil War: Extremis Malis Extrema Remedia

9/1/2014

Commercial Base Ball Club. - The Regular Monthly Meeting of the Club will be held THIS AFTERNOON, at 5 o'clock, at the office of A.W. Howe, Esq.

J.W. Donaldson, Secretary.

-Missouri Republican, September 15, 1863

I wrote awhile back about the fact that the Commercials are a bit overlooked when it comes to the pioneer clubs of St. Louis. One of the reasons for that is the fact that we really didn't know how prominent and active they were during the Civil War years. It wouldn't surprise me, when all is said, done, and posted, that there were more references to the Commercial Club in the Republican from 1861 through 1865 than there were to any other club. They very well may have been the most active St. Louis baseball club of the war years and that's extremely significant.

On the day this notice appeared in the Republican, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the United States under authority granted to him by Congress under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863. That's an oversimplification of what happened but this is just a simple baseball blog and I'm just a simple baseball historian. But these things happened during the Civil War. St. Louis was under martial law throughout the war. Hapeas corpus got suspended. Two days before this notice appeared, the boat-burners were active in St. Louis, burning four steamers and a barge. Desperate times call for desperate measures and these were desperate times.

The Post Boy was one of the steamers set on fire in September 1863

I found a book called Fifty Years on the Mississippi, written by E.W. Gould, and the above image of the Post Boy comes from that book. In the book, Gould publishes a letter he received in 1889 from L.M. Chipley, which mentions the boat-burnings of September 1863:

The Post Boy was in the government service during the war and was selected as dispatch boat for the fleet at Vicksburg during the siege, and also dispatch boat of the fleet at the siege and capture of Arkansas Post, and served in some capacity on White River at Clarendon and Duvolls Bluff and returned to St. Louis in the fall of 1863 and was destroyed by fire along with steamers Jesse K. Bell, Hiawatha and last, but not least, the Steamer Imperial, the queen of all, and the fastest and finest steamboat that ever run in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade.

Chipley had served on the Post Boy and Gould had built both the Post Boy and the Imperial. It's an interesting book and if you're interested in the history of steamboats and the Mississippi steamboat trade, I'd recommend you take a look at it. I would also recommend Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, which is easily my favorite book by Mr. Clemens.

The Imperial arrives in New Orleans - July 8, 1863

I could go on and on about steamboats and boat-burners but I'll leave you with this thought. In the midst of all of this chaos - martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus, attacks on steamboats, Quantrill's attack on Lawrence in August, the general madness of war - the Commercials just wanted to play baseball. The fact that they were able to do that, in the middle of the Civil War, is almost a miracle and speaks to the character and nature of the men that made up that club.

St. Louis Baseball and the Civil War: Another Gap In The Records

8/29/2014

A match game of base ball was played yesterday, on Gamble Lawn, between the Commercial and Empire clubs, which resulted in the success of the latter by 18 runs.

-Missouri Republican, September 3, 1863

And we have another large gap in the records. Even after going back and rechecking the Republican, we find no references to baseball in August 1863 and very little in July of that year. This is similar to the gap in the records for 1862, when there was nothing from the beginning of June until the middle of September. I think there are three possible explanations.

Obviously, the Republican's coverage was not comprehensive. I'm not really sure what their editorial policy was regarding which games they would report on and which they wouldn't. It's extremely likely that the information about the games they were reporting on came from the clubs themselves and if the clubs were not supplying information, the Republicans had nothing to run. The games played during club days were not getting reported and I don't think that all of the match games were getting reported. I think that there was substantially more baseball activities going on than was being reported on in the Republican but I can't really prove that and I don't know to what extent it's true. I know the Republican is missing games but I can only deal with the information I have. All I can really say is that it's a possible explanation for the gap in the record.

Another possible explanation is the weather. If you don't know, it's hot in St. Louis in July and August. It can get really hot in the late summer and, on top of that, there's humidity. Heat and humidity is a popular topic of conversation in St. Louis this time of year. It can just become unbearable and you certainly don't want to be out playing baseball when it's 95 degrees with 90 percent humidity. I can't remember where I read it but there is a reference somewhere about how the ball clubs dealt with the heat in St. Louis. From what I remember, the source stated that, during the pioneer era, the clubs tended not to play during the hottest part of the summer. And that makes a lot of sense. Front-load and back-load your schedule so that you don't have to play during the hottest part of the summer.

So between the Republican's spotty coverage and clubs shutting it down during the hottest part of the year, it does make sense that we don't see a lot of baseball references in the source material in July and August. I'm certainly not saying that there was no baseball going on but I kind of understand why I can't find anything in the Republican.

But that's the third possible explanation for the record gap - the information is there but I haven't found it. I do not claim to be perfect. I make errors. Lots and lots of errors. I like to think that that's part of my charm rather than some kind of flaw in my character but it's true. Now having owned up to my fallible nature, I will say that I've been through this material quite a few times. Like I said the other day, just going through my notes I knew something was missing. I know the material well and as well as anyone. But I also know that my search through the material was not and can not be perfect. There has to be stuff that I've missed and always will be. And that's just a possibility that could explain why I don't have a lot of stuff for the later summer months during the Civil War.

I think I'm going to have to take a closer look at this. 1862 could have been a fluke but if it's happening in 1862 and 1863 then we may be looking at a pattern. We'll see. It's an interesting question and once I finish going through all of the Civil War material I think I'll be in a better position to address it. Right now, I just want to point out that we see this gap in the record in the later summer months in both 1862 and 1863 and there are all kind of interesting possibilities for why we're seeing it.