A tweet from ESPN’s Jorge Arangure reminds us that today is the National League’s 134th birthday. The league was founded in New York by William Hulbert, the owner of the Chicago White Stockings, and the owners of the Philadelphia Athletics, the Boston Red Stockings, the Hartford Dark Blues, the Mutual of New York, the St. Louis Brown Stockings, the Cincinnati Red Stockings and the Louisville Grays.
Obviously much has changed. The White Stockings would soon be known as the Cubs. The Red Stockings would eventually be known as the Braves. Hartford remained until 1961, when it moved to Houston to become the Colt .45s, and was replaced by another team in Hartford that moved to Texas after the 1971 season, dropped the “Dark” from their nickname and simply became “The Blues.” By 1900 The Mutual had morphed from a baseball team into a regional bank, with branches in the Bronx, Brooklyn and northern Manhattan which themselves were reverted back into baseball team to fulfill contractual obligations. As you can see, it was really a time of flux in Major League Baseball.
One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that the National League did not have the DH. This conclusively proves that -- apart from the racial segregation, gambling, rampant alcoholism, short distance from mound to home and the fact that batters could call for a high pitch or a low pitch to his liking -- Mr. Hulbert and his colleagues were on the side of the angels.