George Wright (sportsman)

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George Wright (sportsman) bigraphy, stories - Major League Baseball player, manager; Cricket player

George Wright (sportsman) : biography

January 28, 1847 – August 21, 1937

George Wright (January 28, 1847 – August 21, 1937) was an American pioneer in the sport of baseball. He played shortstop for the original Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional team, when he was the game’s best player. In 1868, Wright won the Clipper Medal for being the best shortstop in baseball. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.

He was one of five men to play regularly for both the Cincinnati and the Boston Red Stockings, the latter winning six championships during his eight seasons to 1878. On April 22, 1876, he became the first batter in National League history, and grounded out to the shortstop. Elder brother Harry Wright managed both Red Stockings teams and made George his cornerstone; the brothers are now both in the Hall of Fame. George helped define the shortstop position and on-field teamwork, but his main work as a sporting developer came after retiring from baseball. After arriving in Boston he entered the sporting goods business, soon under the name Wright & Ditson’s. There he continued in the industry, assisting in the development of golf, tennis, and hockey.Find A Grave lists simply him as "Baseball player, Hall of Famer. Golf course builder."

The construction of George Wright Municipal Golf Course was a minor event in the history of public space, a conversion of part of Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park.

Born in Yonkers, New York, twelve years younger than Harry, George Wright was raised as a cricket "club pro", assisting their father as Harry had done. Before George’s birth, Samuel Wright’s St. George Cricket Club moved from Manhattan across the Hudson River to Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey, where many New York and New Jersey base ball clubs played in the 1850s. Both boys learned base ball, too, but George grew up with the "national game" and 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.

Wright was the father of tennis great Beals Wright, a U.S. Championship winner and Olympic gold medalist, and Irving Wright, U.S. Championship men’s doubles champion.

Amateur era

At some times during the war, both Wright brothers played for the venerable Gothams, the second eldest baseball team after the Knickerbockers. According to Ivor-Campbell (1996), George moved from the Gotham juniors to the senior team when he was fifteen. At seventeen in 1864 he was the regular catcher.

Baseball’s recovery from the American Civil War was far advanced in greater New York City (always untouched by the military conflict), as the leading clubs played more than twenty NABBP matches, the Gothams eleven. George played eight and led the team both in runs, scoring 2.4 times per game, and "hands lost", put out only 2.4 times per game, average being three per player in a 9-inning game. In seven matches infielder Harry was fourth in scoring at 2.0 and second behind George in hands lost at 2.6 (Wright 2000: 91).

For the 1865 season George was hired by the Philadelphia Cricket Club; that summer he played in five matches for the Olympic Ball Club of that city. The Olympic club was the devoted to games in the base ball genus, established in 1833. At the December annual meeting, the first in peacetime, National Association of Base Ball Players membership tripled, including isolated clubs from as far as Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wright returned to the Gothams for base ball; he was nineteen and nearing his athletic peak. At the same time, Harry Wright moved to Cincinnati for a job at the Union Cricket Club.

Early in the summer of 1866, Wright moved from catcher for Gotham, which played eight NABBP matches that year, to shortstop for Union, which played 28, the leading number. The Unions of Morrisania, now in the New York borough of the Bronx, were another charter member of the first Association, but one that moved toward professionalism in the postwar years, as the Gothams did not. In 1867, he joined the Nationals of Washington, DC, eldest club in that city, whose approach to professionalism was arranging government jobs, mainly with the Treasury. He played second base, shortstop, and pitcher in 29 of the 30 matches fully on record and in those matches led the team both in scoring and hands lost. Next year he returned to the Unions for the association’s last officially all-amateur season and moved permanently to the shortstop position.