Thank you to Judson Hamlin for clarifying the identity of our George Coohen. His real last name was Cooper and he was not Jewish. Judson pointed me to "Baseball Pioneers 1850-1870". Fortunately, I had the book. Peter Morris wrote a nice piece on the Ontarios. They were, as I previously said, one of the better teams of western and central New York. They were founded in 1859. The 1868 team was the winner of a gold ball match against the Central City Club of Syracuse. Over the next couple years the Ontarios would play matches against the Eckfords of Brooklyn, Niagaras of Buffalo, Alerts of Rochester, Olympics of Washington, White Stockings of Chicago, and Red Stockings of Cincinnati. They would not win any of these contests, but nontheless were deemed good enough to play these national powers. I believe the Ontarios would cease play as the amateur era came to a close.
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