My Vintage Minneapolis Millers & St. Paul Saints Collection

[Tay1038]

1877 Minneapolis Brown Stockings vs. Janesville Mutuals Baseball Scorecard – The Origins of Professional Baseball in Minnesota (1875-1877)

Here we have a remarkable scorecard dating to the earliest years of organized baseball in Minnesota that I recently acquired. The scorecard measures 4.5 x 5.5. I was told this scorecard was used in the Ken Burns Baseball documentary.

Minneapolis known as the White Shirts in 1875, Blue Stockings in 1876. By the spring of 1877, Minneapolis appeared in upgraded fine white uniforms, brown stockings and belts, and different colored caps for each position. Because of their new stockings the team would now be known as the Brown Stockings.

The Brown Stockings, much like their nearby river rival the St. Paul Red Caps joined the League Alliance in 1877 after a decade of purely amateur teams drifting through various spots in south Minneapolis. The League Alliance was the first semi-affiliated minor league baseball league. Proposed by Al Spalding on January 15, 1877. Independent baseball teams were to affiliate with National League teams, which would honor their respective contracts. The league only existed for one season, 1877, though another version was attempted in 1882. The League Alliance, a loose association of 13 clubs from the Midwest and East and featured clubs from Syracuse, Memphis, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Fall River and Lowell, Massachusetts.

The 1877 Minneapolis Browns rostered some of the earliest players to play at the highest level of Major League Baseball:

Mike Brannock - Chicago White Stockings (1871, 1875)

Dory Dean - Cincinnati Reds (1876)

Charlie Eden - Chicago White Stockings (1877)

Bill Gleason - St. Louis Brown Stockings (1882-87), Philadelphia Athletics (1888), Louisville Colonels (1889), 1886 World Series Champion

Jack Gleason - St. Louis Brown Stockings (1877, 1882-83), Louisville Eclipse (1883), St. Louis Maroons (1884-85), Philadelphia Athletics (1886)

Sonny Hoffman - Cleveland Blues (1879)

Dan O’Leary - Providence Grays (1879), Boston Red Stockings (1880), Detroit Wolves (1881), Worcester Ruby Legs (1882), Cincinnati Outlaw Reds (1884)

Bill Phillips - Cleveland Blues (1879-84), Brooklyn Grays (1885-87), Kansas City Cowboys (1888)