APRIL

25th

Cincinnati begins a week of play in New Orleans with a 51-1 rout of the local Pelicans team. The Chicago White Stockings will soon arrive in town, marking the first time teams have gone south for spring training.

JUNE

14th

After 84 straight wins, the Cincinnati Red Stockings lose 8-7 to the Atlantics of Brooklyn in the greatest game of the year. Twenty thousand spectators watch at the Capitoline Grounds. The Reds had won 24 games this season and 60 last year without a loss. Today's game is tied at the end of the 9th inning 5-5. Bob Ferguson scores the winning run in the last of the 11th on a hit by George Zettlein.

JULY

3rd

As reported in today's New York Clipper, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of New York is formally withdrawing from the National Association of Base Ball Players to protest the evils that seem to be inherent in professionalism. This will be a forerunner of a strictly amateur association. Speculation is that the professionals will form their own association.

23rd

Five thousand spectators jam Dexter Park in Chicago to see the White Stockings play the visiting Mutuals of New York. Mutuals P Rynie Wolters holds the White Stockings to 3 singles and no runs, winning 9-0 for the first shutout game in big-time baseball history. The New York Herald will use "Chicagoed" from now on to signify a shutout; the term survives until at least the late 1890s.

27th

After 104 victories and several road defeats, the Cincinnati Red Stockings lose their first game at home to the visiting Athletics of Philadelphia 11-7.

AUGUST

16th

Fred Goldsmith, an 18-year-old pitcher invited by Henry Chadwick to demonstrate his curveball at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, succeeds before a large crowd. Chadwick observes: "That which had up to this point been considered an optical illusion and against all rules of philosophy was now an established fact." But Chadwick will soon credit Candy Cummings with the discovery of the "crooked pitch." Goldsmith will win 20 or more games each year between 1880 and 1883.

SEPTEMBER

22nd

The Mutuals of New York win the Championship for 1870 by defeating the Atlantics 10-4 at the Union Grounds. The game has such national interest that telegraph wires are strung and inning-by-inning results are sent nationwide.

NOVEMBER

10th

At the New York State Base Ball Convention in Albany, a motion prevails that no club in New York composed of colored men should be admitted to the National Association.

21st

The Executive Committee of the Red Stockings Baseball Club issues a circular to the members announcing their determination not to employ a professional 9 for 1871.

30th

The 14th annual convention of the National Association of Base Ball Clubs is held in New York, the attendance of delegates being smaller than any previous convention. Wansley, Duffy, and Devyr are reinstated to professional baseball, and William H. Craver is expelled for dishonorable play. Rule changes include allowing the batter to overrun 1B after touching it.