More than most sports, baseball thrives on tradition. Nowhere does baseball tradition run more deeply or more passionately than it does in Cincinnati. The Queen City gave birth to the first openly professional baseball team four years after the Civil War, and the town has been represented by a team every year since 1881.

The Cincinnati Red Stockings became baseball's first professional team in 1869. They began with a 45-9 thumping of a team called the Great Western of Cincinnati, then proceeded to win nearly every one of its more than seventy games against overmatched amateur teams in the Midwest. They finally lost a game in 1870, when the Brooklyn Atlantics bested them 8-7 in extra innings.

It was a 19th Century no-brainer that the Red Stockings would be a charter member of the National League in 1876. However, Cincinnati's start in the League was rocky to say the least. The Red Stockings didn't fare as well as their 1869 predecessors, finishing 9-54. After four seasons, Cincinnati was kicked out of the National League for playing baseball games on Sunday and for selling beer during games. Both were National League no-no's at the time.

The Red Stockings played in the American Association during the 1880s, then accepted reinstatement to the National League in 1890, their Sunday baseball and beer sales intact. The only thing they changed was their name, from Red Stockings to Reds.

While with the American Association, the Red Stockings opened League Park in 1884. The Cincinnati team would play at this same location for the next eighty-six years. League Park had a tragic beginning, as part of its grandstand collapsed during its first-ever opening day, killing one and injuring many. A fire devastated the park and a new stadium was built, opening in 1902. Christened the Palace of the Fans, it suffered its own devastating fire in 1911, which led to the construction of a park originally known as Redland Field. It opened in 1912 and was renamed Crosley Field after team owner Powell Crosley in 1934. The Reds played there until moving to Riverfront Stadium (a.k.a. Cinergy Field) in 1970.

For the thirty years following their readmission to the National League, the Reds fared poorly, never finishing higher than third. Then came the 1919 pennant winners led by Hall of Famer Edd Roush, a .321 hitter that year and probably Cincinnati's best player up to that time. They had a twenty game winners (Slim Sallee) and two nineteen game winners (Hod Eller & Dutch Ruether) on the pitching staff.

The baseball world was shocked when the Reds upset the heavily favored White Sox in the World Series, but that shock turned to horror for some, dismay for others when it was revealed that the White Sox (or Black Sox) lost the Series on purpose. Players on the 1919 Reds always professed a frustration that the scandal prevented them from getting their due as World Champions.

Cincinnati Reds History