1865.25

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Three Mutuals Banned for "Heaving" Game to Eckfords for $100

Salience Noteworthy
Tags Business of Baseball
City/State/Country: New York, NY, United States
Game Base Ball
Immediacy of Report Contemporary
Age of Players Adult
Text

"On September 27, 1865, gambler Kane McLoughlin paid $100 collectively to three [Mutual] players to heave, in the favored term of the period, a game the following day to the Eckfords.  . . .  in the fifth inning the Mutuals amazingly allowed eleven runs to score through [what the NYTimes described as] 'over-pitched balls, wild throws, passed balls, and failures to stop them in the field.' "

The Mutuals obtained confessions and banned catcher Bill Wamsley and two others.  John Thorn cites this as base ball's first game-fixing incident.

Sources

John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (Simon and Schuster, 2011), page 127.  The book includes [pp. 128-129] the written confession of the youngest plotter, Tom Devyr, whom the Mutuals reinstated the following year. 

See also Philip Dixon, "The First Fixed Game-- Eckfords vs. Mutuals", in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (SABR, 2013), pp.46-48.

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