Shortly before the 1875 National Association season, the St. Louis Brown Stockings visited Louisville to play an exhibition against the semi-pro Olympics.
The Louisville Courier-Journal wrote with admiration about the building of a professional club in St. Louis:
“The signs of the times indicate a far livelier season of base ball than has ever been enjoyed in America by lovers of the great national pastime. Especially will this be the case in the west, to which part of our country the great baseball wave has been slowly moving for several years.”
The paper said St. Louis was acting to eclipse Chicago as the “capital” of baseball in the west:
“In order to be honorably represented in the base ball arena, the Mound City folks formed a stock company; gathered in $20,000 from wealthy merchants and millionaires, procured twelve experts in the national game, and now the city smiles while she thinks how her club will walk forward to the pinnacle of fame this year.”
Recruited from “Eastern states,” The Courier-Journal said of the St. Louis team:
“The Brown Stockings, a gloomy title for so gay a set of fellows, though it is rather the fault of St. Louis papers than the base ballists, that they are forced to wear it. All in all, the St. Louis club is composed of as handsome a set of fellows as ever handled the willow or tossed the ball. We refer to face as well as form. Since their engagement by a St. Louis stock company the base-ballists have been under gymnastic training…The members have perfect understanding of each other’s movements, and act accordingly.”
Noting that many of the players had spent the previous season in Brooklyn, the paper said they chose to “come west, like all good people ought to do.”
The Courier-Journal reporter interviewed outfielder Jack “Death to Flying Things” Chapman, who offered a wealth of information on the 19th Century ballplayer:
Jack Chapman
“(He) is six feet high, and splendidly built, being a ‘man as is a man.’ He only weighs one hundred and seventy-seven and isn’t married, though he contemplates taking a partner someday.”
Chapman, the “best looking man on the team,” who “is much liked by his associates,” was designated the “team scholar” to talk to the press in the absence of manager Dickey Pearce who was ill. He said:
“St. Louis is bound to be the greatest place on the continent for base ball this season. Her stock company offered big inducements, and we accepted.”
As for the people who had built the club, Chapman said, they were:
“Very rich and nice people…(the club’s) officers are mostly millionaires, who desire their city ably represented in base ball. The people ‘turn out’ there in the thousands, and are all agog with base ball excitement. Five thousand people witnessed our practice game last week.”
Chapman was asked about salaries:
“Substitutes get from $900 to $1200. Regulars receive $1000 to $2500. Bob Ferguson (the other “Death to Flying Things), of our old club, gets $2500 this year for captaining the Hartfords.”
Asked what players did in the off-season, Chapman said:
“A good many loaf, and others work at different jobs. Generally whatever they hit upon that suits.”
As for the St. Louis club’s prospects to overtake the Boston Red Stockings as the nation’s dominant team:
“We hope to do it, and I believe we shall. The Reds are a good team, made excellent by having stuck together so long. I consider the (Philadelphia) Athletics the stronger nine this year. Harry Wright is the best captain in America. The (New York) Mutuals were the best club last season, and but for the bad feeling among the members would now be champions.”
Finally, Chapman was asked whether he thought Louisville could support a professional team:
“I do, indeed, and am surprised she hasn’t one.”
Chapman was hit and miss on his predictions. The Brown Stockings were the best club in the west, finishing the season 39-29, but no where close to playing at the caliber of Wright’s Red Stockings (71-8) , the Hartford Dark Blues (54-28), or the Athletics (53-20).
He was correct about Louisville’s chances to get a professional club, The Grays, with Chapman as manager finished fifth in the inaugural season of the National League.
Baseball History Daily 
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