Mike Dorgan
August 8, 1877: The Louisville Grays beat the St. Louis Brown Stockings, 10-2 at the original Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. It was just one game, in the second season of the National League.
But there was a significant moment: Mike Dorgan, normally an outfielder, became the first catcher in major league history to wear a mask during a regular season game.
Dorgan played in the major leagues from 1877 to 1890, and became a bartender. In 1909, he developed blood poisoning during surgery on the knee he injured during his career. With no antibiotics available at the time, he was dead at the age of 55.
The first known catcher's mask in baseball was developed by Fred Thayer, a Harvard student and 3rd baseman on their 1876 baseball team. In 1888, his brother Ernest would later write baseball's greatest poem, "Casey at the Bat."
Fred Thayer
Inspired by fencing masks, and by the rise (figuratively, and sometimes literally) of the curveball resulting in injuries to catchers, Fred Thayer modified a brass and leather fencing mask to create a protective faceguard for Harvard's catcher, Jim Tyng, who also pitched. The mask was designed to be strong enough to protect against the ball while still allowing Tyng to see the field clearly.
Jim Tyng
Eventually, masks would also be worn by umpires. Today's catcher's masks are more like the helmets worn by hockey goaltenders, complete with team-themed, or personalized, decorations.
Fred Thayer died in 1913. Jim Tyng played several years in the minors, but only briefly in the majors, and died in 1931.
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August 8, 1877 was a Wednesday. There was only one other major league baseball game played that day: The Boston Red Stockings beat the Hartford Dark Blues, 5-3 at the Blues' home ground -- not in Hartford, Connecticut, but at the Union Grounds, the world's 1st enclosed baseball ground, in the Williamsburg section of what was then the separate city of Brooklyn.
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