October 26, 1877: The Louisville Gambling Scandal

Jim Devlin

October 26, 1877: What we would later call "Major League Baseball" suffers its 1st scandal. Charles Chase, vice president of the Louisville Grays, confronts George Hall‚ the National League home run leader in 1876 with 5‚ and pitcher Jim Devlin with charges that they threw road games in August and September of this past season.

Both admit to throwing non-league games: An exhibition game in Lowell‚ Massachusetts on August 30; and another in Pittsburgh on September 3. They also implicate teammates Al Nichols and Bill Craver. 

Hall implicates Devlin, saying that the 2 helped in losses to the NL's Cincinnati Reds (no connection to the current team of that name) on September 6, and to the minor league Indianapolis Blues on September 24. But Hall argues that, since the Reds were about to be suspended and the games nullified‚ it amounted to an exhibition game.

Devlin had pitched for the Philadelphia White Stockings in 1873, the Chicago White Stockings in 1874 and '75, and the Grays in 1876 and '77. In 1876, he became the NL's 1st strikeouts leader. When banned, he had a career record of 72-76, but an ERA of only 1.90, and a WHIP of 1.087. He was a good pitcher.

The Grays opened a 4-game lead in the NL in mid-August 1877, but lost 7 straight, and the Boston Red Stockings, forerunners of the Braves, won 20 of their last 21 games. Meanwhile, the players who would end up accused were wearing new jewelry and dining at the kind of restaurants that ballplayers usually couldn't afford.

The Louisville Courier-Journal did some investigating, and uncovered telegrams from the gamblers to the players they were paying. NL President William Hulbert, also the owner of the Chicago White Stockings, the team that would become the Cubs, knew that if he didn't come down hard on the players, it would be tantamount to announcing that taking money to throw games was okay. So he permanently banned the accused players from the League. When the American Association was founded in 1882, it banned them as well.

And none of them ever played again. Devlin tried the hardest to get reinstated. He went to Hulbert, got on his knees, and begged him for another chance. Hulbert gave him a $50 bill (about $1,400 in 2022 money), and said, "This is what I think of you personally, Jim. But, damn you, you have thrown a game. You are dishonest, and this National League will not stand for it!"

On February 24, 1878, Devlin wrote a letter to the one man he thought Hulbert might listen to: Harry Wright, the owner and manager of the Boston Red Stockings, who had been the leader of the 1st openly professional team, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. Devlin apparently had little education, so I've cleaned up the spelling, and summarized:

As I am deprived from playing this year I thought would write to you to see if you could do anything for me in the way of looking after your ground or anything in the way of work. I don't know what I am to do. I have tried hard to get work of any kind, but I cannot get it...

I am living from hand to mouth all winter. I have not got a stitch of clothing or has my wife and child...

I am honest, Harry. You need not be afraid. The Louisville people made me what I am today, a beggar...

I am dumb, Harry. I don't know how to go about it. So I trust you will answer this and do all you can for me.

Harry Wright never answered the letter. It was found among his papers after his death in 1895.

Finally, Devlin was hired as a police officer in his hometown of Philadelphia. But he fell victim to tuberculosis, and died on October 10, 1883. He was only 34 years old, and left behind a wife and a son.

Ironically, Walter Haldeman, owner of the Courier-Journal, the paper whose investigation doomed Devlin and the others, was also the owner of the Grays. He folded the team after the 1877 season. In 1882, the Louisville Eclipse were founded in the AA. They were renamed the Louisville Colonels in 1885, won the AA Pennant in 1890, and joined the NL after the AA folded following the 1891 season. But they didn't do so well in the NL.

In 1900, Barney Dreyfuss, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, bought the Colonels, including their 2 best players, Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke. He folded the team, as part of the NL's consolidation from 12 to 8 teams. Although various minor-league teams in the city have won 19 Pennants, Louisville has never returned to the major leagues. Curse of Jim Devlin, anyone?

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October 26, 1877 was a Friday. The baseball season had ended a few days earlier. No football games were played. Basketball hadn't been invented yet, and hockey barely had. So there were no scores on this historic day.