The Fort Wayne Kekiongas were a professional baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 team, notable for winning the first professional league game on May 4, 1871.

Kekionga

Kekionga

Kekionga, also known as Kiskakon or Pacan's Village, was the capital of the Miami tribe at the confluence of the Saint Joseph, Saint Marys and Maumee rivers on the western edge of the Great Black Swamp...

 - pronounced KEY-key-awn-guh - is the name of Chief Little Turtle

Michikinikwa

Little Turtle, or Mishikinakwa , was a chief of the Miami people, and one of the most famous Native American military leaders of his time. He led his followers in several major victories against United States forces in the 1790s during the Northwest Indian Wars, also called Little Turtle's War. In...

's Miami Indian

Miami tribe

The Miami are a Native American nation originally found in what is now Indiana, southwest Michigan, and western Ohio. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma is the only federally recognized tribe of Miami Indians in the United States...

 settlement where the St. Joseph River

St. Joseph River (Maumee River)

The St. Joseph River is an tributary of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio, and northeastern Indiana in the United States, with headwater tributaries rising in southern Michigan. It drains a primarily rural farming region in the watershed of Lake Erie. It shares its name with the St...

 and the St. Mary's River

St. Marys River (Indiana)

The St. Marys River is a tributary of the Maumee River in western Ohio and eastern Indiana in the United States. Prior to development, it was part of the Great Black Swamp. Today, it drains a primarily rural farming region in the watershed of Lake Erie....

 join to form the Maumee River

Maumee River

The Maumee River is a river in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana in the United States. It is formed at Fort Wayne, Indiana by the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers, and meanders northeastwardly for through an agricultural region of glacial moraines before flowing into the...

. This was the largest settlement of the Miami tribe. General Mad Anthony Wayne

Anthony Wayne

Anthony Wayne was a United States Army general and statesman. Wayne adopted a military career at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, where his military exploits and fiery personality quickly earned him a promotion to the rank of brigadier general and the sobriquet of Mad Anthony.-Early...

 erected Fort Wayne

Forts of Fort Wayne, Indiana

Fort Wayne in modern Fort Wayne, Indiana, was established by Captain Jean François Hamtramck under orders from General "Mad" Anthony Wayne as part of the campaign against the Indians of the area. It was named after General Wayne, who was victorious at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Wayne may have...

 at that same confluence, and the modern city of Fort Wayne, Indiana

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Fort Wayne is a city in the US state of Indiana and the county seat of Allen County. The population was 253,691 at the 2010 Census making it the 74th largest city in the United States and the second largest in Indiana...

 grew up around the fort. In the language of the Miami tribe, kekionga means Blackberry Patch.

First game

The honor of playing the first game of the newly-organized National Association of Professional Baseball Players was decided by coin flip.

Bobby Mathews

Bobby Mathews

Robert T. Mathews was an American right-handed Major League Baseball pitcher for twenty years beginning in the late 1860s. He is credited as being one of the inventors of the spitball pitch, which was rediscovered or reintroduced to the major leagues after he died. He is also credited with the...

, 5'5", 140 lbs, and 20 years old, hurled a 2-0 shutout for the Kekiongas. Deacon White

Deacon White

James Laurie "Deacon" White was an American baseball player who was one of the principal stars during the first two decades of the sport's professional era...

, catcher for the Cleveland Forest Citys

Cleveland Forest Citys

The Forest Citys were a short lived professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1870s. The actual name of the team, as shown in standings, was Forest City, not "Cleveland". The name "Forest Citys" was used in the same generic style of the day in which the team from Chicago,...

 got 3 hits in 4 at-bats; the other Cleveland players only shared 2 hits among them. Deacon White scored the first hit, the first extra-base hit (a double) and was the first to hit into a double-play.

The game was rained out in the top of the 9th inning. Attendance was 200, and the home plate umpire

Umpire (baseball)

In baseball, the umpire is the person charged with officiating the game, including beginning and ending the game, enforcing the rules of the game and the grounds, making judgment calls on plays, and handling the disciplinary actions. The term is often shortened to the colloquial form ump...

 was John Boake

John Boake

John Leonsor "J. L." Boake was a professional baseball umpire in the National Association who umpired his only game on May 4, 1871, which was the first game in professional baseball history...

.

Bobby Mathews, who went on to play five seasons each in the National Association, National League, and American Association, is the only player ever to pitch 100 games or to win at least 50 in three different major leagues. He is credited with inventing the spitball and the out-curve. Deacon White was another historic player, ending his 22-year career as playing owner of Buffalo's Brotherhood team.

Origin

In April 1862, several young men gathered in Fort Wayne, Indiana to form the Summit City Club to play baseball. Banker Allen Hamilton

Allen Hamilton

Allen Hamilton 1798-1864 was a founding father of Fort Wayne, Indiana.Allen Hamilton immigrated from Ireland in 1820, living in Lawrenceburg, Indiana just long enough to marry Emerine J. Holman. She was the daughter of Judge Jesse Holman, who was a founder of Franklin College and the Indiana...

 donated land between major thorofares Calhoun and Clinton Street, south of Lewis Street, for a ball field. The field was eventually named Hamilton Field

Hamilton Field (Fort Wayne)

Hamilton Field is a former baseball field located in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. The ground was home to the Fort Wayne Kekiongas in the 1860's, prior to turning professional and joining the National Association for the 1871 season...

.

Play was short-lived, as members enlisted in the Grand Army of the Republic, some dying in the war. The club reorganized in 1866, and a second team, the Kekionga Base Ball Club of Fort Wayne, was formed that year as well. The following year, several other teams were formed: the Twightwees, the Mechanics, the Socials, the Concordia Empires and the Keystones.

The Kekiongas played the legendary 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings twice. The Red Stockings were the first baseball team in the USA to have all paid players, and went $16,000 in debt - nearly half a million in today's dollars - to do so. Cincinnati won the first game 86-8, but as Fort Wayne had improved over the summer, they only achieved a 41-7 victory in the second contest. The 1869 Red Stockings ended up with 57 victories and 1 tie for the season.

The following summer, the Maryland Club of Baltimore broke up in mid-season, and the Kekiongas recruited their best players, including pitcher Bobby Matthews, who is credited with having invented the spitball and being the first master of the curveball. When the team played the Chicago White Sox later that season, the Chicago fans were so humiliated that they threw rocks at Fort Wayne players, injuring several of them.

The National Association of Professional Base-Ball Players

National Association of Professional Base Ball Players

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players , or simply the National Association , was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 season...

 was formed in New York, New York in 1871. In addition to the Kekiongas, the other teams were based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

, Chicago, Illinois, Boston, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, Troy, New York

Troy, New York

Troy is a city in the US State of New York and the seat of Rensselaer County. Troy is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany and Schenectady, forming a region popularly called the Capital...

, New York City, Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...

 and Rockford, Illinois

Rockford, Illinois

Rockford is a mid-sized city located on both banks of the Rock River in far northern Illinois. Often referred to as "The Forest City", Rockford is the county seat of Winnebago County, Illinois, USA. As reported in the 2010 U.S. census, the city was home to 152,871 people, the third most populated...

. Each team was to play a best-3-of-5 series with each other team, and the best team would be able to fly a pennant for a year. The franchise fee for each team was $10. Season tickets, or "Subscriptions" for the Kekiongas sold for $5 in 1871, and allowed entry to games for two people.

Early baseball nomenclature

Although the team is conventionally called the "Fort Wayne Kekiongas", using the modern context of a city name plus a nickname, the actual name of the team was "Kekionga" and was so listed in standings, rather than "Fort Wayne". Referring to the team as the "Kekiongas" is equivalent to calling the team from Chicago as the "Chicagos" or the team from Boston as the "Bostons".

Half a season

The community raised funds and erected a grandstand at Kekionga Base Ball Grounds, located on the former Union Army training grounds, Camp Allen. The grandstand was called "The Grand Dutchess" because of its lavish construction. (The publication "Batter Up" refers to the grandstand as the Grand Dutchess, not the Old Dutchess. It is also called the Grand Dutchess in "Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne", by John Ankenbruck and in an article in the Fort Wayne Daily Sentinel, November 6, 1871.)

Paid attendance was poor, and players were poorly paid, or not at all. A number of homesick players from Baltimore returned home. By mid-season, the team had fallen apart, and the last game was played on August 29, giving the Kekiongas 7 wins for the year. The team was managed by Bill Lennon

Bill Lennon

William H. "Bill" Lennon was an American Major League Baseball player born in Brooklyn, New York. He played catcher for three seasons in the National Association from 1871 to 1873, and managed 14 games for the 1871 Fort Wayne Kekiongas.During the 1870 National Association of Base Ball Players,...

 for the first 14 games, then Harry Deane

Harry Deane

John Henry "Harry" Deane was an American professional baseball player born in Trenton, New Jersey. He mostly played center field in his two season career in the National Association...

 for the final five.

Leading the offense for the Kekiongas was first-baseman James H. "Jim" Foran

Jim Foran

James H. Foran was an American Major League Baseball player from New York. He was a participant in what is regarded by the Baseball Hall of Fame as the first game ever played in a professional baseball league, which was a contest between his Fort Wayne Kekiongas and the Cleveland Forest Citys on...

, who hit .348. Only 23 at the time, he had previously played third-base for the Philadelphia Athletics. He never again played professional baseball, and died at the age of 80 in Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

.

The Grand Dutchess burned down on November 5, 1871. By the time the fire department arrived, the fire had too great a start to salvage the grandstand.

Bobby Mathews won 6 and lost 11 games for the Kekiongas, but it probably was not his fault. He played five years in each of three different major leagues, and is the only player ever to win over 50 games in each of the major leagues. That's an even greater accomplishment considering that he played outfield on days he wasn't pitching. Bobby Mathews won 42 games in 1874 for the New York Mutuals (National League).

Early rules

• Pitchers were restricted to underhand pitching until 1884. They delivered the ball from inside a "box", whose front line was 50 feet from home plate.
• Between 1879 and 1889, the number of balls required to walk a batter went from 9 to 8 to 6 to 7 to 5 and then to 4 balls.
• Batters were allowed to call for a high- or low-pitched ball between 1871 and 1887.
• It was four strikes to put out a batter in 1887, a rule that lasted only 1 year.
• Catching a foul ball is an out - but before 1883, it could bounce once.
• Spitball
  Spitball
  A spitball is an illegal baseball pitch in which the ball has been altered by the application of saliva, petroleum jelly, or some other foreign substance....
  
  s were allowed until 1920.

Sources

• "Pictorial History of Fort Wayne, Indiana" by Bert J. Griswold, published 1917 by Robert O. Law

Parker, Robert D.,

• "Batter Up: Fort Wayne's Baseball History" by Robert D. Parker in Old Fort News, Summer, 1967.
• "Twentieth Century History of Fort Wayne" by John Ankenbruck, published 1975 by Twentieth Century Historical Fort Wayne, Inc.