Doug Allison

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Doug Allison
Doug Allison
Catcher
Batted: Right Threw: Right
MLB debut
May 5, 1871 for the Washington Olympics
Final game
July 13, 1883 for the Baltimore Orioles
Career statistics
AVG     .271
HR     2
RBI     140
Teams
Career highlights and awards
  • Played on the first fully professional baseball team.
  • First baseball player to use a glove.

Douglas L. Allison (born July 12, 1846 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, died December 19, 1916 in Washington, DC) played catcher for the original Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional baseball team.

He was a specialist catcher at a time when some of the better batsmen who manned the position normally rested or substituted at other fielding positions. In Cincinnati the most part of his job was simply to catch the ball --all the pitches of Asa Brainard and as many as possible pops and tips off the bat, a great number, since a catcher could put the batter out by a catch on the first bounce. He is the earliest known player to use a glove, when he donned buckskin mittens to protect his aching hands from fastballs in 1870. [1]

Contents

[edit] Cincinnati Red Stockings

Not quite 22 years old, he moved to Cincinnati for the 1868 season and played for the Cincinnati Red Stockings managed by Harry Wright. Open professionalism was one year away but the long move from Philadelphia, where he worked as a bricklayer [2], suggests that Allison was somehow compensated by club members if not by the club. Cincinnati fielded a strong team that year, with five of the famous team already in place. Allison was a specialist, maybe the weakest batsman on the team.

When the NABBP permitted professionalism, the Red Stockings hired five incumbents including Allison and five new men to complete its famous Nine, the first team on salary for a season. A few of the others had previously played some catcher (all played at the six infield positions in 1868), but Allison filled the role in almost every game.

Cincinnati toured the continent undefeated in 1869 and may have been the strongest team in 1870, but the club dropped professional base ball after the second season.

[edit] Later career

Harry Wright was hired to organize a new team in Boston, where he signed three teammates for 1871. The other five regulars including Doug Allison signed with Nick Young's Washington Olympics, an established club that also joined the new, entirely professional National Association (NA). The five former Red Stockings led the Olympics to a respectable finish in the inaugural NA season.

Later, Doug Allison played in the major leagues with the Troy Haymakers (1872), Brooklyn Eckfords (1872), Elizabeth Resolutes (1873), New York Mutuals (1873-1874), Hartford Dark Blues (1875-1877), Providence Grays (1878-1879), and one game with the Baltimore Orioles in (1883).

Allison was reported playing for a post office team in 1882. Thirty-four years later he died in Washington, DC at age 70, en route to his job at the Post Office Department.[2] He is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington. [3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ BaseballGloves.com. "The First Glove - Ever". Retrieved 2006-08-28.
  2. ^ a b Puff, Richard (1996). "Douglas L. Allison." Baseball's First Stars. Edited by Frederick Ivor-Campbell, Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker. Cleveland, OH: SABR. ISBN 0-910137-58-7
  3. ^ Retrosheet. "Doug Allison". Retrieved 2006-08-29.
  • Liberman, Noah (2003). Glove Affairs: The Romance, History, and Tradition of the Baseball Glove. Triumph Books. ISBN 1-57243-420-1.
  • Wright, Marshall (2000). The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0779-4.

[edit] External link

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