Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball's Wilmington Quicksteps

Author: Jon, SpringerNumber Of Pages: 240Details: Product Description Professional baseball was barely into its adolescence in 1884 when a hard-playing, hard-drinking minor league club out of tiny Wilmington, Delaware—the Quicksteps—got the opportunity of a lifetime. Led by archetypal stars Tommy “Oyster” Burns and Edward “The Only” Nolan, the Quicksteps attacked opponents with a spike-sharpened, rough-and-tumble approach to the game that was only then coming into style, including Nolan’s revolutionary delivery, the curveball. Managed by a wise cricket veteran and bankrolled by a cigar-chewing sporting goods dealer who ran illicit gambling rings by night, the Quicksteps were the talk of the town, playing to an .800 winning percentage in the minors and holding their own in exhibitions with big league clubs. The National League was less than a decade old then, and the American Association, which had been established two years earlier, was nipping at its heels. But when a maverick mil