Happy Baseball Birthday...Cincinnati Red Stockings

Today we celebrate the 147th Happy Baseball Birthday! of baseball's oldest big league ballclub, the Cincinnati Reds, who played the first professional baseball game on May 4, 1869... as the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

Cincinnati Red Stockings page on baseball reference.


The 1969 Red Stockings toured America, introducing the game of baseball, and winning their first 89 ball games until losing in 1870 to the Brooklyn Atlantics.

⚾BrooklynAtlantics.org.


⚾ It's an interesting fact that the two teams, the Red Stockings and the Atlantics, are still competing against each other today.

The Reds are the 3rd generation of the Original 1869 club led by Hall of Fame Harry Wright, and the Atlantics moved to Boston, became the Boston Red Stockings...who would join the National League, become the Boston Braves...then the Milwaukee Braves...and now the Atlanta Braves.


It used to be a tradition that at the beginning of every baseball season the very first game of the year was played in Cincinnati.

 Because of television money and scheduling quirks, the Reds are no longer the first game of Opening Day, and that's something that big league baseball has to change.

Hey, let the ESPN Sunday Night Game be between two American League teams, and let the Reds open at home on Monday afternoon...against the Braves!


Happy Baseball Birthday! to the Reds, the City of Cincinnati, and all the great Reds fans out there...PLAY BALL!