Bid McPhee played second base barehanded. | ZOOM |

        Clean-faced Bid McPhee, all of 22 years old, could not be missed standing in the field at Cincinnati Park on Bank and Western in 1882, not even if there had been a total eclipse of the sun.

        His uniform made sure of that: The jersey was patterned in two-inch wide orange-and-black stripes. It was the new rule of the new major-league league, the American Association, in this its fledgling season. Each of the nine players on each team would wear the colors of their respective position.

        Second baseman, orange and black; pitcher, sky blue; catcher, deep red; first baseman, bright red-and-white; shortstop, burgundy; third base, black-and-white; the outfielders, from left to right — white, brown and a pale-grayish blue.

WHO WAS BID McPHEE?

When it was announced in March that Bid McPhee, a 19th century Red, had been elected to the Hall of Fame, Enquirer reporter John Erardi talked to McPhee's relatives, read McPhee's letters and pored over baseball history books and microfilm of Cincinnati newspapers from 1882-1899, the span of McPhee's 18-year career as the Reds second baseman.   The result:   This narrative piece that examines three major events in Bid's career:   • His Reds' debut in 1882 on the Bank Street Grounds (where the parking lot of SORTA - Queen City Metro is located today)   • His heroics in the first inter-league postseason championship game that same year.   • His first use of a fielder's glove in April 1896, 10 years after gloves were introduced. His fielding record as a second baseman in 1896 would last 29 years.

        Cincinnati fans had grown hardened to the baseball promises of spring, having suffered through five seasons of ineptitude in the National League since 1876. It was a long cry from the stellar play of the original Red Stockings who only a decade earlier had filled their ballpark on the West End with as many as 10,000 fans for games.

        Today, Wednesday, May 7, 1882, there were only 1,500 fans on hand.

        Cincinnati, a city famous for its beer-brewing and heavily German population that enjoyed drinking beer (including on Sundays at the ballpark) had been booted out of the National League before the 1881 season because Reds officials announced they weren't going to change their beer-and-Sunday ball policies.

        NL president William Hulbert, an ardent prohibitionist who was trying to clean up the national game and had the support of other league members, said that Cincinnati was no longer welcome in the NL.

        And so it was that Cincinnati became instrumental in the formation of a new league for the spring of 1882 with teams in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Louisville. The league would allow the sale of a alcohol at the ballpark, and Sunday baseball.

        The league's formal name was the American Association.

        Informally, it was known as “The Beer and Whiskey League.”

HALL OF FAME WEEK

The Enquirer begins a weeklong series of Hall of Fame stories leading to next Sunday's inductions:   • Today: Bid McPhee was fleet-footed, sure-handed and didn't need a glove most of his career.   • Monday: How Sparky Anderson became Reds manager   • Tuesday: How Marty Brennaman became Reds broadcaster   • Wednesday: How Tony Perez went from cuba to the Reds system   • Thursday: How Anderson became “Captain Hook.”   • Friday: Brennaman's broadcasting style is sharp-edged   • Saturday: Perez's needle wove Big Red Machine fabric   • Next Sunday: Special coverage on each of the Reds' inductees.   • Hall of Fame travelers better act fast

        The club's policies suited the Reds players just fine, because most of them had no aversion to alcohol or to a liberal reading of which day they should be allowed to drink it. McPhee was not a teetotaller, but his fellow Reds had already noticed that their second baseman, a sleek 5-foot-8 and 152 pounds with short, neatly combed hair was the most sober, sedate and well-spoken Red of them all. Anybody who had seen his handwriting knew why his full-time trade was as a bookkeeper when he wasn't playing ball. His penmanship was immaculate, whether it be in his company's ledger books, or in the flowing cursive script of his personal letters.

        All these things he owed to being raised mostly by his mother, Maria Button, a product of a Puritan upbringing in a solid Yankee family. She had been widowed at a young age. Bid's father, John, a Scotchman, had been a saddlemaker by trade.

        At age seven, the young McPhee moved to the small, far-western Illinois town of Aledo (and later Keithsburg), both next to the Mississippi River, so that Maria could be closer to her brother and his family. It was in the kitchen of the hotel that his uncle operated that young John McPhee got his nickname, “Bid.” The kitchen help, which included his relatives, were always asking young John to do their bidding in the kitchen.

        “John, get this,” or “John, do that.”

        Soon, it just became “Bid” or “Biddy.” The name stuck.

        Bid was known for his good hands, dexterous and supple, of which he made good use on the ballfields in Keithsburg, where by age 16 he had already established himself as one the best ballplayers in the area. He was fast and one of those players who startled fans by his ability to cut a narrow, sharp swath around the bases.

        At age 17, he began his pro career in Davenport, Iowa, and after two seasons there, took a stable, good-paying job in Denver as a clerk in a dry-goods store in 1880, where he dabbled in baseball but did not play professionally that season. But, oh, those hands and fleet feet were remembered in Akron, where the team owner had remembered McPhee from his days in Davenport and lured him to Ohio with the promise of both a second baseman's job and a job as a bookkeeper for an Akron lumber company.

        It was in Akron that McPhee came to the attention of Reds baseball officials, and was thus summoned when American Association play began in 1882.

        The Reds lost 10-9 to Pittsburgh in the 1882 opener. The next day, McPhee was one of five Reds mentioned in The Enquirer as having played a fine game in the field.

1889 baseball card | ZOOM |

        Among the stories on the front page of the Oct. 6, 1882, Enquirer was that Frank James, the fugitive bank robber and brother of infamous James, who had been slain the prior April in his home, had just turned himself in to authorities in Jefferson City, Mo., and hoped to ultimately be pardoned by the governor so that Frank could return to a normal life with his wife and child.

        Bid McPhee was very much looking forward to today's game.

        The Reds had finished first in the American Association, and McPhee had distinguished himself as a fielder, having the most putouts, double plays and best fielding percentage of all the second baseman. Much of McPhee's success owed to his ability to pay a deep second base, made possible by his strong, true arm.

        And today, the Reds were going to begin a two-game series against the winners of the National League, the Chicago White Stockings, managed by the most famous player of the day, the great Cap Anson. The Cincinnati grandstand, a rickety wooden structure, was filled by 2,700 fans; many others were scattered about the field.

        When McPhee came to bat in the sixth inning, the Reds surprisingly led the supposedly more powerful Chicagoans, albeit by only a 1-0 score. The Reds had just singled three straight times, and two men were on base. McPhee, who was not a high-average hitter (only .228) was nonetheless a threat if he reached the gap with a hit, because of his speed. With the fans clamoring for the popular rookie to deliver such a hit, he indeed did: a deep drive to right field that sailed by the fielders and left McPhee standing on third with a triple. He scored on a wild pitch, and the Reds led 4-0, the score they would ultimately win by, shocking the National Leaguers.

        The next day, before 6,000 fans, the Reds lost, 2-0. Because both teams had prior commitments to play exhibition games elsewhere the next day, the series was declared a draw.

        The American Association had made its point. Their champion was every bit as good, maybe better, than the National League's.

        Thanks to McPhee.

        April, 1896.

        Thirty-six-year old Bid McPhee could not believe how much his back hurt. For 14 seasons, he been the one consistent connection Cincinnati had to its lone league championship, the American Association crown of 1882. He had never missed more than a few games at a time due to injury.

        And now, here he was, unable to play. He blamed his bad back on the use of the Turkish Baths in New Orleans, where the Reds had first begun traveling to their first-ever spring training in 1895.

        “I notice that Peitz, Gastright and Gray, and all the other players who indulged in Turkish baths the same way that I have, suffered,” McPhee said.

        He had plenty of time to think about what his approach to the 1896 season would be. Would he continue to decline to use a fielder's glove like every other player? He still felt confident in his hands, which had stood him in good stead all during his career. He was still one of the sport's stalwarts, arguably still its best fielder and among the best producers of the pastime's most exciting play: the triple. From 1886 to 1895, he averaged 13 a season, tying for the league lead with 19 in 1887 and banging out 22 three years later. Why, even last year, 1895, when he was 35 years old, he hit 12 triples and 24 doubles and scored 107 runs.

        Sure, the ball would sting his fingers early every season, but gradually, he would get used to it again after the first few weeks.

        The other players in the league chose from a variety of gloves, be they their old standbys, hand-me-downs from other players or the spanking new models in the equipment catalogues, such as the Spalding Guide of 1996.

        Here was the description of one of its newest models, the No. 2X.

        “This glove is made throughout of selected velvet tanned buckskin lined and correctly padded with finest felt. It fits the hand perfectly and our traditional "Highest Quality' is a guarantee the glove is perfect in all its details. Made in rights and left. Cost: $3.”

        McPhee had a sore on one of the fingers of his left hand. The sore was created in early spring practice, only this time it wasn't hardening over with a callous like his sores usually did.

        He began experimenting with a glove.

        “McPhee, for the first time in his long career on the ballfield, is using a glove,” read The Enquirer of Thursday, April 23. “He was forced to use it because (of) a little sore ... The ball coming in contact with it kept it irritated and it would not heal. The use of the glove protects the sore spot and it is now pretty nearly well.”

        He was holding onto wicked hoppers and liners better than ever, thanks to the glove, but he wasn't ranging quite as far to get them because of his back and perhaps his age. From 1882 through 1895, he'd only twice averaged as few as 6.6 chances per game — and one of those times was last year. Now, he felt himself not getting to some balls he'd gotten to in the past.

        He hoped the cause of it was his back, which he felt would heal.

        And not his age, about which he could do nothing.

        Oh, how he still loved the game.

        Epilogue: McPhee had almost one full chance less per game in 1896 than he had in 1895. But those balls he got to, he hung on to, setting a league record fielding percentage of .978. It would be a major-league high for the next 29 seasons. He played for three more seasons, retiring in March of 1899 while in spring training in New Orleans. At the time, he was the career leader in triples (his 188 still ranks No.11 today) and — for second basemen — first in total chances (he's No.2 today, behind only Eddie Collins) and double plays (he's 11th today). His 529 putouts in 1886 remain a single-season record.

        His 6.7 chances per game rank No.2 all-time.

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