for no other reason
than because they were the first to show our British cousins what the
American athlete could do when it came both to inventing and playing a
game of his own.

That they failed to make the game a popular one abroad was no fault of
theirs, the fault lying, if anywhere, in the deep-rooted prejudice of
the English people against anything that savored of newness and
Americanism, and in the love that they had for their own national game
of cricket, a game that had been played by them for generations.

I doubt if a better body of men, with the exception of your humble
servant, who was too young at the game to have been taken into account,
could have been selected at that time to illustrate the beauties of the
National game in a foreign clime.

They were ball players, every one of them, and though new stars have
risen and set since then, the stars of thirty years ago still live in
the memory both of those who accompanied them on the trip and those who
but knew of them through the annals of the game as published in the
daily press and in the guide books.

Harry Wright, the captain of the Boston Reds, was even then the oldest
ball player among the Argonauts, he having played the game for twenty
years, being a member of the old Knickerbockers when many of his
companions had not as yet attained the dignity of their first pair of
pants. He was noted, too, as a cricketer of no mean ability, having
succeeded his father as the professional of the famous St. George Club
long before he was ever heard of in connection with the National Game.
As an exponent of the National Game he first became noted as the captain
of the celebrated Red Stocking Club of Cincinnati, a nine that went
through the season of 1869, playing games from Maine to California
without a single defeat. As captain and manager of a ball team Mr.
Wright had few equals, and no superiors, as his subsequent history in
connection with the Boston and Philadelphia Clubs will prove. He was a
believer in kind words and governed his players more by precept and
example than by any set of rules that he laid down for their guidance.
As a player at the time of this trip he was still in his prime and could
hold his own with any of the younger men in the outfit, while his
knowledge of the English game proved almost invaluable to us. Harry
Wright died in 1895, and when he passed away I lost a steadfast friend,
and the base-ball world a man that was an honor in every