CHAPTER X.THE ARGONAUTS OF 1874.
The players that made the first trip abroad in the interest of the National Game may well be styled the Argonauts of Base-ball, and though they brought back with them but little of the golden fleece, the trip being financially a failure, their memory is one that should always be kept green in the hearts of the game's lovers, if 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 way to the profession.
A.G.Spalding was at that time justly regarded as being one of the very best pitchers in the profession, and from the time that he first appeared in a Boston uniform until the time that he left the club and cast his fortunes with the Chicagos he was a great favorite with both press and public.