The Kansas City and St.Louis clubs, neither of which had been able to make any money, dropped out, their places being taken by Pittsburg and Indianapolis.
The sensation of the year was the sale of Mike Kelly to the Boston Club by the Chicago management for the sum of $10,000, the largest sum up to that time that had ever been paid for a ball player, and Mike himself benefited by the transaction, as he received a salary nearly double that which he was paid when he wore a Chicago uniform.
The Chicago team for that season consisted of Mark Baldwin, Clarkson and Van Haltren, pitchers; Daly, Flint, Darling and Hardie, catchers; Anson, Pfeffer, Burns and Tebeau, basemen; M.Sullivan, Ryan, Pettit, Van Haltren and Darling, fielders.

Pyle, Sprague and Corcoran, pitchers, and Craig, a catcher, played in a few games, and but a few only.
The season, taken as a whole, was one of the most successful in the history of the League up to that time, both from a financial and a playing standpoint.

The result of the pennant race was a great disappointment to the Boston Club management, who, having acquired the services of "the greatest player in the country," that being the way they advertised Kelly, evidently thought that all they had to do was to reach out their hands for the championship emblem and take it.

"One swallow does not make a summer," however, nor one ball player a whole team, as the Boston Club found out to its cost, the best that it could do being to finish in the fifth place.
The campaign of 1887 opened on April 28th, the New York and Philadelphia Clubs leading off in the East and Detroit and Indianapolis Clubs in the West.

At the end of the first month's play Detroit was in the lead, with Boston a good second, New York third, Philadelphia fourth and Chicago fifth.