Harry Wright, while playing with the Cincinnatis against the Holt Club June 22d, 1867, at Newport, Ky., made seven home runs, the largest number ever scored by any individual player in a game, though "Lip" Pike followed closely, he making six home runs, five in succession, for the Athletics against the Alerts, July 16th, 1866, in Philadelphia.
These were, as a matter of course, exceptional performances, and ones that would be impossible in these days of great speed and curve pitching, but serve to show that there were ball players, and good ones, even in those days when the National Game was as yet, comparatively speaking, in its infancy, and the National League, of the formation and progress of which I will speak later on as yet unheard of.
It must be remembered that, the greater number of these old-time games were not played upon enclosed grounds and that the batter in many cases had no fences to prevent him from lining them out, while the pitcher was so hampered by rules and regulations as to give the batsman every advantage, while now it is the pitcher that enjoys a wide latitude and the batsman who is hampered.
It was a much easier matter to hit the old underhand delivery, with its straight ball, and to send the pigskin screaming through the air and over a low picket fence, than to hit the swift curved ball of to-day and lift it over the high board fences that surround the professional grounds, as any old-time player can testify..