The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-13
WINNING STREAMS OF
 BASEBALL TEAMS IN
 PRESENT AND OLD DAYS

The recent performance Of the Giants, following it did a long series of defeats, gains a prominent place among the famous winning streaks of modern big league clubs The greatest string of consecutive vel tories of them all, however, goes back to the very beginning of professional baseball. It was on the fourteenth of June, 1870, just forty-six years ago come tomorrow, when the winning streak of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, which had lasted through year and a half, was finally broken in close game at Brooklyn with the Atlantcs- The score of the contest was Brooklyn 8, Cincinnati 2. The game went into the eleventh inning, when the Reds put two runs over the pan and seem ing1y had victory in their grasp In their half the Atlantics scored three runs, and ended the Redland bunch's Hong run without a defeat. Incident ally, it was in this pastime that the first double play in baseball history was pulled off. George Wright, the Cincinnati shortstop. started the play when Brooklyn had men on first and second, with nobody out Wright got a pop fly on the bound and threw to Waterman at third, and the latter propelled the pellet to Sweasy at sec ond, retiring both Brooklyn runners.
 The Red Stockings turned profes- sional in 1869, and started their sea-
 
 Westerns. They then started out an tour, defeating the Fort Wayne club 86-6; the Buffalo Niagaras 42-S; the Forest Citys, 25-6; the Rochester Alerts. 18-9; the Troy Haynakers, s.
 31; the Albany Nationals. 49-S; the Springfield, Mass, Mutuals, s0-5; the Boston Lowells, 29-9; the Boston Tri- Mountains, 40-12; Harvard, S0-11s | Brooklyn Mutuals, Az; Brooklyn Att l lantics, 30-11; Brooklyn Eckfords, 1 24-5; Philadelphia Olympics, 22-11; Philadelphia Athletics, 27-1S; Phila-
 delphia Keystones, 45-30; Baltimore | Marylands, 47-7; Washington Nation a1s, 24-S; Washington Olynpics, 16-5 J Rockford Forest Citys, 34-13 and 1 15- A; Milwaukee Cream Citys, S5-7; Portsmouth, Riversides, 40-7; New Or leans Southerns, at Cincinnati, S5-Ss and other famous clubs. After a
 string of thirty-nine straight victories, all very much one-sided with the eX-
 ception of one game with Rockford the Red Stockings received a, visir on | their own grounds from the Lansing | burg, N. r., Unions-afterward the
 Troy Haymakers-and were played to l a 17-17 tie. This drawn battle was the only break in the Cincinnati win ming streak until the Reds were de- feated in Brooklyn the following year. During the remainder of the 1869 sea
 son the Reds made a, trip to the l
 defeat the Union 7O-9 and the Elm
 pires 31-14. Four games were play l ed in San Francisco, and on the re- | turn trip the Reds bested clubs at
 Omaha, Nebraska City, Quincy and
 Indianapolis.
 In 1870 the victory-flushed Red
 Stockings started the season with a. southern junket, defeating the best
 clubs of New Orleans, and stopping at
 Memphis to administer 100-2 defect
 to the Orientais. After several games at home the Reds started another
 eastern invasion. and the winning streak cracked at Brooklyn. When the Atlantics got their number the Reds had won fifty-six games, with one tie, had travelled nearly 1,2OO
 miles, and had made 2,395 runs, as 1 against 574 by their opponents. The major league winning streak record was set up in 1884 by the Prov | idence club. which annexed twenty straight games. Frank Bancroft, now business manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was the pilot of the Providence l aggregation. The modern record was set up by the Giants in 1904, when
 they won eighteen consecutive con
 tests, in the National League, while the American League record was es- tablished by the White Sox in 1906s when the "hitIess wonders" made h nineteen straight