1872 Troy NY (Troys, Haymakers, Trojans)

This rendering is based on written documentation for uniform style and color. No visual documentation is known and an artist’s conceptualization is used to create the rendering.

Rendering accuracy:Year: documented    Team: documented

This rendering is included in the book, BASEBALL THREADS.

Visual documentation on this uniform:
None

Written documentation on this uniform:
April 1872: “Special correspondence of the Chicago Tribune. Troy, April 10, 1872– […] The uniform of the Troy Club is of the finest English cricket flannel for the ball field, the pants, cap, jacket and tight shirt being pure white, and the belt, shoes, and stockings of an indescribable chocolate color, very pleasant to the eye. The management have also provided a gray traveling suit, of the style called ‘Cadet-mix,’ which will be worn on tours when off the field. Every care seems to have been taken with the equipments and they are better in quality than any others I have seen. […] –Mr. Bobbles.” From the Chicago Tribune, April 14, 1872. Research from Ed Morton. The use of brown as an accent was unique to the period and Troy was one of the first teams to use this color. The team’s traveling suit was to be “worn on tours when off the field” and was not a road uniform. This suit was referenced twelve years later in 1884 when the St. Louis team of the Union Association also had a traveling suit. Peter Morris writes in A Game Of Inches (2006, 2010): “When this [St. Louis traveling suit] was described as a first, however, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter claimed that Troy had unsuccessfully tried the same idea in 1871.” Undoubtedly, this was a reference to the same Troy suit mentioned in the Tribune report from April 1872.

April 1872: “The members of the Troy Base Ball club are quartered at the International Hotel [in Troy] with the exception of King and McAtee, who reside in Lansingburgh. The club will now practice daily, weather permitting. […] The new uniforms for the club, now ready, are very neat, and have the appearance of coolness and comfort. The playing suits consist, our readers will recollect, of a blouse and breeches of white flannel, trimmed with chocolate braid, chocolate stockings and belts and white flannel caps. The shoes, manufactured by Condon & Cunning of this city, are the most complete articles in their line, we have seen. The traveling suits consist of a sack coat, vest and pants of cadet gray, neatly cut. The field jackets are of the best English white cricketing flannel, and are made to button to suit the wearer. A. Montague did the tailoring and E. W. Boughton furnished the caps. The uniforms throughout are neat and plain, having no monogram or distinguishing marks upon them.” From the Troy Daily Whig, April 17, 1872. Research from Ed Morton. As noted in the Chicago Tribune entry above, the “traveling suit” was not a baseball uniform, but street clothes worn when the team was away from home.

April 26, 1872, Troy v. Mansfield, Middletown CN, at Troy: “By the telegraphic account in the [New York] World […] we learn that the game was marked by few fielding errors on either side, and by very safe batting on the part of the Trojans. Bently, who pitched for the Mansfields, was very difficult to hit, and it was not until the fourth inning that the Haymakers scored a run.” From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1872. Game date and location from retorsheet.org. This report used two different nicknames for the Troy team in successive sentences.

May 6, 1872, Troy v. Atlantic, Brooklyn, at Brooklyn, Capitoline ground: “[The Troy] uniform is white cap, jacket, shirt and Knickerbocker pants with chocolate colored stockings, brown leather gaiters and belts. […] The flannel was so white that it showed off the color of the stockings, boots, and belt to advantage. […] An imaginative individual […] dubbed them ‘the Chocolate Creams.’” From the New York Dispatch, no date given. Research from Bob Tiemann. Tiemann adds that “The New York World account echoes the same information, adding that the ‘chocolate creams’ quip came from ‘a well-known baseball reporter.’ Both papers also refer to the teams as ‘the Trojans.’ The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of May 7 calls the team ‘the Chocolate Stockings of Troy.’”

May 6, 1872, Troy v. Atlantic, Brooklyn, at Brooklyn, Capitoline ground: “The second game of the championship series between the Troy club (formerly the Haymakers) of Troy and the Atlantic Club was played yesterday afternoon on the Capitoline ground. This was the first appearance here of the newly organized Troy Club. […] The Trojans made only three errors in the game.” From the Brooklyn Union, May 7, 1872. This entry implied the Troy team had dropped the Haymaker nickname, while the Times report below from this same game implied the opposite.

May 6, 1872, Troy v. Atlantic, Brooklyn, at Brooklyn, Capitoline ground: “The return game between the Haymakers of Troy and Atlantics of this city [Brooklyn], was played yesterday […] and resulted in another victory for the Trojans.” From the Brooklyn Daily Times, May 7, 1872. Use of the Trojans nickname.

May 1872, editorial from a newspaper: “We were fearfully out of our reckoning in regard to the Troy and Mutual game, but it was very natural to expect the defeat of the ‘chocolate creams’ [of Troy] under the circumstances.” From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 17, 1872.

July 1872: “The Haymakers have been embodied into the Eckford Club, under which name they will in future play. Their headquarters will be in Brooklyn.” From the Philadelphia Inquirer, July 31, 1872, page 1.

Team genealogy: Troy NY, 1865?-1872
The Troy, NY, team originated as the Union club, forming in Lansingburgh, NY, in 1865 or 1866. Lansingburgh is located next to Troy and the Union club was often referred to as Troy or the Troy Haymakers. The Haymaker nickname originated in 1866, and may have derived from “hay raker”, a comment on the team’s rural location, or reaction from one game when the team chose to play in bare feet to gain better traction. Union was commonly known as Troy when they played in the National Association (NA) in 1871 and 1872. The NA was baseball’s first league, operating 1871-1875. The team folded after the 1872 season. — Information from Peter Morris, Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870 (2012).