Chicago Colts

The following is a franchise history of the Chicago Cubs of Major League Baseball, a charter member of the National League who started play in the National Association in 1870 as the Chicago White Stockings. The Chicago National League Ball Club is the only franchise to play continuously in the same city since the formation of the National League in 1876. They are the earliest formed active professional sports club in North America. In their history, they have also been known as the White Stockings, Orphans, Colts, Panamas, Rainmakers, Spuds, Trojans, Microbes, and Zephyrs.

The success and fame they won of the Brooklyn Atlantics, organized baseball's first true dynasty, and the (c. 1867–1870) baseball's first openly all-professional team, led to a minor explosion of other openly professional clubs by the late 1860s, each with the singular goal of defeating the Red Stockings, who had accumulated an unparalleled 89-game winning streak. It was common at the time for sportswriters to refer to teams by their uniform colors, and it happens that Chicago's club, which was officially known as The Chicago Base Ball Club, adopted white. On April 29, 1870, the Chicago White Stockings played their first game against the St. Louis Unions, and soundly defeated the Unions 7-1. The White Stockings divided their games between their downtown practice field, Ogden Park, and a larger facility set up at Dexter Park where they hosted games expected to draw larger crowds.

After some individually arranged contests, using mostly the same roster, Chicago managed to put together a 10-man roster and joined the nation's top organized league, which was now allowing entry to professionals. This league, known as the National Association of Base Ball Players, had been primarily dominated by the Atlantics and until very recently before the admitting of the Red Stockings and the White Stockings, had consisted of mostly baseball clubs from the New York and Washington, D.C. areas. Despite this East Coast dominance, Chicago won the NABBP championship that year, although the title was disputed by the opposing club, the New York Mutuals.

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