Harry Wright
| Harry Wright | |||
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| Center fielder/Manager | |||
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Born: January 10, 1835 Sheffield, England |
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Died: October 3, 1895 (aged 60) Atlantic City, New Jersey |
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| MLB debut | |||
| May 5, 1871, for the Boston Red Stockings | |||
| Last MLB appearance | |||
| September 29, 1877, for the Boston Red Caps | |||
| MLB statistics | |||
| Batting average | .272 | ||
| Hits | 222 | ||
| RBI | 111 | ||
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| Member of the National | |||
 Baseball Hall of Fame
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| Inducted | 1953 | ||
| Vote | Veteran's Committee | ||
William Henry "Harry" Wright (January 10, 1835 – October 3, 1895) was an English-born American professional baseball player, manager, and developer. He assembled, managed, and played center field for baseball's first fully professional team, the 1869 . It was there where he is credited with introducing innovations such as backing up infield plays from the outfield and shifting defensive alignments based on hitters' tendencies. For his contributions as a manager and developer of the game, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1952 by the Veterans Committee. Wright was also the first to make baseball into a business by paying his players up to seven times the pay of the average working man.
Born in Sheffield, England, he was the eldest of five children of professional cricketer Samuel Wright and his wife, Annie Tone Wright. His family emigrated to the U.S. when he was nearly three years old, and his father found work as a bowler, coach, and groundskeeper at the St George's Cricket Club in New York. Harry dropped out of school at age 14 to work for a jewelry manufacturer, and worked at Tiffany's for several years.
Both Harry and George, twelve years younger, assisted their father, effectively apprenticing as cricket "club pros". Harry played against the first English cricket team to tour overseas in 1859.
Both brothers played baseball for some of the leading clubs during the amateur era of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP). Harry was already twenty-two when the baseball fraternity convened for the first time in 1857, at which time he joined the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. He did not play in a game with the Knickerbockers until July 8, 1858, playing the outfield against Excelsior of Brooklyn. The Knickerbockers lost the game, 31–13.
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