This is one of the first references to baseball on Kelley’s Island. While organized baseball had been around for several years, 1869 marked the first year that a recognized all-professional baseball team took the field. An Ohio team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was the first team to be openly paid a salary. They closed the 1869 season with a record 65 wins and no losses. This Ohio team fired up the baseball spirit of the islanders. January 1869 - “A few thoughts concerning Base Ball – The great game of American base ball has been having a ‘great run’ throughout the United States, ever since the greater excitement of the late war has terminated, say since or within the last three years. The ‘fever’ has not, until the present winter, reached the Island but it is now here in its most virulent form and the probabilities are that the Doctor will have all she can attend to unless those liable to be taken, exercise a great deal of caution during its prevalence. All the preliminary sympt