The Western baseball club of

Keokuk, Iowa Keokuk is a city in and a county seat of Lee County, Iowa, United States, along with Fort Madison. It is Iowa's southernmost city. The population was 9,900 at the time of the 2020 census. The city is named after the Sauk chief Keokuk, who is ...

, or Keokuk Westerns in modern nomenclature, was a professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

team in the National Association in 1875, the last season of that first professional league. It is considered a major league team by those who count the

NA as a major league The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), often known simply as the National Association (NA), was the first fully- professional sports league in baseball. The NA was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 se ...

. It was geographically the farthest west that major league baseball had progressed up to that time. In 1875, the NA entry fee was $20 for one championship season. The Westerns won one of 13 games (1–12 record) before going out of business. On June 14, 1875, the Western club played their last game and dropped out of the league two days later. For 1876, stronger clubs in bigger cities, led by the Chicago White Stockings, organized the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

on a different basis, chiefly in order to exclude weaker clubs from smaller cities such as Keokuk. The Westerns were managed by Joe Simmons and played their home games at Perry Park, which was located in a field located beyond Rand Park. Their top hitter was

catcher Catcher is a position in baseball and softball. When a batter takes their turn to hit, the catcher crouches behind home plate, in front of the ( home) umpire, and receives the ball from the pitcher. In addition to this primary duty, the ca ...

Paddy Quinn, who went 14-for-43 for a

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average is ...

of .326.

References

External links

Keokuk Westerns Index
Defunct National Association baseball teams Defunct baseball teams in Iowa Baseball teams disestablished in 1875 Baseball teams established in 1875 {{Iowa-baseball-team-stub

See also

References

External links