by the score of 106 to 21 in a full game. It was in this game that McVey, afterward to win enduring fame on the diamond, played at second base for the Westerns, and made his bow to the public as a future great one. The game was played on the old Camp Burnside Grounds.
On the 22d of July the Nationals played their first game at St. Louis with the Unions of that city, on one of the hottest days of a very hot season, the mercury registering 104 in the shade on the ball grounds. Notwithstanding the torrid heat, the game lasted four hours and a half, and the poor clerks from the government offices at Washington had to circle the bases for a grand total of 113 runs to 26 for the Unions in a nine innings game. Next day the Nationals had no trouble in defeating the Empire Club of St. Louis by 53 to 26, in six innings.
From St. Louis the Nationals went to Chicago, where occurred the most sensational incident of the entire trip. On July 25th this great team of splendid ball players, that had visited Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville and St. Louis, winning every game played, and by scores ranging from 113 to 26 to 53 to 26, in large cities, met a nine from the pretty little city of Rockford, Illinois, and suffered their first and only defeat; for, utterly crushed and humiliated by the unexpected drubbing by the schoolboys, after a game next day with the Chicago Excelsiors, which they won easily by a score of 49 to 4, the Nationals turned their faces homeward, and the players were soon again at their desks at Washington, D. C.
The late Henry Chadwick, in his Base Ball memoranda, which came into my possession at his death as the
