Fred Goldsmith's International Association play

[jjpm74]

I've read several accounts that Fred Goldsmith pitched for the New Haven Elm City's (even though there's no statistical record of this that I can find) and that he also pitched for the London Tecumsahs in 1876 as well as 1877-1878 with the International Association. Generally speaking, how much credit is he usually awarded for those years?

On a separate note, what other notable players played in the IA during those 2 years?

[rrhersh]

I'm not sure what you mean by credit being awarded. Generally, play in non-major leagues is ignored, particularly if we are talking stats.

Monty Ward played with, IIRC, Buffalo in 1878.

[jjpm74]

I probably should have worded that better. I'm basically looking for any statistics out there for Fred Goldsmith from his IA days. What makes the IA unique IIRC is that it was an attempt to be a major league.

[rrhersh]

There might be some sort of stats published in the relevant Spalding Guide. I don't know if any modern researcher has gone through and reconstructed this sort of thing.

The IA attempting to be a major league is not a solid interpretation, by the way. The IA was at its heart a trade organization, like the Beef Council. The idea was to organize all non-NL professional clubs, out of self-defense as much as anything. Its pennant competition was only a subset of the IA, and even inasmuch as it was like a league, it clearly was not the equal of the NL. There are arguments floating around that it was a challenger to the NL: Harold Seymour certainly argued this. But these arguments don't really stand up to scrutiny well.