{{Short description|American baseball player (1841–1888)}} {{Use mdy dates|date=June 2024}} {{Infobox baseball biography | name = Asa Brainard | image = Asa Brainard.jpg | position = Pitcher | bats = Unknown | throws = Right | birth_date = c. 1841 | birth_place = Albany, New York, U.S. | death_date = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1888|12|29|1841||}} | death_place = Denver, Colorado, U.S. |debutleague = MLB | debutdate = May 5 | debutyear = 1871 | debutteam = Washington Olympics |finalleague = MLB | finaldate = October 14 | finalyear = 1874 | finalteam = Baltimore Canaries | stat3label = Strikeouts | stat3value = 25 |statleague = MLB | stat1label = Win–loss record | stat1value = 24–53 | stat2label = Earned run average | stat2value = 4.40 | teams = ; National Association of Base Ball Players : Excelsior of Brooklyn ({{baseball year|1860}}–{{baseball year|1866}}) : Washington Nationals ({{baseball year|1867}}) : Cincinnati Red Stockings ({{baseball year|1868}}–{{baseball year|1870}}) ; National Association of Professional BBP : Washington Olympics ({{baseball year|1871}}–{{baseball year|1872}}) : Middletown Mansfields ({{baseball year|1872}}) : Baltimore Canaries ({{baseball year|1873}}–{{baseball year|1874}}) }} '''Asahel "Asa" Brainard''' (c. 1841 – December 29, 1888), nicknamed "Count", was the ace<ref>''Ace'' may be derived from its "number one" meaning. One story says that some teams called a good pitcher "their Asa" after Brainard, in time shortened to ''ace''.</ref> pitcher of the original Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional baseball team, after having pitched for the Excelsior club of Brooklyn, New York.
==Early career== Born about 1841 in Albany, New York, Brainard played outfield and second base for the mighty Excelsiors of Brooklyn in 1860. Led by the sensational teenage fast pitcher, Jim Creighton, the team toured New York state from Albany to Buffalo, a major event in the baseball boom. The Civil War curtailed that; after playing 21 matches in 1860, the Excelsiors played none in 1861 and only a few in 1862. Following Creighton's premature death, Brainard succeeded him as the regular pitcher and remained in that role for four seasons. The Excelsiors played a heavy schedule again in 1866, the first full peacetime season, winning 13 of 20 games—a strong team but no longer a threat to the strongest. Young Candy Cummings, one inventor of the curveball, evidently won the pitcher's job by the end of the season.
Creighton biographer Thomas Gilbert points out that three of the preeminent pitchers of the amateur era, Creighton, Brainard, and Cummings, were each mentored and caught by one man, Excelsior veteran catcher Joseph "Joe" Leggett.<ref name="Gilbert">Gilbert, Thomas W., ''Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero'' (Godine, 2026)</ref> While acknowledging that Leggett was an exceptionally talented catcher and developer of pitching talent, Gilbert has chronicled countless misdeeds by Leggett, who was a compulsive gambler, including the likely throwing of the 1860 National Association championship series between the Excelsior and the Brooklyn Atlantic.<ref name=Gilbert/><ref>[https://howbaseballhappened.com/blog/joe-leggett-great-baseball-player-terrible-human-being Gilbert, Tom, "Joe Leggett: Great Baseball Player, Terrible Human Being,"] March 3, 2022</ref>
In 1867 the National club of Washington completed the first western tour, playing ten games from Ohio to Missouri during three weeks in July. Brainard probably joined the team in the fall, in time for a shorter tour from Troy, New York to Philadelphia, where the strongest teams were based.<ref>Brainard played 6 games, primarily as pitcher, among 36 Nationals games logged by Wright (2000).</ref>
==Cincinnati== At 27 years old, he moved to Cincinnati for the 1868 season where he shared second base and pitcher with manager Harry Wright. Open professionalism was one year away but the long move suggests that Brainard was somehow compensated by club members if not by the club.<ref>On the other hand, Wright pitched more than Brainard. (Wright (2000) distinguishes them simply as "P,2B" and "2B,P".) Maybe Asa's reputation and bargaining power were at low ebb.</ref> Cincinnati fielded a strong team that year, with five of the famous team already in place.
When the NABBP permitted professionalism, the Red Stockings hired five incumbents including Brainard and five new men to complete its famous Nine, the first team on salary for a season. In their 1869 campaign, Asa Brainard pitched more than 70% of the innings, Harry Wright more than 25%, as the team toured the continent undefeated, vanquishing all of the plausible challengers. With Charlie Sweasy ensconced at second, the two pitchers now shared center field.<ref>Some tandems shared pitcher and right field, a less demanding position. Wright's primary role as team captain probably required that he be in the center of the field.</ref>
The Red Stockings toured again in 1870, with Brainard pitching almost 70% of the innings in 74 games. Occasionally beaten this year, the team may have been the strongest again, but the club dropped professional baseball in the fall.
==National Association== Harry Wright was hired to organize a new team in Boston, where he signed three teammates for 1871, also bringing along the "Red Stockings" designation. The other five regulars including Asa Brainard and catcher Doug Allison signed with Nick Young's Washington Olympics, an established club that also joined the new, entirely professional National Association (NA). The five former Red Stockings led the Olympics to a respectable finish in the inaugural NA season. Brainard's published "career statistics" begin with this year.
Later, Brainard played from 1871 to 1874 for the Washington Olympics, Middletown Mansfields, and Baltimore Canaries, all teams in the National Association.
Brainard died of pneumonia in Denver, Colorado at age 47, only a few months after John Bass at age 40, the first major league ballplayer to die in that city. Owing to its dry climate and relative convenience, Denver had become a destination for people suffering from tuberculosis.<ref>[http://www.thedeadballera.com/tooyoung.html Dead Ball Era]</ref> He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn.
==References== {{reflist}}
==Notes== {{commons category}} {{Baseballstats|br=b/brainas01}} *Overfield, Joseph (1989). "Asa Brainard (Count)". ''Nineteenth Century Stars''. Edited by Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker. Kansas City, MO: SABR. {{ISBN|0-910137-35-8}} *Retrosheet. [http://retrosheet.org/boxesetc/Pbraia102.htm "Asa Brainard"]. Retrieved 2006-08-29. *{{cite book |last=Wright |first=Marshall |year=2000 |title=The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857–1870 |location=Jefferson, NC |publisher=McFarland & Co. |isbn=0-7864-0779-4 }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brainard, Asa}} Category:1840s births Category:1888 deaths Category:Major League Baseball pitchers Category:Brooklyn Excelsiors players Category:Washington Nationals (NABBP) players Category:Cincinnati Red Stockings players Category:Washington Olympics players Category:Middletown Mansfields players Category:Baltimore Canaries players Category:Baseball players from Albany, New York Category:19th-century baseball players Category:19th-century American sportsmen Category:Deaths from pneumonia in Colorado Category:Burials at Green-Wood Cemetery