James Creighton Jr. (April 15, 1841 – October 18, 1862) was an American baseball player during the game's amateur era, and is considered by historians to be the sport's first superstar and one of its earliest paid competitors.Gilbert, Thomas W., Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America's First Baseball Hero (Godine, 2026) In 1860 and 1862 he played for one of the most dominant clubs of the era, the Excelsior of Brooklyn. He was also a superb cricketer, playing in both amateur and professional matches.
During the early, pre-professional period of baseball's evolution, Creighton's pitching technique transformed the sport from a game that showcased hitting, running, and fielding into a confrontation between the pitcher and batter. Under game rules of the 1850s, a pitcher was required to toss the ball in an underhand motion with a stiff arm/stiff wrist movement. The intention was to induce the batter to swing and put the ball in play, thus initiating action around the diamond. The pitcher was essentially just another position player, a "fielder" once the ball was struck by the hitter.
Creighton's swift delivery confounded opposing batters, who were accustomed to balls being lobbed slowly over the plate and easy to hit. Historian Thomas Gilbert, in his 2015 book Playing First: Early Baseball Lives at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, which includes a chapter on Creighton and his family, referred to Creighton's pitching style as "weaponizing the ball."Gilbert, Thomas, Playing First: Early Baseball Lives at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, published by The Green-Wood Cemetery, September 2015 Gilbert wrote Creighton "was the first pitcher in the modern sense of the word."
On October 14, 1862, at the height of his popularity, Creighton collapsed at a game from severe abdominal pain. It was later determined that he had suffered from a chronic inguinal hernia, a condition possibly caused and exacerbated by his unorthodox pitching motion and high per-game pitch counts. Creighton died at home four days later. The cause of death was a strangulated intestine.
Early life Creighton was born on April 15, 1841, in lower Manhattan to Irish immigrant parents James and Jane (née McBrien) Creighton, and lived there with his family in a Sixth Ward slum known as Five Points. When James was eight, his mother died. In late 1857, his father moved the family to Brooklyn (which, at the time, was a separate city).Thorn, p. 122 By age 16, James had become recognized for his superior athletic skills in baseball and cricket.
According to contemporaneous hearsay, often later repeated in biographical chronicles, in 1857 Creighton helped form a club known as the Young America, which lasted one season; however, there are no authoritative historical accounts of this being accurate.
At age 17, Creighton joined the Niagara of Brooklyn club, playing second base. The Niagaras were a junior club with an established relationship to a reputable Brooklyn senior club, known as the Excelsiors, one of the pre-eminent clubs of the time.
Baseball
Discovery by the Star Club In a match on July 19, 1859, the Niagaras were being heavily outscored by the Star Club of Brooklyn. Creighton, who had thus far played primarily in the infield, was brought on as a substitute pitcher. Using what observers described as a "low, swift delivery," Creighton achieved uncommonly swift velocity. With the balls "rising from the ground past the shoulder to the catcher," the Star batsmen were unable to hit his pitches effectively. Under the rules of baseball at the time, a pitcher was required to deliver the ball underhanded with his arm locked straight at the elbow and at the wrist. Creighton also managed to apply spin to the ball, making it harder for batters to hit it squarely.Ryczek, p. 4 Star batsmen claimed that Creighton was using an illegal snap of the wrist to deliver the pitch. The Star Club eventually won the game, but following the match, Creighton left the Niagaras and joined the Stars.
Joins the Excelsiors
Before the 1860 season began, Creighton left the Star Club and joined the Excelsiors.Brown, Craig, "1860 Excelsior, Brooklyn," Threads of Our Game, May 25, 2014 With their new dominant pitcher, the Excelsiors organized the first documented baseball road trip, playing matches outside their home region against upstate New York clubs in Albany, Rochester, Troy, Buffalo, and Newburgh, as well as in Baltimore and Philadelphia.Excelsior Club of Brooklyn, database of known games at Protoball.org After a string of victories, the club became a sensation outside the New York metropolitan area. In a baseball game against the St George's Cricket Club at Hoboken's Elysian Fields on November 8, Creighton hurled baseball's first shutout, with a final score of 25–0.
In addition to his pitching skills, Creighton was reportedly an excellent hitter and fielder. (The Excelsiors, along with most organized clubs, did not play ball in 1861, as countless players of military age enlisted to fight in the Civil War.)
Pitching style
The speed with which Creighton was able to hurl the ball had previously been considered impossible without movement of the elbow or wrist, which was prohibited by existing rules. If there were any such movements by Creighton, they were imperceptible. In addition to the rapid velocity of his pitches, when Creighton released the ball, he managed to apply enough spin to cause the pitch to veer upwards, away from the batter, making Creighton the inadvertent inventor of the breaking ball. "He threw much, much harder than anyone before him," wrote Creighton's biographer Thomas W. Gilbert, "with lethal movement and exquisite control. He almost never lost."
Creighton was accused by some opponents and spectators of using an illegal delivery. In effect, because Creighton was exceptionally successful, his opponents assumed he was cheating. However, the competitive advantage of this delivery, and his dominance as a pitcher, eventually led others to emulate his technique, which thereafter became a standard pitching tactic.
Years later, Excelsior teammate John (a.k.a. "Jack") Chapman recalled that Creighton "had wonderful speed, and, with it, splendid command. He was fairly unhittable." After Creighton held the famed rival Brooklyn Atlantics to five runs, an extraordinarily low total for the era, the Brooklyn Eagle dispatched a reporter to determine whether or not his pitch was legal. The journalistic witness reported that Creighton was throwing a "fair square pitch", rather than a "jerk" or an "underhand throw."
Professionalism
During this era of baseball, the game was an amateur sport, and clubs served as social organizations with sporting activities rather than as strictly sports alliances. Creighton was described as principled, unassuming, and gentlemanly — traits considered ideal during the amateur era.Thorn, p. 123 However, rumors circulated that clubs had started paying exceptional players in an under-the-table manner. Clubs would hire the player ostensibly for a position of responsibility within their administration, or the player would be given a sinecure in a municipal department, with the understanding that there were no actual duties required beyond playing for the sports club.
In 1860, the Excelsior Club lured Creighton, along with teammates George Flanley and the brothers Asa and Henry Brainard, from the Stars. All but Henry Brainard were quietly paid a salary, with Creighton earning $500, thus making these men some of the earliest "professional" baseball players.Thorn, p. 120
In September 1862, rumors circulated that Creighton and teammates George Flanley and Asa Brainard were jumping from the Excelsior Club to the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn. After three weeks of speculation, and without any of these men having played in a game for the Atlantic, they returned to the field for the Excelsiors.
Creighton biographer Thomas Gilbert points out that three of the preeminent pitchers of the amateur era, Jim Creighton, Asa Brainard, and Arthur "Candy" Cummings, were all mentored and caught by one man, Excelsior veteran catcher Joseph "Joe" Leggett. 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.Gilbert, Tom, "Joe Leggett: Great Baseball Player, Terrible Human Being," March 3, 2022
Cricket Creighton was considered a prominent member of the cricket community, playing both amateur and professional. He performed for the American Cricket Club in both 1861 and 1862, often playing against the all-England team, whether at Hoboken's Elysian Fields or elsewhere. Though the English teams would dominate these matches, Creighton fared well. In an 1859 match of 11 Englishmen against 16 Americans, he clean bowled five wickets out of six successive balls.
Death
There has been some historical controversy about the circumstances of Creighton's death. On October 14, 1862, Creighton played second base in a match on the Excelsior Grounds against the Union of Morrisania club, while Asa Brainard pitched. Creighton had allegedly hit four doubles in four at bats during the first five innings. As chronicled 50 years later by a witness to the game, Jack Chapman, Creighton took over pitching duties from Brainard in the sixth inning, and in his next at bat hit a home run. While swinging the bat, he allegedly suffered an injury in his abdominal area. According to Chapman, when Creighton crossed home plate, he commented to the next batter, George Flanly, that he heard something snap.Spink, p. 128 After the game, he began to experience severe pain and hemorrhaging in his abdomen. He died in his father's home on October 18 at the age of 21.Terry, p. 140 In an 1887 issue of an early sports newspaper, the Sporting Life, a letter-writer, who signed only as "Old Timer", sent in his account of the event.Robert Smith (Baseball in America, Holt Rinehart Winston, 1961, p. 10,13) This account reported it as a ruptured bladder; in the light of modern medical understanding, the injury was an inguinal hernia.
However, subsequent research indicates that Creighton's death by hitting a home run was fabricated years later to dramatize his martyrdom. "Dying while hitting a long home run is a great story; it's just not true," said Tom Shieber, senior curator of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.Coffey, Wayne, "Daily News Sports Hall of Fame Candidates", New York Daily News, June 18, 2006. Shieber researched original news sources and found no references to Creighton hitting a home run in that game. (In fact, he hit four doubles that game.) The death-by-home-run myth was popularized, and probably started, five decades later by Chapman. Alfred H. Spink's 1910 book The National Game quoted Chapman as saying, "I was present at the game between the Excelsiors and the Unions [sic] of Morrisiana at which Jim Creighton injured himself. He did it in hitting out a home run. When he had crossed the rubber [i.e., home plate] he turned to George Flanley [sic] and said, 'I must have snapped my belt.'"Spink, Alfred H., The National Game (St. Louis: The National Game Publishing Co., 1910), 128. Countless historians have refuted this legend, but it has taken root as factual.
Later research has suggested that Creighton's hernia was chronic, and that the tremendous workload from baseball and cricket contributed to worsening the hernia. In that era, balls and strikes were not called, and batters who could not hit Creighton's rapid deliveries adapted by refusing to swing at good pitches, forcing Creighton to throw well over 300 pitches per match. Pitching with great force and the exaggerated body contortions necessary to achieve high velocity exacerbated his condition.