In 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first truly professional baseball team. Only one team member actually came from Cincinnati, and all the players were paid salaries (the high being $1,400 a season to George Wright, the brother of player-manager Harry Wright). That first season, the Red Stockings posted a 56-0 record against generally overmatched amateur teams. Late that summer, the Red Stockings traveled to California, part of the way by steamboat and part of the way on the first transcontinental railroad, recently completed by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific. The Wright brothers and their colleagues continued their winning ways there, and the San Francisco Chronicle praised the Red Stockings’ athletic ability as well as their “large and well turned” legs.

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In 1870 the Harvard baseball team traveled by railroad as far west as St. Louis to play ball against other college teams and local clubs. In 1872 a baseball squad from New Orleans went on a Texas road trip — traveling by stagecoach to play teams in Austin, Dallas and Waco. During Lt. Col. George Custer’s expedition to the Black Hills of Dakota Territory in 1874, members of his 7th Cavalry organized several games of baseball. In 1875 the Mississippi River town of Keokuk, Iowa, had a team in the National Association of Professional Baseball Players.  The National Association became the National League the next year, but the Keokuk Westerns did not become a part of it.  In 1876 (the same year Custer met his match at the Little Bighorn in Montana Territory), one of the original eight National League teams was from St. Louis (along with teams from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Hartford and Louisville).

Most of the baseball played in the West, however, continued to be amateur or semi-professional. Many towns and forts, such as Fort Union in New Mexico Territory and Fort Missoula in Montana Territory, proudly formed teams of their own in the 1870s and 1880s. Baseball was also played at Fort Sill in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) in the 1870s, and the games sometimes involved Indians as well as soldiers. In 1884, the University of Texas was already playing rival Texas A&M University in baseball, a decade before the two schools had their first football clash. Minnesota actually had a major league team in 1884 when St. Paul played nine games in the Union Association (designated a major league at the time), but none of them were home games. Minnesota didn’t get a major league team again until 1961 when the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis and became the Minnesota Twins. In Missouri, the Kansas City Cowboys were one of the original American Association minor league teams in 1902. The major league (American League) Kansas City Athletics existed from 1955 to 1967 (in between homes in Philadelphia and then Oakland). The expansion Kansas City Royals were born in 1969. The land rush that led to the formation of Oklahoma Territory in 1890 brought baseball to Oklahoma City, which got its first professional team in 1902.

In the Far West, where baseball had arrived in 1849, the original Pacific Coast League started in 1879. It had its ups and downs, including some failings and restarts. A new Pacific Coast League, consisting of teams in Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle, began play in 1903 and was recognized as an official professional league the next year. The Pacific Coast League still exists. It wasn’t until 1958 that the first major league baseball teams of the 20th century operated west of St. Louis — after the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the New York Giants moved to San Francisco. Major league Baseball now has another team in Los Angeles (technically Anaheim), the Angels, as well as the Oakland Athletics, San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners.

Professional minor league baseball came to the Lone Star State in 1888 when the Texas League was formed (it’s still going). Major League Baseball became part of the Texas landscape in 1962 in the form of the expansion Houston Colt .45s (later the Astros). In 1972 the Washington Senators moved to Arlington and became the Texas Rangers. Over in New Mexico Territory, the first known semi-professional team in Albuquerque began play in 1880 in the fairgrounds. The organizer, W.T. McCreight, had once played for the major-league St. Louis Browns, so he chose to call his new team the Albuquerque Browns. No major league team has ever been based in New Mexico, but the Albuquerque Dukes operated in the Pacific Coast League for years, and now the Albuquerque Isotopes are the top farm team of the Florida Marlins.

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