George Wright (sportsman) Amateur era
where did he get his start?
where did George Wright get his start?
At some times during the war, both Wright brothers played for the venerable Gothams, the second eldest baseball team after the Knickerbockers. According to Ivor-Campbell (1996), George moved from the Gotham juniors to the senior team when he was fifteen. At seventeen in 1864 he was the regular catcher.  Baseball's recovery from the American Civil War was far advanced in greater New York City (always untouched by the military conflict), as the leading clubs played more than twenty National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) matches, the Gothams eleven. George played eight and led the team both in runs, scoring 2.4 times per game, and "hands lost", put out only 2.4 times per game, average being three per player in a 9-inning game. In seven matches infielder Harry was fourth in scoring at 2.0 and second behind George in hands lost at 2.6 (Wright 2000: 91).  For the 1865 season George was hired by the Philadelphia Cricket Club; that summer he played in five matches for the Olympic Ball Club of that city. The Olympic club was the devoted to games in the base ball genus, established in 1833. At the December annual meeting, the first in peacetime, NAABP membership tripled, including isolated clubs from as far as Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wright returned to the Gothams for base ball; he was nineteen and nearing his athletic peak. At the same time, Harry Wright moved to Cincinnati for a job at the Union Cricket Club.  Early in the summer of 1866, Wright moved from catcher for Gotham, which played eight NABBP matches that year, to shortstop for Union, which played 28, the leading number. The Union of Morrisania, now in the New York borough of the Bronx, were another charter member of the first Association, but one that moved toward professionalism in the postwar years, as the Gothams did not. In 1867, he joined the Nationals of Washington, D.C., eldest club in that city, whose approach to professionalism was arranging government jobs, mainly with the Treasury. He played second base, shortstop, and pitcher in 29 of the 30 matches fully on record and in those matches led the team both in scoring and hands lost. Next year he returned to the Unions for the association's last officially all-amateur season and moved permanently to the shortstop position. CANNOTANSWER
), George moved from the Gotham juniors to the senior team when he was fifteen. At seventeen in 1864 he was the regular catcher.
George Wright (January 28, 1847 – August 21, 1937) was an American shortstop in professional baseball. He played for the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first fully professional team, when he was the game's best player. He then played for the Boston Red Stockings, helping the team win six league championships from 1871 to 1878. His older brother Harry Wright managed both Red Stockings teams and made George his cornerstone. George was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. After arriving in Boston, he also entered the sporting goods business. There he continued in the industry, assisting in the development of golf.

Personal life
Born in Yonkers, New York, 12 years younger than Harry, George Wright was raised as a cricket "club pro", assisting their father Samuel Wright as Harry had done. Before George's birth, Samuel Wright's St George's Cricket Club moved from Manhattan across the Hudson River to Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey, where many New York and New Jersey baseball clubs played in the 1850s. Both boys learned baseball, too, but George grew up with the "national game" and was barely in his teens when the American Civil War curtailed its boom; Harry was already 22 when the baseball fraternity convened for the first time, and 30 when the war ended. George's younger brother Sam Wright also played baseball professionally, with brief appearances in the major leagues.

George was the father of tennis great Beals Wright, a U.S. Championship winner and Olympic gold medalist, and Irving Wright, U.S. Championship men's doubles champion.

Amateur baseball
At some times during the war, both Wright brothers played for the venerable Gothams, the second-oldest baseball team after the Knickerbockers. According to Ivor-Campbell (1996), George moved from the Gotham juniors to the senior team when he was 15. At 17 in 1864, he was the regular catcher.

Baseball's recovery from the American Civil War was far advanced in greater New York City (always untouched by the military conflict), as the leading clubs played more than 20 National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) matches, the Gothams 11. George played eight and led the team both in runs, scoring 2.4 times per game, and "hands lost", put out only 2.4 times per game, average being three per player in a 9-inning game. In seven matches infielder Harry was fourth in scoring at 2.0 and second behind George in hands lost at 2.6 (Wright 2000: 91).

For the 1865 season, George was hired by the Philadelphia Cricket Club; that summer he played in five matches for the Olympic Ball Club of that city. The Olympic club was the devoted to games in the baseball genus, established in 1833. At the December annual meeting, the first in peacetime, NAABP membership tripled, including isolated clubs from as far as Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Wright returned to the Gothams for baseball; he was 19 and nearing his athletic peak. At the same time, Harry Wright moved to Cincinnati for a job at the Union Cricket Club.

Early in the summer of 1866, Wright moved from catcher for Gotham, which played eight NABBP matches that year, to shortstop for Union, which played 28, the leading number. The Union of Morrisania, now in the New York borough of the Bronx, were another charter member of the first Association, but one that moved toward professionalism in the postwar years, as the Gothams did not. In 1867, he joined the Nationals of Washington, D.C., the oldest club in that city, whose approach to professionalism was arranging government jobs, mainly with the Treasury. He played second base, shortstop, and pitcher in 29 of the 30 matches fully on record and in those matches led the team both in scoring and hands lost. Next year he returned to the Unions for the association's last officially all-amateur season and moved permanently to the shortstop position. In 1868, Wright won the Clipper Medal for being the best shortstop in baseball.

Cincinnati Red Stockings

Meanwhile, George's brother Harry had acquired baseball duties and had organized for Cincinnati the strongest team in the West, led in 1868 by a handful of players from the East — presumably compensated somehow by club members if not by the club. When the NABBP permitted professionalism for 1869, Harry augmented himself and four incumbents with five new men including his brother George, who was highest paid at $1400 for nine months. George remained a cornerstone of Harry's teams for 10 seasons.

Cincinnati toured the continent undefeated in 1869, as George batted .633 with 49 home runs in 57 games. It may have been the strongest team in 1870, but the club dropped professional baseball after the second season.

Major League Baseball
Harry Wright was hired to organize a new team in Boston, where he signed three teammates including George for 1871. The new Red Stockings team just missed winning the first National Association pennant. George suffered a broken leg and missed half the season; one more win would have been decisive in Boston's favor. With some personnel changes, the Boston Red Stockings won the other four NA pennants, dominating so severely in 1875 that they helped provoke a new league. Wright holds the NA career record for the most triples (41), and he led the NA in triples with 15 in 1874.

On April 22, 1876, Wright became the first batter in National League history, and grounded out to the shortstop. Boston trailed badly in the first NL season after the defection of its Big Four western players to Chicago, but rebounded to win again both 1877 and 1878. George Wright had played an even decade for Harry's teams. Another 1869 hire, Andy Leonard, was present for all but the 1871 second-place finish.

The Providence Grays, new in the NL for 1878, hired George to lead the team in 1879. He did as well as possible, wrestling the championship for himself from older brother Harry; for Providence and Rhode Island from older and regionally dominant Boston and Massachusetts. However, Wright & Ditson Sporting Goods was growing, so George returned to Boston for business reasons. He remains the only man to win the pennant in his lone season as manager. Meanwhile, the National League introduced the reserve list system, and Providence listed George, so he was not free to sign with Boston. Until the 1879–80 off-season, every professional baseball player was a "free agent" for every season. During the next two seasons he played only a few games. When Boston changed managers for 1882, Harry signed to lead Providence and inherited the right to sign his brother. George played another season full-time, retiring after the 1882 season with a .301 batting average in the major leagues from 1871.

After Ditson died in 1891, Spalding purchased Wright & Ditson Co in Feb 1892. The name Wright & Ditson Co continued to be used several years after the purchase.

Cricket
In 1882, George Wright took up cricket seriously again with the Longwood Cricket Club of Boston where he dominated local cricket sides with Isaac Chambers, the Longwood cricket pro and greenskeeper, holding up the other bowling end. In 1891, Wright captained the Longwood Cricket Club against Lord Hawke's visiting English side. Wright's side surprised the visiting English first-class players with accurate bowling which kept the tourists in check. In 1892, Wright donated cricket gear to British Guianese (Guyana) cricket players, thereby starting a century-old tradition of West Indian cricket in New England.

Golf
In 1886, Wright obtained what was said to be the first set of golf clubs and balls in the United States and had them on display in the Wright & Ditson sporting goods shop in Boston where a visitor from Scotland saw them and explained the game. In December 1890, Wright and three friends obtained a permit and chopped nine holes in the frozen ground of Boston's Franklin Park, playing two rounds. (Six years later, a public golf course was laid out in Franklin Park. The course, now known as the William J. Devine Golf Course, is the second oldest public golf course in the United States.) 

Wright & Ditson became a major seller of golf clubs; early U.S. Open champion Francis Ouimet worked at the store while pursuing his amateur career. Wright later donated the , the former Grew estate, for Boston's second municipal course which became the Donald Ross-designed George Wright Golf Course located in the Hyde Park section of Boston.

Baseball legacy
George Wright served on the 1906–1907 Mills Commission that—despite a complete lack of historical evidence—determined that Cooperstown, New York was the birthplace of baseball. President Mills and secretary Sullivan probably did the work, with the others lending gravity and celebrity. (The commission's determination has never been taken seriously by baseball historians and scholars.)

Wright accompanied the United States contingent to the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden where demonstrations of baseball, involving American track and field athletes and a team of Swedish players, were held. Wright umpired one of the games and provided instruction in the game for the Swedish players. Jim Thorpe, winner of the pentathlon and decathlon at that year's Olympics and a future Major League Baseball player, was one of the American players participating in the baseball exhibitions.

Wright was consulted regarding the baseball centennial celebrations of 1939, including the establishment of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. Soon after his own election to the Hall of Fame in 1937, he died in Boston of a stroke, aged 90. He is buried in Holyhood Cemetery, in Brookline, Massachusetts.

See also

List of Major League Baseball player-managers

References

Further reading
Ivor-Campbell, Frederick (1996). "George Wright". Baseball's First Stars. Edited by Frederick Ivor-Campbell, et al. Cleveland, Ohio: SABR. 
Retrosheet. "George Wright". Retrieved August 29, 2006.
Sentence, David (n.d.).  "Cricket in America – Part 3: America's Oldest Cricket Club". Retrieved August 31, 2006.
Wright, Marshall (2000). The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857–1870. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co.

External links

 (cricket career)

1847 births
1937 deaths
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Major League Baseball player-managers
Major League Baseball shortstops
19th-century baseball players
Cincinnati Red Stockings players
Boston Red Stockings players
Boston Red Caps players
Providence Grays players
Baseball players from New York (state)
Providence Grays managers
New York Gothams (NABBP) players
Morrisania Unions players
Washington Nationals (NABBP) players
American cricketers
American cricket umpires
Cricketers from New York (state)
Sportspeople from Yonkers, New York
Burials at Holyhood Cemetery (Brookline)
Colin McGlashan (born 17 March 1964 in Perth, Scotland), is a Scottish former football striker. In a career spanning an incredible 22 seasons, McGlashan played for 9 professional football clubs and scored 210 goals in 609 league appearances.

Career
McGlashan spent his youth career with Celtic Boys Club. He signed for Dundee at the start of the 1982-83 season, where he stayed for 18 months and scored one goal in 11 league appearances. McGlashan signed for Dunfermline Athletic midway through the 1983-84 season, where he stayed for 6 months and scored one goal in 16 league appearances.

McGlashan signed for Cowdenbeath at the start of the 1984-85 season, where he stayed for 2 years and scored 27 goals in 60 league appearances. He signed for Clyde at the start of the 1986-87 season, where he stayed for 4 years and scored 48 goals in 140 league appearances.

McGlashan signed for Clyde's fiercest rivals Partick Thistle at the start of the 1990-91 season, where he stayed for 3 years and scored 30 goals in 103 league appearances. While at Thistle, McGlashan was the subject of a famous quote from manager John Lambie; on being informed during a match that McGlashan was concussed and didn't know who he was, Lambie said, "tell him he's Pelé and get him back on".

McGlashan signed for Ayr United at the start of the 1993-94 season, where he stayed for 1 year and scored 3 goals in 36 league appearances. He signed for Montrose at the start of the 1994-95 season, where he stayed for 4 years and scored 67 goals in 141 league appearances. McGlashan signed for Montrose's arch rivals Arbroath at the start of the 1998-99 season, where he stayed for 3 years and scored 33 goals in 88 league appearances.

McGlashan's final professional club was Elgin City, whom he signed for at the start of the 2001-02 season, where he stayed for 3 years and did not score any league goals in the 14 league matches that he played in. McGlashan retired at the end of the 2003-04 season at the age of 40.

See also
List of footballers in Scotland by number of league appearances (500+)
List of footballers in Scotland by number of league goals (200+)

References

Living people
1964 births
Sportspeople from Perth, Scotland
Scottish footballers
Dundee F.C. players
Dunfermline Athletic F.C. players
Cowdenbeath F.C. players
Clyde F.C. players
Partick Thistle F.C. players
Ayr United F.C. players
Montrose F.C. players
Arbroath F.C. players
Elgin City F.C. players
Scottish Football League players
Association football forwards Richard Gonzalez (born February 3, 1966) is an American professional stock car racing driver who competed in one NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race in 2004 and a number of ARCA Re/Max Series races from 2004 to 2007. He became the first Hispanic-American driver to compete in ARCA.

Racing career

Early career and Truck Series
Gonzalez began getting interested in racing when he watched a race at Flemington Speedway that his father's friend was competing in. Gonzalez started racing motorcross bikes and then moved up the racing ladder, where he next would race go-karts, microstocks, and legends cars. He then competed in the American Race Trucks Series and the now-defunct NASCAR Goody's Dash Series. In order to have enough money to move up the ranks, Gonzalez had to sell his old equipment from the previous series he raced in as well as his own personal motorcycle.

Gonzalez reached the Craftsman Truck Series in 2004 and would attempt two races for Troxell Racing in a partnership with Rick Ware Racing. Driving their No. 93 Dodge, he failed to qualify in his first attempt at Martinsville. In the next race at Mansfield, which was his other start, he did qualify for the race and finished 26th, nine laps down. 

Gonzalez's next race of the year was scheduled to be in the Busch Series' race at IRP, the Kroger 200, in August. It would have been his debut in that series. He was to drive for a team called Coqui Motorsports. This planned start did not happen, and Gonzalez would never get to make a start in the Busch Series. Also, Coqui was a new team that had never made any Busch starts before, and never would get to after this deal fell through. Gonzalez would not make another start in the Truck Series either, and the rest of his stock car starts came in the ARCA Re/Max Series.

ARCA
He made his ARCA debut at Chicago in Wayne Peterson Racing's No. 06 Chevrolet, and would make one other start in that car in the next race at Salem. He crashed out of both races and would finish 27th and 26th, respectively. With these starts, Gonzalez became the first Hispanic American to start an ARCA race. In 2005, Gonzalez would run full-time and for rookie of the year with the Peterson team split between their various entries (No. 6, No. 16 and No. 06). He was not eligible to run at Daytona, so his first start of the year came in the second race of the season at Nashville, which he did not qualify for along with a staggering twelve other races. The Peterson team was underfunded and had to start and park in a large number of Gonzalez's starts. In the race at Pocono which Gonzalez was going to run the full race in, he was running in the top 10 until he suffered a broken transmission and radiator and did not finish the race. For the final two races of the season, Gonzalez fielded his own team instead. Although he had his own car and equipment, he still used Peterson's car numbers (No. 06 at Salem and No. 16 at Talladega) and owner points. Gonzalez's team partnered with Lafferty Motorsports to field his Talladega entry.

Gonzalez would not make any NASCAR or ARCA starts in 2006, but did return in 2007 in ARCA, when he attempted three races. He first returned to the Peterson team, with a DNQ in the No. 0 at Nashville. The first race in which he did qualify for was at the Milwaukee Mile, where the team got to run the full race in Darrell Basham's No. 94 car thanks to support from Richardson-Netzloff-Harmon Racing (co-owned by driver Mike Harmon, who at the time was competing in ARCA full-time). Although Gonzalez finished eight laps down, he picked up a solid 18th-place finish. He returned to the same car the following race at Gateway, which was without RNH support. Gonzalez failed to qualify the No. 94, but was given a chance to return to the Peterson No. 0 again when team owner-driver Wayne Peterson stepped out of the start and park ride for Gonzalez, who would do the same. This would end up being Gonzalez's last ARCA start.

Personal life
Gonzalez is of Puerto Rican descent and was a member of NASCAR's Diversity Council when he was competing in the sport. After being born in Aguada, Puerto Rico, he moved to South Plainfield, New Jersey. In his Truck Series debut in 2004 at Martinsville, Gonzalez was sponsored by two local businesses, one of which was located in his hometown of South Plainfield and the other one was in Manville, New Jersey. When he ran full-time in ARCA in 2005, he moved from New Jersey to Mooresville, North Carolina (near where most NASCAR teams are based) with the hopes of getting a ride in the NASCAR Busch or Truck Series again, which did not end up happening.

Motorsports career results

NASCAR
(key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

Craftsman Truck Series

ARCA Re/Max Series
(key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

References

External links
 

Living people
1966 births
People from South Plainfield, New Jersey
Sportspeople from Middlesex County, New Jersey
Racing drivers from New Jersey
NASCAR drivers
American sportspeople of Puerto Rican descent
ARCA Menards Series drivers