From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Harvey Gould (August 21, 1847 – April 9, 1917) was a professional baseball player during the 1860s and 1870s. He played for the original Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869-1870, the only local man on the team, and he returned home in 1876 to lead the new club that was a charter member of the National League. In all he played about twelve seasons of "bare hand" first base for major teams.

Born 1847 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Gould was the regular first baseman for the local Buckeye club by 1866, its first season as a member of the National Association of Base Ball Players. Two years later he moved to the rival Cincinnati Red Stockings. Bolstered by an Eastern imports, Cincinnati vanquished the Buckeyes and other regional rivals that summer and fared well against all but the strongest teams on a tour from Washington to Albany to Cleveland in the fall.

When the NABBP permitted professionalism for 1869, manager Harry Wright completed the first fully professional team by hiring five new men to join himself, Gould, and three other incumbents, all from the East. Gould of Cincinnati and the eastern trio had joined the team only one year earlier; Harry Wright retained no one from his first, chiefly local 1867 team.

The Red Stockings toured the continent undefeated in 1869 and may have been the strongest team in 1870, but the club dropped professional base ball after the second season.

Harry Wright Wright was hired to organize a new team in Boston, where he signed Gould and two other Red Stockings for 1871. Wright brought along the nickname, too. Charlie Gould remained two seasons at first base for the new Boston Red Stockings, so he was part of the club's and Boston's first championship team. He was replaced for 1873 by Jim O'Rourke who would be one of the biggest stars in the game for the next twenty years.

After four seasons as the regular first baseman on great professional teams, Gould was a marginal player, a regular player only for teams struggling to remain in business, not contend for the championship. Baltimore and New Haven in the last two NA seasons achieved more than some but they were big losers on the field. New Haven made him captain, so he had most of the duties of a modern field manager and he gets manager's credit in the historical record. Next year the new National League excluded New Haven but one charter member was a new club in Cincinnati, which hired Charley Gould to lead it. The new Cincinnatis were a woefully weak tailender but the club did survive and Charlie played another season at first, relieved of his leadership role.

Gould died 1917 in Flushing, New York about four months before his 70th birthday. He is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery, Cincinnati.

• Baseball-Reference. "Charlie Gould". Retrieved 2006-08-28.
• Ellard, Harry ([1908] 2004). Base Ball in Cincinnati: A History. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-1726-9
• Retrosheet. "Charlie Gould". Retrieved 2006-08-29.
• Find-a-Grave. "Charles Harvey Gould". Retrieved 2006-08-28.
• Wright, Marshall (2000). The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. ISBN 0-7864-0779-4