Shown: AUGUST: First place Louisville (olive green) and second place Boston (dark blue) trade places as Boston wins with a Charged Run.

A one month long homestand followed by four straight wins "out west" against St. Louis and Chicago gave Louisville a 27-13 record on August 17 and a four game lead with twenty to play. Thirteen teams in baseball history have overcome a deficit of (at least) 3.5 games with twenty to play out of 352 pennant races. The largest lead ever overcome with twenty to play is still 6.5 by the 1891 Bostons.

So Louisville felt safe.

The schedule had Louisville traveling for two weeks through Boston and Brooklyn, the only Eastern teams in the league. (The Hartford still played home games in Brooklyn.) before returning out west to mop up the remaining dozen or so games against fellow Western clubs Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis. Louisville got slaughtered in Boston and Brooklyn scoring ten runs to thirty-seven in seven losses. These are the Game Dots shown from 8/17 to 8/31. Boston didn't need twenty games to catch up: they overcame the deficit in four games.

The teams crossed paths during a three game set in Boston starting August 25. The first game seemed a 2-0 Louisville shutout until the eighth inning when Boston scored a run on a George Wright double, a bobble by star pitcher Jim Devlin, and a Deacon White rbi-single. In the top of the ninth inning, still down a run, Jim O'Rourke led off with a walk and White singled. After an out, Devlin picked O'Rourke off second base but third baseman Limpy Bill Hague dropped the throw and Tommy Bond tied the game up with a grounder to the first baseman George Latham on which all were safe. Johnny Morrill gave Boston it's final 3-2 score with a deep-enough fly to left field. The second game was a 6-0 Tommy Bond shutout featuring twelve strikeouts which tied the two teams with identical records of 27-17. Monday, the teams played the final game of the series and Boston obtained the lead for keeps with a 4-3 win. Clutch hitting Boston shortstop Ezra Sutton got an rbi-single in the sixth inning, after Louisville second-baseman Joe Gerhardt's two-base error, to break the 3-3 tie.

Boston finished the year 20-1 and ended up winning the pennant by seven games. Louisville finished the year 8-6 for second place. Boston's lone loss (see far top-right of graph) came hosting Chicago September 9 when George Bradley out-dueled Tommy Bond 1-0. The only run scored on consecutive singles by the first four Chicago batters of the game.

Louisville was known as the "half-season champs" and their collapse was a sore topic for a team that also entered September heavily in debt. After the season, a Louisville Journal-Courier sports reporter who was close to the team (so close they let him play second base for one game) questioned the team's veracity and confronted greasy utility player Al Nichols over an unusually high volume of telegrams. Nichols, who had been dropped by Pittsburgh earlier in the year for trying to bribe pitcher Jim Galvin, quickly left town before even getting the final payment of his contract. Then players one-by-one were called into the offices of the directors of the Louisville club. Players had little choice: the team was nearly one-month late on the final payments to all of them: a more-than-tidy $3,500 sum. Hats were being passed in Louisville to make good on the player contracts.

Reportedly offered immunity, two players revealed a scheme involving Nichols as the middleman between them and James McCloud, a pool-seller from the New York gambling house of Kelly and Bliss. "Squealing worse than two stuck pigs" the Courier-Journal wrote, ace pitcher Jim Devlin and team captain George Hall spilled the beans on seven dumped games: August 21st* 0-7 loss in Brooklyn; August 29th exhibition 4-7 at Lowell; September 3rd exhibition 2-3 at Pittsburgh; September 6th 0-1 loss at Cincinnati; September 13th* 4-7 hosting Cincinnati; and September 24 exhibition 3-7 at Indianapolis. (Asterisks * for two games indicate that these games were alluded to and not specifically named and therefore might be erroneously listed here.) Devlin and Hall received $75.00 and $25.00 respectively in the mails. While this was going on, Devlin forwarded an eviction notice from his landlord to the Louisville club for $150.00. Louisville ignored it despite owing Devlin $470 salary.

Devlin's testimony also recalled that Louisville paid umpire Dan Devinney extra to deliver about twenty victories to the team, but Louisville directors said that part of Devlin's testimony was a lie. After the season rules were changed as to how each team picked umpires for home games. McCloud, the New York pool-seller, claimed he knew nothing about the Louisville fixes and wouldn't trust a ball-player with his money if he did. "Hardly a club played no crooked games." he said.

After a weekend of player interviews, Devlin, Hall, and Nichols were summarily expelled by the Louisville club on Monday, October 29. Their salaries were "forfeited". The Journal-Courier broke the story and excerpts from the interviews were released to the public four days later. Talented shortstop Bill Craver, who had a rap sheet of incidents of "suspicious play" dating back to his expulsion from the 1870 Chicagos, refused to make public his telegrams and letters and became a fourth player expelled. The four tried numerous appeals over the years but instead became poster children for the NL's purportedly pure stance on integrity. At a league meeting in 1885, a letter from Nichols begging for re-instatement (so he could appear with a local semi-pro team) was ceremoniously thrown in a waste basket amid chuckles.

Hulbert's NL, as he had demanded, allowed players to sign with teams before each season's close. Devlin, since July, traveled with offers from various clubs including Hartford and St. Louis and was happy to show them off. He and Hall had already signed with St. Louis and Craver already signed with Hartford all for big sums in early October. Their expulsions then only affected other teams and Louisville's action merely excused them from paying thousands of dollars in back salries. Unable to play their new stars St. Louis, and Hartford withdrew from the National League for 1878 under muttered curses.

The St. Louis team also faced it's own thrown-game controversy when a coterie of Chicago and St. Louis gamblers named third baseman Joe Battin and outfielder/pitcher Joe Blong as willing partners in an August 24th 3-4 loss hosting Chicago. Having already lost Devlin and Hall, St. Louis owners decided to disband the franchise. Battin and Blong, though never officially expelled, never appeared again in an NL game.