William Hulbert

Born in Burlington Flats, New York, Hulbert moved with his family to Chicago two years later where he lived the rest of his life save for a stint at Beloit College beginning in 1847. When he returned to Chicago from school, he married into the family of a successful grocer and expanded the business into the coal trade. A backer of the Chicago White Stockings baseball club of the National Association from its inception in 1871, Hulbert became an officer of the club in 1874 when it resumed play after being forced to sit out two seasons due to the Great Chicago Fire and assumed the presidency the next year.\n', '

In his brief tenure as a club president in the National Association, Hulbert soon became fed up with the circuit\'s lack of definite structure, organization, and integrity. He was particularly disgusted by the Davy Force case in 1874. Force, the shortstop of the White Stockings th…