Illustration by Jim Tucker
John May was the unlikely inspiration for Cincinnati’s first tailgating event, and he was one bad dude. After plunging a dagger into the heart of his erstwhile drinking buddy Wat Sullivan in 1797, May was convicted of murder and sentenced to hang from a gallows erected at Fifth and Main streets. A crowd estimated to top 8,000 soon gathered, largely conveyed by farm wagons from the rural districts. Cincinnati’s total population at the time was 700, so one might assume the farmers packed lunch.
Hangings were a big draw here for many years—until executions were made private and relocated to the Ohio Penitentiary—and the spectators were hungry for blood or for entertainment, if not for the picnic baskets they carried. When John Birdsall murdered his wife in 1829, a mob estimated at 15,000 people gathered on Government Square. Among the multitude was a “professor of galvanism,” polishing his electrodes and collecting pennies from curiosity seekers who hoped to watch the contortions of his body after he was hanged. Birdsall was reprieved at the last minute, and the throng erupted into “a general burst of indignation and disappointment,” according to newspaper reports, with many insisting he be hanged anyway.
Cincinnati could not manage anything resembling a tailgate party in these early years, largely due to literal lack of tailgates and vehicles of any sort. Most of the public events back then occupied venues that were either in easy walking distance or served by frequent streetcars. Affluent folks who owned their own carriages largely eschewed events patronized by the great unwashed.
But the upper class did relish the “sport of kings,” packing the roads out to the Latonia Race Track. The infield there overflowed with surreys, phaetons, and barouches, the ground plastered with blankets boasting sumptuous feasts and Champagne chilling in silver buckets.
Charitable picnics were far more democratic and usually involved a game of baseball. Fund-raisers at Parker’s Grove (eventually renamed Coney Island) were well attended and suggested there was a lot of baseball at picnics at a time when there were few picnics at baseball.
Baseball and boxing, the big sports draws of the day, took place at facilities plopped square in the middle of thriving neighborhoods, and every thriving Cincinnati neighborhood boasted a plethora of saloons. Most Reds fans built up a thirst on the streetcar, quenched it at the watering hole across the street from the ballpark, and procured their second round within the friendly confines. As late as the 1940s, saloons for sale in Cincinnati bragged about their proximity to Crosley Field.
There was some activity that might be considered tailgate-adjacent, of course. On Opening Day 1919, as the Reds launched their world championship season, fans gathered hours before the ticket window opened in hopes of snagging decent seats. John Geraci and Brutus Buchanan, both 17, enjoyed a sort of tailgate as the first two fans in line, perched on wooden boxes salvaged from a nearby grocery. During their five-hour vigil, the young men fortified themselves with sandwiches and pickles.
Toward the close of that season, the merchants of Miamisburg, Ohio, treated 200 World War I veterans to a Reds game. Delivered to the Queen City by train, the soldiers marched behind a brass band to the Sinton Hotel for a mid-day repast, then boarded charted streetcars to the ballpark.
If you wanted a pregame feast in those days, you got on the good side of Reds owner August “Garry” Hermann. For road games, he piled his inner circle into his personal railroad car loaded with snacks and beer. He transported visiting teams to Redland Field in a four-horse tally-ho, equipped with a fully stocked icebox.
During the 1919 World Series, Herrmann opened his office to the entire Chicago White Sox organization as well as newspaper reporters. In this private clubroom, he proffered a pregame banquet of burgoo, boiled ham, bratwurst, and sauerkraut.
Maybe the “Black Sox” didn’t throw the World Series that year after all. They might have been too stuffed to play!
