<Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs to be updated . Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information . (October 2012) </Td> </Tr> </Table> <Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This article needs to be updated . Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information . (October 2012) </Td> </Tr> <P> The Cincinnati Reds are a Major League Baseball team . Originally named the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the name was shortened to the Cincinnati Reds in the 1890s . </P> <P> The original Cincinnati Red Stockings, baseball's first openly all - professional team, was founded in 1866, and became fully professional in 1869 . The Red Stockings won 130 straight games throughout 1869 and 1870, before being defeated by the Brooklyn Atlantics . Star players included brothers Harry and George Wright, Fred Waterman, and pitcher Asa Brainard . The 1869 Red Stockings made an eastern swing of 21 games and went undefeated . According to Walter Camp, the team received a banquet and a "champion bat...this rather remarkable testimonial was twenty - seven feet long and nine inches in diameter ." The following year, the team lost only one game . They were defeated at the Brooklyn Athletic's Capitoline grounds park . According to Camp, the Red Stockings lost 8--7 in 11 innings . The game apparently served as a precursor to today's unruly crowds because he wrote: "A crowd of ten thousand people assembled to witness this match, and so lost their heads in the excitement as to give the Western men a very unfair reception ." (See: "Base - Ball For The Spectator" Walter Camp, Century Magazine October 1889) </P>

What was the original name of the cincinnati reds