Tom Foley was a member of the first Chicago entry into what we now call major league baseball, the 1871 Chicago club of the National Association. Appearing in 18 of the 28 league games, Foley played the outfield, caught, and even took a turn at third base. That was his only season amongst the big leaguers, but to be fair, Foley played not long after the Great War for Slavery ended – and may have learned to play some form of the game before Booth shot Lincoln. He was a captain of the Excelsiors for three seasons from his perch at third base before moving to Rockford’s Forest City Club in 1869. Foley left the Forest Citys to join Chicago’s nine for 1871.

In the picture above, Foley is at the far left next to Ross Barnes, (one of the early greats of the game) and that tall bloke third from the right is A. G. Spalding, baseball player soon to become a sporting goods magnate. Foley, a well-regarded man, also umpired three Association games in 1874 and one more in 1875.

In sum, Foley was a fine player of his day on teams that faced all the great touring semi-professional and, let’s face it, mostly professional teams of that era and we are fortunate that having played until after the Great Chicago Fire, we can recognize Foley’s professional career for what it was – a half decade or so of games at the highest levels that baseball had. Speaking of the Chicago fire – Foley was one of two players who didn’t lose everything they owned in that fire and the team, in the pennant race at the time, went on the road using borrowed uniforms and gear and somehow finished the season, falling off to second place when they lost two of the last three while Philadelphia rolled to the finish line.

Soon after that 1871 season, Foley returned to his Chicago home and gave up book binding for a position with the post office where he worked for more than twenty years, the last fourteen years delivering the mail in the Chicago Loop. He stopped playing and managing amateur baseball around 1880 and tended to his wife and five children instead.

Thomas James Foley was born November 17, 1845 in Chicago to English immigrant parents, Charley and Mary Foley. Best I can tell, he was the oldest of five boys. His younger brother, William, also played major league ball over a ten-year span, bouncing up and down between the big leagues and other organizations beginning in 1875. Father Charles was an engineer; Mary took the reins of a busy home.

Thomas met and married Ellen Elizabeth (Libbie) McBride and their happy home grew in bounds – three boys before 1880, and a girl and a boy after his baseball retirement. Foley was living in LaGrange, Illinois when he had a heart attack on January 4, 1896 and advanced to the next league. He was buried in Parkholm Cemetery in LaGrange.

Notes:

1870, 1880 US Census
Retrosheet.org
Baseball-Reference.com
Photo Credit

“Base Ball,” Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1867: 4.
“The National Game,” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1870: 4.
“Chicago,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 1871: 1.
“The Death of Thomas J. Foley,” Chicago Chronicle, January 5, 1896: 5.