Nathaniel Carl Goodwin

Who was Nathaniel Carl Goodwin?

Nathaniel Carl Goodwin was an American actor and vaudevillian born in Boston. While clerk in a large shop he studied for the stage and made his first appearance in 1874 at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston in Stuart Robson's company as the newsboy in Joseph Bradford's Law in New York. The next year he appeared at Tony Pastor's Opera House in New York City where he began his career as a vaudevillian.

In 1876, he appeared at the New York Lyceum in Off the Stage where he imitated a number of popular actors of the period.

In 1878, he co-founded the Boston Elks Lodge, and his association with the lodge, and that of his manager in the 1880s, George W. Floyd, would change baseball history, giving us arguably the first role of an agent in baseball history. Floyd, in particular, would serve as a go-between, starting in 1887, between the management of the Boston National League club, the Beaneaters, and its newly signed star, Mike "King" Kelly. In 1889, Goodwin became a member of the governing committee of the newly created Actors' Amateur Athletic Association of America.

When Kelly and his Chicago teammates won the pennant in 1885, Goodwin and Floyd treated the Chicago team to a performance of "The Skating Rink" at Hooley’s Theater in Chicago. "After the overture the orchestra struck up 'See, the Conquering Hero Comes,' and Mr. Floyd conducted the eleven Chicago players to their boxes," [Chicago captain-manager Cap] Anson in the lead." After the first act, Goodwin presented Anson with a "solid silver facsimile of a League ball."