Wha'happen?: The four teams from '91 AA to move to NL

[Brownieand45sfan]

Checking the St. Louis franchise from 91 to 92, I see that no players from the end of '91 season were carried over to the NL club for '92**. Even though that AA team finished 2nd and had some good players on it and the NL Browns finished way down in the standings. Yet Chris had to find 25 ballplayers from somewhere. It seems like he found them from every source, AA and NL, *except* the club he owned only five months earlier. Most of the '91 Browns found teams elsewhere meanwhile.

Checking BAL, LOU, and WAS I find a similar state of affairs, though not "zero" players, but rather "a few".

My question: did not the 4 teams have valid player contracts that would be recognized by the league they were entering? Comiskey, e.g., is listed as "jumping" to the Reds. Why didn't the NL force him to go back? (like they did when Christy Mathewson jumped from the Gothams to the A.L. Browns a decade later :cry: )


** One possible exception is Ted Breitenstein http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/breitte01.shtml who debuted April 28, 1991 but only pitched five more games all year and very few total innings. Haven't figured out yet whether he was cut, sent to the minors or what....

[Brian McKenna]

Interesting, I didn't realize von der Ahe completely revamped the whole team.

There was a signing war betwen the two leagues in late 1891 until the merger on 12/16.

Actually the leagues merged - becoming the National League and American Association of professional ball clubs. Everything after the words "National League" would soon be dropped from reference.

Breitenstein, local STL kid, got a trial in 1891 on that debut date. He didn't return to the club until purchased from Grand Rapids on August 3. He pitched the rest of the year with STL and started the final day of the season - first game of DH - the famous no-hit game.

[tschiwau]

Awesome information guys,... thanks a lot for the cool data!

[Buzzaldrin]

Von Der Ahe didn't pick the team apart after 1891 like he did after 1887. The AA and NL merged because of sheer economics; here's the deal.

After the Player's League threat was over, NL and AA owners figured they'd finally be able to control spiralling player salaries. 1890 had been disastrous financially for both league- especiall the NL. It was the first year since 1882 that neither league had topped a million attendance. 1891, with only two leagues, was a heck of a lot better, but still nowhere near the 1887 major league peak (the Browns still led the country in attendance, as they had the majority of years since 1882).

Thing is, when NL teams signed Harry Stovey and Lou Bierbauer after the PL folded, instead of letting them return to their AA teams, the AA concluded that the NL no longer recognized its franchises and players and withdrew from the national agreement. This prompted a wave of player raids from both sides and made 1891 the second straight season of baseball warfare.

In late August, 1891, a three man AA comission and a three man NL comission met to make some sort of peace and end the raiding. However, while the meeting was taking place in Washington, NL Boston raided King Kelly from AA Boston- which to Von der Ahe and co was an act of war under guise of cease fire. They demanded Kelly's return; the NL protested.

This prompted a big flurry of player raids- in the next five months 28 players were "pirated" from one league to another (15 by the NL, 13 by the AA) for exorbitant salaries. The Browns were hardest hit, losing Comiskey, O'Neill, McCarthy, Stivetts, Boyle, Fuller, and Lyons- basically, their whole starting team.

The moguls met again in November, after sort of coming to their senses, with the chief issue being the inflated players salaries from the raids. Realizing that they couldn't co-exist financially without the National Agreement, and not trusting each other with it, consolidation became the order of the day (it had been discussed since 1887, but since the AA sold beer at games and played Sundays, and Spalding wouldn't allow it in the NL, consolidation had never come close to realization). It was a purely financial move, since baseball owners had made loads of money in the 1880's, but NOBODY was making anything in the 90s.

The NL caved on its opposition to the three AA practices of beer sales, Sunday ball, and 25 cent admission. if you think these were not a big deal, think again. These three were the sole reasons for the AA's existence in the first place- as its early teams were brewery owned and were not allowed consideration for the NL. Spalding had said he would never EVER cave on any of these, but with the AA putting franchises in both Chicago and Boston in 1892, Spalding and Soden (Boston owner) sang a completely different tune. The last thing they wanted was to lose half their fans to a Sunday playing team (and this was the age of the six day work week).

So the NL caved on all three, which means that in a large sense, the AA won the war. Four NL teams, four AA teams, and the four teams that had been in both leagues would evenly constitute the new league, named "the National League and American Association" This was very long-winded and the shortening within a few years to the National league may be one reason that people no longer recognize that the reason the leagues came together was a simple consolidation of business interests- not a case of the strong taking in the weak (it NEVER was like that).

However, that name came at the last moment. The original name for the new league, vetoed late in the day by NL magnates because it put the AA too prominently in the title, would come back to haunt everybody ten years later. What was the original name?

the American League.

[Brownieand45sfan]

Von Der Ahe didn't pick the team apart after 1891 like he did after 1887. The AA and NL merged because of sheer economics; here's the deal.(snip)

Good summary. I am sure that it was economics. But what sort of economics? Who had the upper hand in the deal? These factors make it look less like a merger and more like an unfriendly acquisition:


The four A.A. teams were the four cellar dwellers in the '92 NL, finishing from 40 to 54 games out (staggering!) whereas the 8th place team (NYG) was only 31 games out. Imagine the effect being that far behind had on attendance.
This poor finish does not seem to have been a coincidence as those four former A.A. franchises retained very few of their players from '91, the Browns not retaining a single player (except Breitenstein, up and down in the minors in '91).
When the NL contracted after the '99 season, it was 3 of these 4 A.A. "merged" franchises plus one franchise of the four that had A.A. roots, that got bounced.

[Buzzaldrin]

With Baltimore, it was a team in transition- they could still hit in 1892, finishing fourth in the league, but their pitching was absolutely atrocious. They had counted on McMahon and Buffinton anchoring the staff, but Buffinton was washed up and McMahon had only a so-so year, so being forced to rely on guys like George Cobb gave them one of 19th c ball's worst staffs. Two years later, they'd solved the pitching and won the pennant.

St. Louis' big problem was losing Comiskey. I don't think people realize what a genius he was at spotting talent, certainly one of the best all-time, up there with Ed Barrow. When Von der Ahe broke up the team after 87 (financial interests- Connie Mack syndrome), it was Comiskey that put together the new 88 team that was picked to finish last and instead won a fourth straight pennant. The Browns without Comiskey had five managers in 1892, and indeed different managers every single season of the 1890s (sometimes including Von der Ahe himself). They never got any better until he was forced to sell the team.

Washington finished last in the AA in 1891 (and it was their first season as a team) and there wasn't any reason to think they'd do better in 1892, although they did have a better winning percentage.

Louisville had finished second to last in 91 and also had no reason to think they'd do better, but they too had a better winning percentage in the NL in 92.

It's not fair to say that their teams weren't any good in the 90s, since Baltimore won three straight pennants. The reason that these teams (except St Loo) were shown the door after 1899 was syndicalism. After posting financial losses in 1897 and 1898, in spite of being in the thick of the pennant races, Henry von der Horst of Baltimore wanted out of baseball. During the off season, he formed a syndicate with Ferdinand Abel, Brooklyn's owner. So they created an uber team in Brooklyn, which had a larger population than Baltimore. Funnily enough, though, John McGraw- in his first ever season as a manager in Baltimore- kept Baltimore within two games of Brooklyn to the end of August. His wife died of appendicitis on the 31st, and he understandably was not the same for the rest of the season and Baltimore faded. Von der Horst out of baseball- Baltimore dissolved.

The late 1890s was a tough time for the USA- we were in a recession and attendance suffered during the Spanish American was in 1898. The Robsion brothers- who owned both Cleveland and St. Louis by 1898- created their own uber team in St. Louis, who traditionally had the largest attendance in the country. They were pissed off at Cleveland for the lame 1898 attendance figures and Stanley Robison actually stated his intention to run the Spiders as a side show. Good bye, Cleveland.

Barney Dreyfuss owned Louisville but then bought Pittsburgh, and "traded" Honus Wagner, Rube Waddell, Fred Clarke, Deacon Phillippe, Tommy Leach, and Chief Zimmer (and a few other lesser lights) basically to himself after the 1899 season. Goodbye Louisville. Why would Dreyfuss prefer Pittsburgh? Lousiville had finished last or next to last in the league in attendance almost every year of the 1890s. Pittsburgh had a bigger fan base.

Washington- created in 1891-pretty much alternated with Louisville in being bottom or next to bottom in league attendance throughout the 1890s and only once finished better than 9th in the standings. Several of Washington's best players in 1899 were puchased by Detroit, and played in the AL in 1900, but you won't find their stats at BR because it wasn't an official major league then. However, in August 1899 (the 23rd), Washington actually began releasing players, including starters Frank Bonner and Charlie Atherton, to save money. later that winter a bunch of the others were sold to Boston (NL). Goodbye Washington-

That's why these teams failed to make the cut- it wasn't anything to do with their being relics of the AA, and the reason that Bal, Wash, Stl, and Lou were the four that entered the NL was this- they didn't want two teams in one city. The National Agreement respected turf. Boston won the 1891 AA pennant, but they didn't come to the NL, neither did Philly or Cincinnati (and Philly was pretty good)- those teams were dissolved to avoid single city conflict. Milwaukee and Columbus were too small market to compete with the consolidated league, so that left the four that made the switch. The biggest problem was Von der Ahe assuming that he could put together a good team without Comiskey. That was never going to happen. Shame we didn't get to see how Boston would have fared moving straight to the NL, even without the over the hill Kelly- they had Dan Brouthers, Hugh Duffy, Hardy Richardson, Bill Joyce, Clark Griffith, and Tom Brown, and that, my friends, is the heart of a pennant winning team (though Griff wouldn't mature till 93).

[Brownieand45sfan]

Hardtimes? Was the "Gay 90s" a myth?


The late 1890s was a tough time for the USA- we were in a recession and attendance suffered during the Spanish American was in 1898.

[Buzzaldrin]

Not a myth but not a very kind truth. The Panic of 1893 was the worst economic crisis in US history till the Depression. Unemployment had stood at around 3% through 1892, then stood between 11 and 20% for the rest of the decade (well, it finally dropped to 6.5% in 1899). Here's a tip- when 5 times the usual number of the workforce is unemployed and you want them to spend their money on baseball games, beef up the offense.

1893 and 1929 marked the beginning of the US's worst two depression eras; it's no coincidence that 1894 and 1930 were the watershed years of all-time for offensive production in baseball.

"The gay nineties" refers to the enormous explosion of fantastic wealth among New York and New England society families (think Edith Wharton novels) as Southern Agriculture failed and the American trade "Empire" hit its peak. Cities exploded as well, because of massive immigration from poor European countries, so there the economic burden of the Panic was placed on the working classes and the South.

[Brownieand45sfan]

According to post #28 here........ http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=30769&page=2

...in Boston in 1901, the AL offered 25 cents admission, versus 50 cents for the NL.

What happened to Soden's and the NL's agreed to 25 cents admission? Any ideas?? Or did it just mean that teams were free to set a 25 cent admission?


(snip)
The NL caved on its opposition to the three AA practices of beer sales, Sunday ball, and 25 cent admission. if you think these were not a big deal, think again. These three were the sole reasons for the AA's existence in the first place- as its early teams were brewery owned and were not allowed consideration for the NL. Spalding had said he would never EVER cave on any of these, but with the AA putting franchises in both Chicago and Boston in 1892, Spalding and Soden (Boston owner) sang a completely different tune. The last thing they wanted was to lose half their fans to a Sunday playing team (and this was the age of the six day work week).

So the NL caved on all three, which means that in a large sense, the AA won the war. (snip)

[Buzzaldrin]

According to post #28 here........ http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?t=30769&page=2

...in Boston in 1901, the AL offered 25 cents admission, versus 50 cents for the NL.

What happened to Soden's and the NL's agreed to 25 cents admission? Any ideas?? Or did it just mean that teams were free to set a 25 cent admission?

Exactly.

They were also free to serve or not serve alcoholic beverages and to play or not play Sunday ball. That was the real kicker- in 1887 Sabbatarians took over the Missouri legislature, which briefly meant no Sunday ball in St. Loo. Von der Ahe immediately hatched two plans he never followed: 1) move the nation's most popular team to New York, the nation's largest market, and compete directly with the Giants. He freely admitted he would have done this had the 1887 Series been a commercial and ballfield success for the Browns, or 2) Consolidate both leagues to keep salaries down so it wouldn't matter if St. Louis couldn't play on Sundays.

[EdTarbusz]

1893 and 1929 marked the beginning of the US's worst two depression eras; it's no coincidence that 1894 and 1930 were the watershed years of all-time for offensive production in baseball.

.

I think the connection to the Great Depression and the offensive explosion of 1930 is overstated. The Stock Market crash didn't happen until the end of 1929, and it's effects were not understood until well into 1930. It would make more sense to see the offensive explosion as a panacea for the Great Depression if the ball was changed for the 1931 or 1932 seasons. In the popular venacular, these years were the real ******* of the Depression.

[Buzzaldrin]

I think the connection to the Great Depression and the offensive explosion of 1930 is overstated. The Stock Market crash didn't happen until the end of 1929, and it's effects were not understood until well into 1930. It would make more sense to see the offensive explosion as a panacea for the Great Depression if the ball was changed for the 1931 or 1932 seasons. In the popular venacular, these years were the real ******* of the Depression.

You may very well be right; I know a lot more about the links between 1890s ball and the Panic of 1893 than I do about links between 30s ball and the Depression, since studying 1890s ball is often a study of the owners and their machinations, which were necessarily economic in nature. After a bit of looking, I found that already in July 1929, Time magazine was railing against the live ball, and accusing Spalding and co. of tampering with its construction. The lively ball certainly reached its peak in 1930- where only one NL player with enough AB to qualify for the batting title hit below .250 (Hod Ford), and I wouldn't be surprised if there had been further rabbiting of the ball in the off season between 29 and 30 to create the peak, but 1) I don't have any actual evidence for this, and 2) even if I did I may not be able to connect it to the Depression in any way, and 3) in April 1930, the stock market had bounced back to its early 1929 level. I suppose I was mistaken in drawing a tenuous line that probably doesn't exist. My bad.

[EdTarbusz]

My bad.

Not really. I don't have the attendance figures in front of me, but I believe that 1930 was comparable to 1929, and that attendance began falling in 1931 and really bottomed out in 1932. I don't know whether attendance in 1930 was helped by the offensive explosion or whether people still had some discretionary income during the financial crisis. Based on my readings of the Great Depression, I believe that the Depression as it's understood today really hit hard in late 1930 or early 1931. The Stock Market crash and subsequent rebound probably seemed like the usual boom and bust cycle when the 1930 season opened.

[rrhersh]

Going back a bit earlier, there clearly is a connection between the Panic of 1873 and the baseball economy. We don't have reliable attendance figures from that era and the overall organization of baseball was still developing, so we can only look at indirect signs. With that caveat, there appears to have been a delay after the panic itself. I suspect that 1875 was a peak year; 1877 at the latest. Superficially, it looks like there was huge growth of professional baseball, from team teams at the beginning of the 1876 season to some forty or fifty at the beginning of 1877. I think this was to some extent illusory: an artifact of changes in how baseball was organized and which teams were considered "professional". In any case the end of the decade saw a clear decline, with the first signs of revival late in the 1880 season.

Richard Hershberger

[Buzzaldrin]

This I know- attendance in the NL never reached the figures posted by the NA in 1875 until 1882. Not even close.

[rrhersh]

This I know- attendance in the NL never reached the figures posted by the NA in 1875 until 1882. Not even close.

This is certainly plausible, but where are those numbers coming from? Attendence reports in that era are informal, often vague (e.g. "several hundred") and frequently contradictory between different newspaper accounts. There are a tiny handful where there is a specific number not ending in zero, which almost certainly are actual turnstile counts, but these are vanishingly rare.

I suppose we can argue that the vague numbers are likely to be inaccurate in consistent ways, so even if we can't rely on them for absolute numbers we can to compare attendence from place to place and year to year. This relies on the assumption that reporting biases don't depend on date and place. It could be true, but it is a big assumption.

An indirect means is to look at overall numbers of professional clubs and level of activity. In the late 1870s the NL consistently had six or eight clubs, but the tier below the NL got smaller each year, while you saw ever more improbable cities for the NL such as Worcester or Syracuse. If you look just at the NL, things look reasonably stable. Look beyond and it is apparently that professional baseball was slowly collapsing, with the NL absorbing outside clubs to fills its vacancies. By July of 1880 there were exactly two fully professional clubs in the east which weren't in the NL, and the west was in similar shape. Had the baseball revival come a year or two later, there may have been no more professional baseball to revive.

[Brian McKenna]

1875 - 13 teams playing 345 games
1876 - 8 teams playing 260 games
1877 - 6 teams playing 180 games
1878 - 6 teams playing 184 games
1879 - 8 teams playing 321 games
1880 - 8 teams playing 340 games
1881 - 8 teams playing 336 games
1882 - 8 teams playing 338 games
1883 - 8 teams playing 395 games

Year Attendance
1871 266,500
1872 237,000
1873 224,500
1874 269,000
1875 387,823 avg 1124
1876 266,441 avg 1025
1877 204,694 avg 1137
1878 223,606 avg 1215
1879 251,783 avg 784
1880 256,428 avg 754
1881 301,236 avg 897
1882 804,388 avg 2380
1883 1,617,154 avg 4094
1884 2,107,328
1885 1,569,507
1886 2,122,307
1887 2,714,083
1888 2,241,786
1889 2,582,245
1890 2,560,129
1891 2,505,730
1892 1,822,587
1893 2,224,752
1894 2,427,573
1895 2,889,271
1896 2,900,973
1897 2,886,842
1898 2,372,089
1899 2,541,485

[Buzzaldrin]

This is certainly plausible, but where are those numbers coming from? Attendence reports in that era are informal, often vague (e.g. "several hundred") and frequently contradictory between different newspaper accounts. There are a tiny handful where there is a specific number not ending in zero, which almost certainly are actual turnstile counts, but these are vanishingly rare.

I suppose we can argue that the vague numbers are likely to be inaccurate in consistent ways, so even if we can't rely on them for absolute numbers we can to compare attendence from place to place and year to year. This relies on the assumption that reporting biases don't depend on date and place. It could be true, but it is a big assumption.

An indirect means is to look at overall numbers of professional clubs and level of activity. In the late 1870s the NL consistently had six or eight clubs, but the tier below the NL got smaller each year, while you saw ever more improbable cities for the NL such as Worcester or Syracuse. If you look just at the NL, things look reasonably stable. Look beyond and it is apparently that professional baseball was slowly collapsing, with the NL absorbing outside clubs to fills its vacancies. By July of 1880 there were exactly two fully professional clubs in the east which weren't in the NL, and the west was in similar shape. Had the baseball revival come a year or two later, there may have been no more professional baseball to revive.

I can dig up further attendance figures, but McKenna seems to have done a pretty good job. One important thing here- the NL was not stable in the late 1870s and was in a perilous state by 1882. The two largest markets in the country (New York and Philadelphia) were unrepresented after 1876, Cincinnati was out after 1880. This was because Spalding was adamant that teams must play out their schedules and that alcohol sales and gambling were zero tolerance in the NL. The National league charter called for only cities with populations greater than 100,000 to be represented, but by 1882 the NL had broken that rule several times (like with the two cities you mention).

Had Ned Cuthbert and Chris von der Ahe not come along when they did baseball may well have died out altogether professionally. The AA changed everything and galvanized the NL into action. Seriously, a USA with no major league ball clubs in Philly and New York? Ridiculous.

[Brian McKenna]

This was because Spalding was adamant that teams must play out their schedules and that alcohol sales and gambling were zero tolerance in the NL.

I know Spalding gets a lot of credit but I think Hulbert might get the nod here in the early going. How much influence do you think Spalding had by the late 1870s into the '80s?


Had Ned Cuthbert and Chris von der Ahe not come along when they did baseball may well have died out altogether professionally.

Indy, talk if you would about Cuthbert. Would love to hear it.


Seriously, a USA with no major league ball clubs in Philly and New York? Ridiculous.

No doubt. NY and PHI had a larger base to draw from then the whole rest of the league combined.

[Buzzaldrin]

Indy, talk if you would about Cuthbert. Would love to hear it.


Well, briefly, in 1878, after the original St. Louis Brown Stockings resigned from the NL, Cuthbert and four of their players (including Dickey Pearce) put together a semi-pro Brown Stockings to play a four game series against the local St. Louis Red Stockings. Since 2,000 came to the first game and over 1,000 to the fourth, Cuthbert felt good enough to set up another team in 1879. This team didn't draw more than 700 to the park, though, because locals complained that they were simply too good for their competition (Cuthbert even introduced a 25c admission to try to attract the working classes, but it had no effect on attendance). So Cuthbert took the Brown Stockings to Cincinnati and Louisville to play the Stars and the Eclipse (the best semi-pro teams in their respective states) two games each and have return matches against each in St. Louis. St. Louis won three of the four games in front of crowds up to 3,000. This was a great trip for St. Louis baseball, because after these wins their 26-1 record for the season gave them great PR in St. Louis.

Enter fate.

Cuthbert was also a bartender at Chris von der Ahe's Golden Lion Saloon, a block away from Grand Avenue Park in St. Louis. After that first Sunday match between Brown and Red Stockings, Cuthbert had gone to the bar after the game (in which he was player-manager) with some of the players for a few drinks. Von der Ahe came over, puzzled, and asked why so many people came in in the early afternoon, hurriedly guzzled a few beers before 2 PM, disappeared, and then came back after 4 and had a leisurely afternoon of drinking. Cuthbert explained about the ball game. He then spent the next two years filling Von der Ahe's head with tales of early baseball. (Cuthbert, it should be remembered, had been a star with the original 1871 NA champion Athletics, and is often credited as the first man to ever steal a base (in 1865)) He also filled von der Ahe's head with stories of the riches that awaited a concession owner at a ball game. Von der Ahe freely admitted for the rest of his life that it was "Eddie" Cuthbert who got him into baseball.

So Von der Ahe finally took over the lease of Grand Avenue Park in 1880 and formed the Sportsman's Park and Club Association. He raised $5,000 to refurbish the re-christened Sportsman's Park, and by opening day 1881 it was a double decked covered beauty that held 6,000 and had a beer garden and lawn bowling arena beyond right field (the beer garden was actually PART of right field till 1888). The new facilities and the committment of O.P.Caylor to bring a team from Cincinnati to rival the Brown Stockings brought people back to the game in ever larger numbers. 4,000 people came to see St. Louis beat Cincinnati on Sunday, May 29th. As the season progressed, Von der Ahe began turning big profits from beer sales, and the Brown Stockings- with Cuthbert as player manager- racked up a 35-15 record against the nation's best pro and semi pro teams (non NL). They even managed to sell out all 6,000 seats in games against the Philadelphia Athletics and the Louisville Eclipse. This during a season the NL averaged fewer than 1,000 per contest!

The St. Louis Renaissance occurred at the same time as a renewal of interest in baseball in the large cities excluded from the NL, and on November 2, 1881 the American Association was signed into existence. Its six original members represented the six hubs of pre-industrial waterway traffic- St. Louis, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Louisville-and all were partly or entirely financed by brewery interests.

Without Cuthbert almost single handedly keeping baseball alive in St. Louis through 1878-1880 all of this may well have never happened. Personally, I've always believed that both Cuthbert and Von der Ahe deserve a place in Cooperstown.

[rrhersh]

I can dig up further attendance figures, but McKenna seems to have done a pretty good job. One important thing here- the NL was not stable in the late 1870s and was in a perilous state by 1882. The two largest markets in the country (New York and Philadelphia) were unrepresented after 1876, Cincinnati was out after 1880. This was because Spalding was adamant that teams must play out their schedules and that alcohol sales and gambling were zero tolerance in the NL. The National league charter called for only cities with populations greater than 100,000 to be represented, but by 1882 the NL had broken that rule several times (like with the two cities you mention).

Had Ned Cuthbert and Chris von der Ahe not come along when they did baseball may well have died out altogether professionally. The AA changed everything and galvanized the NL into action. Seriously, a USA with no major league ball clubs in Philly and New York? Ridiculous.

Those are very pretty numbers, but what is their ultimate source? I suspect they are the accumulated sums of long lists of guesses.

As bkmckenna has pointed out, Spalding wasn't in a position to be adamant about NL policy at that time. Hulbert was. Keep in mind that much of the traditional version of events from this time comes from Spalding's book, written decades later. Spalding was entirely willing to exagerrate his role.

It is not entirely true that the New York market was unrepresented after 1876. The Hartfords played their home games the 1877 season in Brooklyn at the Union Grounds, which is also where the Mutuals had been playing previously.

As for the idea that the NL would not have returned to New York and Philadelphia were it not for the AA, this is extremely unlikely. The economy had turned the corner before then. The AA was a result of the improved economy. The question of why the NL initially failed in those two markets is interesting and not entirely satisfactorily answered, and there is sign of institutional inertia in the NL by 1881/1882 allowing the AA to get the jump on it in Philly. But the NL was in no danger of failing by then, and it is implausible that it would have stayed out of those markets forever. The AA likely prodded the NL to make it happen in 1882; to expel Troy and Worcester despite the absence of actual cause. But this or something like it would have happened eventually even without the AA.

[hubkittel]

Without Cuthbert almost single handedly keeping baseball alive in St. Louis through 1878-1880 all of this may well have never happened. Personally, I've always believed that both Cuthbert and Von der Ahe deserve a place in Cooperstown.

Al and William Spink also had a great deal to do with keeping both baseball and the Brown Stockings alive in St. Louis. Al Spink wrote the following in The National Game:


At this time my brother William Spink was the sporting editor of the Globe-Democrat and I held that sort of position on the then Missouri Republican, now the St. Louis Republic. After the failure to land a professional team in St. Louis in 1878 we did our best and worked together to replace the game here on a substantial footing.

But the baseball-loving public, disgusted at the way they had lost the splendid team they had hoped for, would have none of it.

Out of the remnant of the old St. Louis professional team we organized a nine that included holdover veterans like Dickey Pearce, Edgar Cuthbert, Lipman Pike, Mike McGeary, Joe Blong, Arthur Croft, Charles Houtz, Tom Sullivan, Packie Dillon, Danny Morgan and others.

This team played games on Sundays sometimes at Grand Avenue Park, now Sportsman's, and sometimes at the Reds' Park on Compton avenue, to which Shakespeare would have termed a beggardly array of empty benches. One day in the summer of 1878 we went to the pains of bringing the Indianapolis Browns here, a team that had won the championship of the International Association and that included in its ranks such famous players as the "only" Flint and the "only" Nolan.

But this team and our picked nine of professionals did not take in enough money at the gate at its initial game to pay the street car fares of the twelve players on the Mound City bob-tailed cars from the park back to their hotel quarters downtown.

The season of 1879 was as unfruitful of results as that of the season which preceded it. A picked up team of left-over professionals was again organized, called the St. Louis Browns and it stood ready to play any team of players that happened on Sundays to drop into Grand Avenue Park. During the close of the season of 1879 the game showed signs of returning to life, and with my brother William, I again set out to reconstruct the old edifice and bring it back to its own.

Together we brought about the meeting which at the close of the season of 1880 led to the organization of the Sportsman's Park and Club Association, an organization effected for the purpose of fitting up Grand Avenue Park for baseball purposes. This organization included Chris Von der Ahe, president; John W. Peckington, vice president; W. W. Judy, treasurer; and A. H. Spink, secretary.

The Grand Avenue Park, which at this time contained a weather beaten grandstand and a lot of rotten benches, was torn away and in its place was erected a new covered stand and an open "bleachers."

Sitting out in the field early in the spring of 1881 before the new grandstand was completed, I organized the St. Louis Browns of that year, Edgar Cuthbert, the only one of the old professionals still remaining in the city assisting me in the selection of a nine which included George Baker and George Seward, catchers; George McGinnis, pitcher; Edward Gault, first base; Hugh McDonald and Dan Morgan, second base; Jack Gleason, third base; William Gleason, short field; Harry McCaffrey, center field; Edgar Cuthbert, left field; and John T. Magner, right field.

It was agreed as we all sat there on the green sward that we would work together to build up the sport and each player promised to be prompt at each game, to do his level best at all times and to take for his pay just as small a percentage of the gate receipts as the general welfare of the park and its owners would allow.

On Sunday, May 22, 1882, these grounds were really opened with an exhibition game between the newly organized St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Reds. The Reds won by 2 to 1...

Despite the good attendance at this opening game between the Reds and Browns the outlook seemed cold and bleak, for St. Louis stood badly then in the eyes of the outside world.

The Sporting News wrote about the Interregnum Browns in October of 1886:


(The) original Brown Stocking Club which first represented St. Louis in the National League...died in 1878 when the news came that Hall, Devlin, Nicholls, and Craver had been expelled from the Louisville Club for crookedness. This announcement was a death blow to the St. Louis Brown Stockings Club of that year by reason of the fact that Devlin and Hall, two of the expelled players, had signed with St. Louis for the following season. In 1879 St. Louis had no baseball to speak of. In 1880 a nine called the St. Louis Browns, under the management of the veteran Cuthbert, played games on the co-operative plan and furnished patrons with the only base ball that was going that year. That nine included Cuthbert, Shenck, Decker, McDonald, Croft, McGinnis, Pearce, Bowles, Cunningham and Morgan. This team played twenty-one games, losing but one, and that to the Louisville Reds, a semi-professional organization, by a score of 14 to 8. Its success in fact led to the organization of what is now known as the Sportsman's Park and Club Association, a company which was really organized for the purpose of refitting the present Sportsman's Park for baseball purposes. After the park had been fully equipped the Brown Stockings of the previous year were asked to reorganize and take possession of it. This they did with a nine which included the Gleason brothers, Baker, Seward, McCaffory, McSorley, McGinnis, Magner, McDonald, Gault and Cuthbert. This nine, like that of the previous year, played great ball, and the famous Akron team was the only nine it met that year that proved too much for it. It was so successful, in fact, that in the fall of 1881 steps were taken to put a professional team in the then talked of American Association.

[Buzzaldrin]

Those are very pretty numbers, but what is their ultimate source? I suspect they are the accumulated sums of long lists of guesses.

As bkmckenna has pointed out, Spalding wasn't in a position to be adamant about NL policy at that time. Hulbert was. Keep in mind that much of the traditional version of events from this time comes from Spalding's book, written decades later. Spalding was entirely willing to exagerrate his role.

It is not entirely true that the New York market was unrepresented after 1876. The Hartfords played their home games the 1877 season in Brooklyn at the Union Grounds, which is also where the Mutuals had been playing previously.

As for the idea that the NL would not have returned to New York and Philadelphia were it not for the AA, this is extremely unlikely. The economy had turned the corner before then. The AA was a result of the improved economy. The question of why the NL initially failed in those two markets is interesting and not entirely satisfactorily answered, and there is sign of institutional inertia in the NL by 1881/1882 allowing the AA to get the jump on it in Philly. But the NL was in no danger of failing by then, and it is implausible that it would have stayed out of those markets forever. The AA likely prodded the NL to make it happen in 1882; to expel Troy and Worcester despite the absence of actual cause. But this or something like it would have happened eventually even without the AA.

Excuse me, but Brooklyn was not part of the New York market in 1881, it was part of the Brooklyn market. It was a separate city from New York, as you are no doubt aware, and the citizens of Manhattan were most probably not eager to travel to another city to watch a third city play its home games.

Actually, I think the NL WAS in danger of failing by 1881. Until 1882, this "stable" league had never fielded the same teams two seasons in a row, and if it was forced to break its own charter within six years of inception and admit cities it would not even have considered a year or two earlier, than I believe it was in a perilous state. How can you say that the NL would have returned to the Phily and New York without AA prodding? Why is it "extremely unlikely"? It's also way too simple to say the AA was a result of an improved economy. The AA offered different services in a different manner to a different public than the NL. It also offered them in in different (and larger) cities. From the outset, it was a winner. In 1882, every AA club turned a profit- NL clubs rarely had, and the AA outdrew the NL by 30%.

The National League's original goal was to become an exclusive organization of big market teams evenly divided between the East and the West. In this respect it was a total failure by 1880. The death of Hulbert before the 82 season was also a serious blow. (BTW- You are correct that Hulbert was pulling the moral strings before 1882- I wrote that without thinking.)

Oh, and I didn't mean to underplay either Spink's or Caylor's roles in St. Louis ball or the AA as a whole. To do so would be an egregious distortion of history. I was asked to write about Cuthbert, so I wrote about Cuthbert.

[hubkittel]

Oh, and I didn't mean to underplay either Spink's or Caylor's roles in St. Louis ball or the AA as a whole. To do so would be an egregious distortion of history. I was asked to write about Cuthbert, so I wrote about Cuthbert.

Of course, and you wrote well.

I think the point I was trying to make, besides giving some general information about the Brown Stockings during the 1878-1881 period, was that Spink paints a rather dire picture of the economic situation after the collapse of the Brown Stockings in the fall of 1877. The situation in St. Louis may have been a bit unique and not exactly similiar to the rest of the country but Spink writes that regardless of their best efforts, they were having problems drawing people to the ballpark.

The team that they put on the field was a good one that essentially combined players from the Brown Stockings and the NA Red Stockings. They had a lot of local players like Joe Blong, Art Croft, Charlie Houtz, Packy Dillon, and Pidge Morgan as well as the Brown Stocking left-overs like Cuthbert, Lip Pike, and Dickey Pearce. This was certainly the best ball club in StL and if any team was going to draw, they should have. But according to Spink, they didn't. He specifically mentions the game against a very good Indianapolis club, with StL native and former Red Silver Flint catching, that didn't draw a crowd.

The series between the Brown Stockings and the Reds, that you mentioned, would be an exception to the general situation. In this era, a Browns/Reds tilt would be the highlight of the baseball season and would see the largest crowds that either team would get all year.

[rrhersh]

Regarding Brooklyn and the New York market, if we count them as seperate then professional baseball had never been in the New York market. The nominally New York teams of the NA era, as well as the NL Mutuals of 1876, all played in Brooklyn. I have no idea what percentage of the spectators were from Manhattan. The first professional baseball game on Manhattan occurred in late 1880, between the new Metropolitan club and the Nationals of Washington.

As for the likelihood of the NL failing, no one has suggested that it was stable in its early years. My argument is that by 1882 it had turned the corner. The economy was improving and attendence was up. To the extant that we can rely on the attendence figures bcmckenna posted, the revival is obvious. Indeed, things were even better than that. With decent non-League clubs playing in Philadelphia and New York in 1881 and 1882, League clubs routinely made profitable side trips. We tend to treat the NL in isolation, but outside games were a signficant part of the members' incomes. There were many more, and more profitable, opportunities for outside play in 1882 than there had been in, say, 1879.

The novel stability of the League in 1881/1882 is a sign of this. Troy and Worcester were terrible markets, and the teams were pretty bad as well, but both planned on remaining in the League for 1883 until they were forced out. Even playing in bad markets, the rising tide lifted these boats.

So the idea that the NL was on the point of collapse in 1882 just doesn't stand up. If we want to talk about 1879, with Syracuse and Cincinnati stumbling along, that is another matter. I think the League could very possibly have failed. The shining success was the Chicago market, where attendance remained high. Chicago, and to a lesser extent Boston, carried the League. This goes a long way toward explaining why Hulbert was able to get away with his dictatorial behavior.

So why do I think the League would have come to New York and Philadelphia even without the competition of the AA? Because nature abhors a vacuum. The NL wasn't in Troy and Worcester because it was under the mistaken impression that they were good markets. It was there because these cities were along the line from Chicago to Boston, so teams there kept travelling expenses down during the dark years. This is also why the League gave the franchise to Detroit in 1881 rather than the Nationals. By 1882 it was pretty obvious that baseball had revived in NY and Philly. I strongly suspect that the reason the NL didn't move in that year was that Troy and Worcester were just strong enough to come back that year. Had they been a bit weaker, the League would have replaced one or both with the Metropolitans and/or the Athletics.

I think that the AA forced the issue. John Day had attended the AA formative meeting, but had also met with Hulbert and persuaded Day to hold off on the Mets joining the AA for 1882. Reading between the lines, it looks like Hulbert promised Day an NL franchise once a slot opened up. With Troy and Worcester persisting through 1882, the League had to force the issue rather than let Day go to the AA. (Of course he did, with teams in both leagues, but he consistently favored the NL team, so the NL achieved its goal in the end.) Had the AA not existed, it is plausible that the Troy and Worcester clubs would have remained in place and 1883 would be like 1882, with New York and Philly being lucrative side trips for exhibition games. But this would clearly not be a satisfactory permanent solution and clubs would have ended up in New York and Philly one way or another.

As for the National League's "original goal", it is a perilous thing to try to summarize it in one short paragraph. Were I forced to, I would say its original goal was for the better-capitalized clubs to schedule championship games among themselves, without being obliged (as they had been in the NA) to also schedule less remunerative games against weaker clubs. Clearly the late 1870s were not a ringing success; but the League survived, which compares well with its contemporaries.