Players who played in both 'American' Leagues

[Brownieand45sfan]

How many players have played in both the American Association and American league major leagues. In other words, lived to see the day that they could challenge the NL again for dominance. So far I have found 10, including three Hall of Famers:

Hugh Duffy: Boston AA, Milw. AL
Bill Hallman: Phila. AA, Cle. AL
Dummy Hoy: Stl AA, Chi. AL
Duke Farrell: Bos AA and AL
Lafayette Napoleon Cross: Phila. AA, Phila. and Wash. AL
Gus Weyhing: Phila. AA, Cleve. AL (for all of 11 innings)
Clark Griffith: Stl, Bos AA, NY and Was AL
Frank Foreman: Bal, Was. AA, Bos, Bal AL
John McGraw : Bal AA and AL
John O'Connell: a weird one: debuted with BAL AA playing in 8 games in '91, came back in '02 to play 8 games for DET AL, then retired. In the intervening 11 years, he had learn to play a new position: 1st Base.

Any others?

[Brian McKenna]

Wilbert Robinson
Hughie Jennings
Jack O'Connor

[Buzzaldrin]

Tommy Dowd, Bones Ely, Morgan Murphy (who also played in the Players League), Billy Clingman (only one AA game, though), Joe Quinn did NOT play in the AA, but he did play in the UA, PL, NL, and AL so I thought I'd mention him, Frank Scheibeck, Bill Hart, Gus Weyhing (only two AL games).

[RuthMayBond]

You guys are good. I don't think these are repeats

Patsy Donovan
Jack Doyle
Herman Long
Deacon McGuire
Jack Ryan

[hubkittel]

Joe Quinn did NOT play in the AA, but he did play in the UA, PL, NL, and AL so I thought I'd mention him

Joe Quinn, I believe, is the only player to have played in the UA, PL, NL, and AL. It's kind of odd that he never played in the AA because prior to joining the St. Louis Maroons in 1884, he was playing with the Dubuque Rabbits. When Chris Von der Ahe and company were putting together the AA Browns in 1882, they brought in Ted Sullivan to help organize the team. Sullivan had been running the Dubuque team and brought the core of that team (Comiskey, the Gleason brothers, Tom Loftus, etc) to St. Louis. Even after he was no longer managing the team, Sullivan acted as a kind of bird dog for the Browns, finding and funneling players to the team. Al Spink wrote that it was Sullivan who arranged for Quinn to play with the Maroons and I always fond it strange that he didn't sign him for the Browns.

Quinn did play for the Browns when they were in the NL. He's the only player to have played for the St. Louis Maroons, the St. Louis Browns, and the St. Louis Cardinals (he rejoined the St. Louis NL club in 1900 after the name change). Sadly, he never played for the AL Browns. In 1884, he played on the Maroons team whose .832 winning percentage is the highest in major league history (IIRC). In 1899, he played for the Cleveland Spiders, whose .130 winning percentage is the lowest in major league history.

Quinn also was the only Australian native to play in the major leagues until Craig Shipley came up with the Dodgers in the 1980's.

Edit: Going back and looking at some notes on Quinn, I see that the Browns did try to aquire Quinn in March of 1887. After the Maroons basicly sold their franchise rights and most of their players to Indianapolis, there was a bit of a fight among League teams over the former Maroons players. Von der Ahe stepped in to complicate matters by offering $500 dollars for the rights to Quinn. The offer obviously wasn't accepted and the League kept its reserve rights to Quinn (who didn't play in the major leagues in 1887). It's a shame because if the offer was accepted and Quinn's career path continued as it did, he would have played in every major league that existed during his playing career.

[RuthMayBond]

Quinn did play for the Browns when they were in the NL. He's the only player to have played for the St. Louis Maroons, the St. Louis Browns, and the St. Louis Cardinals (he rejoined the St. Louis NL club in 1900 after the name change).

Were they called the Browns, which team?

[hubkittel]

Were they called the Browns, which team?

Quinn played for the Browns from 1893-1896 when they were in the NL. This was Von der Ahe's Browns, who had joined the League after the merger between the AA and NL in 1892. After Von der Ahe lost control of the team in 1898/99, the new club owners, seeking a complete break from the Von der Ahe years, changed the uniform colors from brown to "a lovely shade of cardinal red" and they also got a new nickname, the Perfectos. The following year (1900), with Quinn back in the fold, the team would be known as the Cardinals.

The Browns nickname has a long and rich tradition in St. Louis but keeping the teams straight can be a bit complicated. It goes something like this:

1875 Brown Stockings (NA)
1876-77 Brown Stockings (NL)

1882 Brown Stockings (AA)
1883-1891 Browns (AA)
1892-1898 Browns (NL)
1899 Perfectos (NL)
1900-present Cardinals (NL)

1901-1953 Browns (AL)

The 1875-77 (NA/NL) team is distinct from the 1882-present (AA/NL) team which is distinct from the 1901-1953 (AL) team. Three different franchises, if you will.

Technically, when Quinn played for the Browns in the 1890's and the Cards in 1900, he was playing for the same team.

[rrhersh]

The 1875-77 (NA/NL) team is distinct from the 1882-present (AA/NL) team which is distinct from the 1901-1953 (AL) team. Three different franchises, if you will.

Hah! That's nothing! There were three versions of the "Athletics" in Philadelphia in 1880 alone. Seriously. The old club had collapsed a couple of years earlier, but the name still held prestige. There wasn't any clear heir to the name, so you had semi-pro co-op teams using the name.

Then there is the mess of the Athletics of 1890, when both the AA and the PL clubs used that name. (The same thing happened in Washington in 1884, with the AA and UA teams both using the "Nationals" name.) So even if we restrict the discussion to major leagues, there have been four "Athletics" clubs.

[hubkittel]

Yeah, but I left out the 1878-1881 unaffiliated Brown Stockings of the St. Louis Baseball Interregnum.

[SABR Steve]

You guys are really into it, but I'd be careful with all these nicknames. They weren't really official like they are today.
The closest example today of what I'm talking about is the use of "Bucs" instead of the Pirates. we know who we are talking about, but it isn't their official nickname. There are others.

I saw a blurb in an old Sporting News that christened Boston of the Players League as the "Red Stockings," but they have always been referred to as the "Reds."

[rrhersh]

You guys are really into it, but I'd be careful with all these nicknames. They weren't really official like they are today.
The closest example today of what I'm talking about is the use of "Bucs" instead of the Pirates. we know who we are talking about, but it isn't their official nickname. There are others.

Preach it, brother! I've been saying this for years.

On the other hand, there are instances where the "nickname" really was official, others were it was quasi-official, and yet others where it was unofficial but widely used. As a rule of thumb, early NL teams tended not to use nicknames even quasi-officially, and many of the nicknames found in the standard sources are pretty much bogus. AA teams did tend to use nicknames, so those are largely legitimate. There are exceptions all around. As for non-major clubs, all bets are off.

In the case of the three "Athletics" clubs in 1880 I mentioned previously, the first two were loosely organized co-op clubs. I'm sure they weren't incorporated, and I don't know that they even had letterhead. But they called themselves the "Athletic" club and the local press went along with it. The third one was the predecessor to the AA Athletics. It's naming status was similar to the other two of that year, but perhaps more formal.

[Buzzaldrin]

There's also the good nicknames that time forgot. Anson is only ever referred to as Cap or Pop these days, but if you check out older newspapers from the 1880s (very handy in the 1889 compilation "A Tale of Four Cities") he's called Baby Anson any number of times (which makes sense, since the Chicagos were sometimes called the Babys (with the misspelled plural) or Anson's Babys.

I much prefer Baby to Cap.

[Brownieand45sfan]

According to the book Baseball Team Names: A Worldwide Dictionary, 1869-2011, "the 1882 players wore red hose at the start of the season. However constant washing of the socks faded them to Brown, prompting newspapers to call the players the Browns. By 1883 the stockings were deliberately-dyed Brown " This is got to be an error correct? Von Der Ahe did not begin the franchise with red stockings did he? I think the author's "fade in the wash" story must have happened to the St. Louis red stockings of 1875.

Quinn played for the Browns from 1893-1896 when they were in the NL. This was Von der Ahe's Browns, who had joined the League after the merger between the AA and NL in 1892. After Von der Ahe lost control of the team in 1898/99, the new club owners, seeking a complete break from the Von der Ahe years, changed the uniform colors from brown to "a lovely shade of cardinal red" and they also got a new nickname, the Perfectos. The following year (1900), with Quinn back in the fold, the team would be known as the Cardinals.

The Browns nickname has a long and rich tradition in St. Louis but keeping the teams straight can be a bit complicated. It goes something like this:

1875 Brown Stockings (NA)
1876-77 Brown Stockings (NL)

1882 Brown Stockings (AA)
1883-1891 Browns (AA)
1892-1898 Browns (NL)
1899 Perfectos (NL)
1900-present Cardinals (NL)

1901-1953 Browns (AL)

The 1875-77 (NA/NL) team is distinct from the 1882-present (AA/NL) team which is distinct from the 1901-1953 (AL) team. Three different franchises, if you will.

Technically, when Quinn played for the Browns in the 1890's and the Cards in 1900, he was playing for the same team.