The Simplest Beginnings: From Amateurism in 1857, to Pro Ball (1870), Int'l Ball, & More

[tm1681]

CÉAD MILE FÁILTE! BASEBALL CROSSES THE ATLANTIC AND SETTLES IN THE EMERALD ISLE!

The development of organized baseball in the United States coincided with the mass immigration of Irish people to the Northeast starting in the middle of the Nineteenth Century following events like the Great Potato Famine. This meant that Irishmen were present as players, coaches, and executives from the very start of the NBBO in 1857 – hence a club in Boston named Shamrock B.C. – and they’ve remained a steady influence on the sport since.

An Irishman was one of the first major stars of organized baseball: outfielder Thomas Maloney of the Orange Club, born in Galway. He won three of the first six New York League Batsman of Year awards, three NYL MVPs, two Tucker-Wheaton Cups, made ten NBBO All-Star Games, and won another Batsman of the Year award in the first seasons of the APBL. He was one of the three major stars, along with Edward Huntley and Carl Bancroft, that made the Orange Club the marquee club of the early days of the sport.

There were other Irishmen that had notable roles in the NBBO years as well:

• Luhan McCready, second baseman for Shamrock/Boston from 1859-75 before spending two years with the Manhattan Orangemen.
• Rian Cooney, four-time All-Star and Team of the Year member in the NBBO (1857-70).
• Keenan Jones, nine-time Golden Glove shortstop who played for Sons of the Ocean from 1874 to 1889.
• Darragh Kelly, everyday third baseman for Niagara from 1864-70 and then for their first five years in the APBL as Buffalo (1871-75).
• Sweeney McCrudden, five-time All-Star catcher who spent most of his fifteen-year NBBO career (1875-89) with the Springfield Pioneers.

In all, there were 269 Irish and 317 Irish-American players who took part in the 48-team National Base Ball Organization’s single competition before it became a larger organizing body in 1890.

Going into the end of the Nineteenth Century, the Irish diaspora could also boast of some of the best and most accomplished active players in the game as well:

• Outfielder Mahon Bailey, who was Prairie League MVP twice by the age of 22 before becoming a star regular in the APBL (6.4 WAR in 1895).
• Brogan Williams, the 1892 APBL Newcomer of the Year and part of Providence’s APBL dynasty that won four straight APBL titles after playing in the last three NBBO All-Star games for the Manhattan Orangemen.
• Brannan Walker, three-time Golden Glove winner at third base for Detroit in the Midwestern Baseball Association.
• William O’Neill, 1893 Team of the Year outfielder for Pennsylvania in the APBL.

With that much influence on the sport, it was only a matter of time before baseball started to slowly make its way back to where these players had come from. Ireland was open to new sports at the time, as football and rugby had been introduced over the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century and the Gaelic Athletic Association was founded in 1884 to promote native sports like Gaelic Football and hurling.

The sport of baseball was slowly brought to the Emerald Isle by Irish natives coming back from America and ex-players who’d had small roles on NBBO teams. Eventually there were clubs all over the island, and every county had the ability to send players to compete against one another. Not much attention was paid to its spread by members of the other sports on the island, as baseball sat in a bit of a middle ground between the native games of the GAA and sports coming from the occupiers of England, like football and rugby. That said, given where the sport was coming from – Irish emigrants to the U.S.A. who frequently had to move by no choice of their own – baseball in Ireland took on a bit of a nationalist bent closer to that of the GAA.

In 1895, with clubs and players in enough places for every county on the island to compete against one another, various club executives agreed that an Ireland-wide competition would start the next year. Dividing the competition into a structure was easy enough since there were four provinces in Ireland: Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster. However, there was one big problem: the four provinces had wildly differing numbers of counties. Connacht had five, Leinster had a dozen, Munster had half of that dozen, and Ulster had nine. That wouldn't necessarily work in a baseball context, so in a sporting sense neighboring counties were moved around until each of the four provinces had “eight” counties each to take part in the maiden baseball competition.

And here’s what the first baseball competition outside of North America looked like going into its inaugural season:


















NOTE: I used the nicknames of Gaelic Athletic Association county-level teams to come up with the names of the teams in this league, because doing the logos took an inordinately long amount of time and I didn't want to get stuck trying to figure out good names for a bunch of Irish baseball teams. County names on the logos are in Irish.

The length of the season would be a short one – each team would play the others in their division a dozen times for a total of 84 games. Pay was also not going to be much, as the average Irish laborer only made a couple of Pounds (about $10) per week at the time and people didn’t move around much. This meant that there weren’t going to be any high-profile Irish players from the United States returning home anytime soon, but there was semi-professional baseball on the Emerald Isle and hopefully it was there to stay.

[tm1681]

THE FIRST SEASON OF IRISH BASEBALL

The first set of games in the competitive history of Irish baseball took place on June 2nd, 1896, with the first official game being a contest between Carlow and Louth at Ballymakenny Road in Drogheda. Thanks to a three-run rally by the hosts in the bottom of the seventh inning Louth won the inaugural AIBC game 8-6, with center fielder Fred Martin (3/4, 2 RBIs) winning Player of the Game honors.

While a high-scoring opener might seem like it would portend a high-scoring first season of the All-Ireland Baseball Championship, the reality was that the AIBC ended up being the lightest-hitting league in existence in 1896. This owed to one simple factor: Ireland isn’t the United States – the weather is cooler, the winds are stronger, and the air is more humid. This meant that even if most of the venues in the competition were smaller than the average ballpark in the states, the ball didn’t carry like it does in many parts of the U.S., and offensive output suffered as a result.

The final slash line for the 32-team league was .259/.320/.330, which was good for an OPS of .650. That OPS was about fifty points lower than that of the semi-pro leagues in the Northeastern U.S., and when compared to the most offensive league in the U.S.A., the Prairie League, average and OPS came in at 42 and 95 points lower respectively.

The first season of the league was competitive for the most part, with three of the four provincial championships being decided in the final week of the three-month season. The champions:

• Connacht: Cavan (54-30 – Galway & Roscommon 7 GB)
• Leinster: Wicklow (54-30 – Wexford 3 GB)
• Munster: Tipperary (52-32 – Kilkenny & Laois 2 GB)
• Ulster: Donegal (54-30 – Armagh 10 GB)

The playoffs were also very exciting. Both All-Ireland semifinals went the maximum five games, with Cavan besting Tipperary in one and Donegal beating Wicklow in the other. Cavan went on to win the first All-Ireland Championship for baseball three games to one, with third baseman Donegal Walker, who plays for Cavan and not Donegal, being named the AIC’s Most Valuable Player.

SUMMARY

STANDINGS



ALL-IRELAND SEMIFINALS

• Cavan (Connacht) beat Tipperary (Munster) 3 games to 2 – Darragh Allen (RF, CAV) named MVP (8/22, 5 RBI)
• Donegal (Ulster) beat Wicklow (Leinster) 3 games to 2 – Gavin Martin (WICK) named MVP (Game 5 winner, 2-1, 0.90 ERA, 30 IP)

ALL-IRELAND CHAMPIONSHIP

Cavan beat Donegal 3 games to 1

• Game One (@ Cavan): Cavan 4, Donegal 3 – Desmond Jones (CAV – 10 IP, 159 pitches, 7 H, 1 ER, 5 BB, 4 K) Player of the Game
• Game Two (@ Cavan): Cavan 5, Donegal 0 – Casey Nuttle (CAV – CG shutout, 155 pitches, 8 H, 1 BB, 3 K) Player of the Game
• Game Three (@ Donegal): Donegal 6, Cavan 3 – Charlie Sherwin (DON – 3/4, 2B, HR, 3 RBI, 2 R) Player of the Game
• Game Four (@ Donegal): Cavan 7, Donegal 5 – Donegal Walker (CAV – 4/5, 2B, RBI, 3 R) Player of the Game

All-Ireland Championship MVP: Donegal Walker (3B, CAV) – 8/17, 2 2B, 2 RBI, 5 R

BATSMAN OF THE YEAR



Toirealach Brennan (C, Cork) – .362/.429/.471, .900 OPS, 100 H, 15 2B, 3 HR, 44 RBI, 4.3 WAR (8.3/162 G)

HURLER OF THE YEAR



Casey Nuttle (Cavan) – 256.1 IP, 22-5, 1.72 ERA, 26 CG, 10 SHO, 41 BB, 75 K, 1.01 WHIP, 6.2 WAR (5.4/225 IP)

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER



Morrigan Osborne (CF, Clare) – .348/.418/.497, .915 OPS (177 OPS+), 119 H, 20 2B, 7 HR, 43 RBI, 170 TB, 18 SB, 3.95 WPA (7.62/162 G), 4.1 WAR (7.9/162 G)

TEAM OF THE YEAR

P: Gavin Martin (Donegal) – 16-12, 1.83 ERA, 26 CG, 38 BB, 82 K, 1.09 WHIP, 7.6 WAR, AIC runner-up
C: Toirealach Brennan (Cork) – .362 AVG, .900 OPS, 100 H, 21 XBH, 3 HR, 44 RBI, 2.56 WPA, 4.3 WAR, BotY
1B: Tyler Bevan (Longford) – .332 AVG, .864 OPS, 103 H, 19 XBH, 4 HR, 35 RBI, 1.20 WPA, 2.3 WAR
2B: Regan Moran (Roscommon) – .362 AVG, .899 OPS, 101 H, 16 XBH, 4 HR, 32 RBI, 1.82 WPA, 2.5 WAR
3B: Bowen Kennedy (Wicklow) – .330 AVG, .832 OPS, 104 H, 22 XBH, 4 HR, 48 RBI, 2.74 WPA, 3.0 WAR, AIC semi-final
SS: Killian Perry (Galway) – .303 AVG, .771 OPS, 99 H, 20 XBH, 6 HR, 42 RBI, 2.42 WPA, 4.1 WAR
OF: Sheridan O’Sullivan (Cavan) – .303 AVG, .851 OPS, 91 H, 28 XBH, 6 HR, 48 RBI, 2.73 WPA, 4.2 WAR, AIC champ
CF: Morrigan Osborne (Clare) – .348 AVG, .915 OPS, 119 H, 32 XBH, 7 HR, 43 RBI, 170 TB, 18 SB, 3.95 WPA, 4.1 WAR
OF: Richard Simpson (Kerry) – .301 AVG, .833 OPS, 98 H, 28 XBH, 7 HR, 38 RBI, 15 SB, 2.71 WPA, 4.8 WAR

[tm1681]

DOMINANT PITCHERS ABOUND AROUND THE LOWER LEAGUES DURING 1896!

1896 was the year of the dominant ace hurler in semi-professional and international baseball, as there were multiple Pitching Triple Crown winners and near-winners outside of the main leagues of the American Baseball Association.

First up, in Canada young ace Cecil Richards of the Quebec City Voyageurs - 23 for most of the season - went 30-14 with a 1.80 ERA and 197 strikeouts, leading the CBL in all three major pitching categories. He also led the league in innings pitched (399.0), complete games (38), shutouts (8), K/BB ratio (2.1), WHIP (1.08), and pitching WAR (10.0). It was the third straight year he’d led the CBL in wins even though QC has never finished higher than fourth in the standings, and it was also the third straight year he led the league in innings pitched, complete games, and WHIP.

In the United States, Ralph Easterly of the Reading Athletics in the Northeastern League had perhaps the best season of any non-ABA pitcher. He finished the NEL season 34-5 with a 2.13 ERA and 228 Ks, easily earning the NEL Pitching Triple Crown as no hurler was very close to him in any of the three major categories. Somehow, Easterly didn’t lead the league in pitching WAR (George Bardi of Lancaster: 11.1), but that would have been of little concern to him. Over four seasons since leaving the Milwaukee Bavarians reserve team, Easterly is 115-42 for Reading with a 2.57 ERA and 23 shutouts.

In the New York League, Marathon Base Ball Club’s undisputed ace, Edward Lapley, led the NYL in both wins (30) and ERA (1.65) for the second consecutive year. As if that wasn’t enough, he topped the pitching WAR chart for the fifth straight year (11.4) while leading the league in both K/BB ratio (2.3) and WHIP (0.98) for the third year in a row. His record over the last two years: a measly 56-15.

In New England, Henry Danforth came extremely close to winning the NEBA’s Pitching Triple Crown, finishing 28-12 with a 1.97 ERA and 172 strikeouts. That last number put him second in the league – just four more Ks would have made him the strikeout king and Triple Crown winner. Danforth has been ridiculous in his three seasons with The Cantabrigians after nine years in Duluth. He’s led the NEBA in Pitching WAR, ERA, WHIP, BB/9, and K/BB ratio all three seasons while pitching his way to an 80-35 record for the Cambridge (MA) club.

Over in the Great Lakes Baseball Conference, Ajdir Kambuji of the Duluth Loons was five strikeouts away from earning the GLBC Pitching Triple Crown (27-9, 2.20 ERA, 171 Ks). The African-born mainstay of the GLBC took his fourth ERA title (1892, 94-96), led the league in K/BB ratio for the fifth year in a row (2.3), WHIP for the third year in a row (1.07), and was #1 in pitching WAR (9.0) for the sixth time in his eleven seasons as a GLBC player (1889, 91-92, 94-96).

Finally, in the Prairie League Spencer Phillips of the Sioux City Falcons was agonizingly close to earning a Pitching Triple Crown of his own, as with an ERA just two hundredths of a point lower (2.76 instead of 2.78) he would have led the PL in wins, ERA, and strikeouts. As it was, he finished the season 24-11 with a 2.78 ERA and 183 Ks while leading the league in both complete games and innings pitched. Those 183 Ks earned him his sixth finish atop the PL strikeout charts in ten seasons with Sioux City (1890-93, 95-96).

One might wonder why these pitchers don't try their luck in the APBL, MWBA, or the SEAL. It's a complicated decision - both leagues still have three-man rotations and little use for bullpens, so if lower-league aces sign with a full-time squad and don't make the cut as a starter, not only will they see little pitching action but they'll likely be cut after a year and take a big pay cut to sign with a new team the next year. Thus, the money they can make playing as superstar semi-pros is more consistent and might actually be better in the long run in the baseball world of the late 1800s.

[Hrycaj]

I'm a huge fan of 19th century stuff. I suck at creating logos. I'm getting better but I know there is no way I'll ever be creative enough to have ideas similar to your own. Just really well done.

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by Hrycaj

I'm a huge fan of 19th century stuff. I suck at creating logos. I'm getting better but I know there is no way I'll ever be creative enough to have ideas similar to your own. Just really well done.

Thanks! Honestly, you can get really creative with OOTP-related things. As mentioned, I started by just messing around with Illustrator during remote work down time in 2015-16. It's just a matter of looking at things and practicing.

[tm1681]

MILBURN HAS BEST SEASON YET, BUT PITCHING & SPEED TRUMP HITTING IN THE APBL AS PROVIDENCE WINS FIFTH CUP IN A ROW!

Going into the 1896 APBL season, it looked like the President’s Cup was the Pennsylvania Quakers’ to lose. During the previous season, it took a 17-2 run at the end of the season run for Providence to move past two other teams to reach P.C., and the Quakers front office reacted to the shocking sweep at the hands of the Saints by adding even more star power to the lineup. They let regular shortstop Joseph Tally (1.0 WAR over the previous two years) go and replaced him with three-time MWBA Golden Glove winner and one-time WAR leader Robert Driscoll. They also let quality center fielder George Hedges (11.9 WAR from 93-95) leave for the Knickerbockers and replaced him with the best middle outfielder in the league: Rochester’s Thomas Paulari (18.8 WAR, 301 SB in four years w/ ROCH).

The Northeastern punditry had two major predictions for the 1896 APBL season: first, that the Quakers would easily be the league’s most dangerous team; second, that Providence would finally be evicted from the Colonial Conference penthouse, likely by Buffalo. The Quakers’ offensive attack certainly lived up to what the public had in mind for them, as their batsmen collectively led the league in the following over the 132-game season:

• Runs – 722
• Hits – 1,486
• Runs Batted In – 634
• Doubles – 223 (tied w/ Brooklyn)
• Total Bases – 1,969
• Batting Average – .314
• On-base Percentage – .375
• Slugging Percentage – .416
• On-base + Slugging – .791
• OPS Plus – 108
• Win Probability Added – 13.43
• Wins Above Replacement – 40.0

Also, they were second in home runs (26) and walks (426). Their pitchers weren’t bad either, finishing third in runs allowed (458), fourth in ERA (2.76), and they were able to boast of having the APBL’s Hurler of the Year in Jurgen Schultz (33-11, 2.36 ERA). Not surprisingly, they easily had the APBL’s best Run Differential (+264), scoring exactly two runs per game more more than the opposition.

Of course, their attack was led by Jacob Milburn, who put in arguably his finest season at the age of 36. After taking a year to get used to the superior pitching in the APBL, he proceeded to crush the league and finish with the following stat line:





He didn’t lead the league in a dozen offensive categories like he did in his 1891 MWBA season – only ten this time. What made his season arguably more impressive was that he did it in the APBL, where the batting average and OPS are normally 20 and 40 points lower, respectively, than they are in the MWBA each season. He won the batting title by more than 50 points (George Bixby: .377) and led on-base percentage by more than 50 points (Bixby: .450), total bases by 40+ (Lindsey Christianson: 259), and OPS by an absurd 198 points (Mogens Markert: .906). As a result, his WAR was nearly a full point higher (10.1) than it was during 1891 (9.2). He was the unanimous Batsman of the Year.

Over in the Colonial Conference, Buffalo couldn’t live up to preseason predictions and fell just a bit short of a trip to the President’s Cup (5 GB), meaning Providence, whose record shot back up 90-42, was going to try to take the cup home for the fifth year in a row. The Saints made it there the same way they had in each of the previous four years. They had excellent pitching from what was now “The Three Charlies”: Charles Wilkerson (29-13, 2.00 ERA), Charles Carlyle (27-14, 2.54 ERA), and offseason signee Charles Clinton from Pittsburgh (29-13, 2.62 ERA). Once again, they had a league-leading defense led by APBL Most Valuable Player Charley Rankin (11.6 WAR). Also, they also had one of the better batting lineups in the league.

Would they face the 87-45 Quakers? Incredibly, no! Pennsylvania was pipped to the Metropolitan Conference title by the completely revamped Excelsior Knights, who signed or traded for the following players in the offseason:

• George Patterson, two-time defending APBL Hurler of the Year (32-11, 1.87 ERA in 1895)
• Hawk Nielsen, 1895 SEAL Hurler of the Year (34-7, 2.36 ERA for Atlanta)
• Wyszemir Pawlak (1B/LF), four-time SEAL TotY Member and 1890 Batsman of the Year (.914 OPS, 4.79 WPA, 3.7 WAR in 1895)
• Samuel Mayer (2B/SS), two-time Golden Glove winner & Team of the Year member (.974 OPS, 4.99 WPA, 5.2 WAR in SEAL in 1895)
• Sean Crane (3B/SS/CF), twelve-year APBL veteran (.767 OPS, 3.34 WPA, 2.2 WAR in 1895; 35.2 career WAR)
• Levi Carmichael (3B), Buffalo’s regular third baseman each of the previous four seasons

The addition of Crane to a lineup already featuring Mahon Bailey and Bernard Evanson gave the Knights by far the fastest team in the league. They stole more than two bases per game (273) at a roughly 75% success rate, they swiped 105 more bases than any other team, and Excelsior had all the top three base stealers in the APBL (Evanson: 66, Crane: 62, Bailey: 58). The addition of two HotY winners to go with 1895 ace Redmond Krebs gave the Knights a pitching staff that led the APBL in numerous categories:

• Runs Allowed – 381
• Earned Run Average – 2.14
• Shutouts – 18
• Walks – 237 (1.8 BB/9)
• Strikeouts – 524 (3.9 K/9)
• Pitching WAR – 27.9

Because of that and a 9-1 record over the season’s last ten games, the Knights matched Providence’s 90-42 record and earned a spot in the President’s Cup. From there, the Providence team that had already been through the cup experience four times before made quick work of the strikingly similar Knights team, winning the 1896 President’s Cup four games to one. Series MVP Charles Carlyle allowed one run over eighteen innings, and thus he got to lead the cup on yet another parade through the city. It was the fifth year in a row Providence took it home, and it made people wonder when, or if, the cup would ever leave the country’s smallest state.

[sportsfan388]

I found this thread earlier this week and have enjoyed catching up on the history of your leagues. I can tell you have invested a lot of time! I look forward to your future posts!

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by sportsfan388

I found this thread earlier this week and have enjoyed catching up on the history of your leagues. I can tell you have invested a lot of time! I look forward to your future posts!

Hey thanks! Kind of funny how something I started just to pass time during Covid has become something that I keep building on now.

[tm1681]

NEW FOR 1897: THE FOUR-MAN PITCHING ROTATION!

For the last 10-15 years, the standard operating procedure of all the baseball leagues in existence has been for their teams to use a rotation of three pitchers. This made sense for several reasons:

• Pitching previously hadn’t put significant demands on the pitchers’ bodies.
• The 22-man roster limit meant teams weren’t keen on employing more than a handful of hurlers.
• The three-game series had become the standard across nearly all existing leagues.

However, as the number of games per season slowly increased across the leagues of the United States, so did the gradual demands on pitchers. For instance, the APBL started play in 1871 with a 90-game schedule, then switched to a 112-game schedule in 1884, and moved to its current 132-game schedule in 1890. While the underhanded soft-tossers of the inaugural season didn’t have any issues starting 45 games in their two-man rotations, the changes of 1884 that let pitchers throw as hard as they wanted to, and overhanded, meant that the starters of the 1890s were facing much more physical strain in having to start 40-45 games each.

There was also another problem: young pitcher angst. The fact that each team only had three regular pitchers, as opposed to eight position players, meant there were far fewer opportunities for prospects to develop. Many starters in the professional leagues didn’t get much of a chance to feature in a rotation until they were in their mid-20s, except for the very best prospects. Compare them to the best young position players, who would often get a chance to start at the highest level shortly after exiting their teenage years, and sometimes even before. Missouri’s Knud Van Steen is the best current example, as he started nearly twenty games at shortstop for the Bluebirds in the MWBL last year, and he did it as an 18-year-old the same year he was signed out of high school.

With these two problems in mind, a proposal was raised at the 1896 American Baseball Association offseason meetings: have every team switch to a four-man rotation. The idea was the pitchers would start every four days, and if there happened to be an off day in the middle of the rotation then pitcher #4 would be skipped. This would lessen the strain on pitchers’ arms over the course of a season while also giving more opportunities to younger hurlers.

The proposal was deemed reasonable enough, and the teams of the APBL and MWBA decided that the four-man rotation would be in use starting in 1897 (NOTE: in real life the four-man rotation was widely adopted starting around the turn of the 20th Century). The other two professional leagues, the Southeastern & Atlantic League and the Canadian Baseball League, quickly followed suit since their leagues had schedules nearly as long as the primary two.

The semi-professional leagues decided to hold off for the time being. Their seasons were 20-25 games shorter and they had less space on their reserve rosters, so the pitchers of leagues like the NYL weren’t physically punished as much and roster spots for them were more scarce.

Nonetheless, the four-man rotation was in, and it would probably be just a matter of time before it would be used everywhere.

[tm1681]

PROVIDENCE LOSES THEIR ACE BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER AS THEY WIN THEIR SIXTH STRAIGHT PRESIDENT’S CUP

The Providence Saints went into the 1896 APBL season being told that…surely…finally…this had to be the year that they would lose their grip on the President’s Cup.

The reason was simple: the second-place finishers in the Colonial Conference in 1896, Buffalo, figured that if they couldn’t beat Providence they’d just sign their talisman, two-time Hurler of the Year winner Charles Wilkerson, to a six-year contract. The move was seen as especially devious because just a couple of weeks earlier the Blues had traded star outfielder Appolonius Wilkins (29 y/o, 43.8 career WAR) to Providence for five prospects in order free up money and turn center field over to emerging star Mogens Markert. They then used the money saved in the trade with Providence to turn around and sign the Saints’ best ever pitcher.

Wilkerson was seen as even more important to the Saints’ fortunes than three-time APBL MVP Charley Rankin as Wilkerson joined Providence from the Philadelphia Quakers in November of 1891, meaning his signing coincided with the team’s five consecutive President’s Cup triumphs. Wilkerson wasn’t just Providence’s ace. Instead, he was the best pitcher in the APBL and viewed as the man whose arrival turned the Saints from a good team into a historically great one. His exit, combined with the expansion of pitching from three-man to four-man rotations left just about everyone figuring that, while still a very good team, the Saints were now beatable.

Wilkerson’s record during five years in Providence:





Honors & achievements include five President’s Cups (1892-96), one President’s Cup MVP (1895), two Hurler of the Year awards (1892-93), four times leading the APBL in pitching WAR, three strikeout championships, three thirty-win seasons, and an average of 31 wins per year.

For a good portion of the season, it looked like Buffalo could indeed prove to be the best team in the “C.C.” as they were in a three-way dogfight with Providence and Rochester after 90 games (PRO: 60-30, BUFF: 57-31, ROCH: 55-35). However, the Saints did what they always do and excelled during the final third of the schedule, going 34-8 over their final 42 games to leave Buffalo and Rochester 10+ games back in the standings when all was said and done.

As it turned out, retooling in the outfield and some excellent fortune in the pitching market led to the Saints winning more than 90 of their 132 games for the fifth time in the last six years (final record: 94-38). To start off the season, second-year Providence manager Malcolm Stocker moved the aforementioned Wilkins from CF to RF, inserted highly rated 23-year-old Frederick Hammond (purchased from Olympic B.B.C.) at CF, and moved RF of two and half years Henry Duncan to first base while keeping Daniel Snell at LF. The result was the best lineup in the APBL (collective Batting WAR of 37.8).

On the pitching side, the front office signed two journeymen to replace Wilkerson and fill out the rotation: Thomas Apple from Jersey City (28 y/o, two years a pro) and Grover Hildebrand from Detroit (32 y/o, pro career of 3 IP). Pitching Coach Albert Tierney worked wonders (NOTE: His "Teach Pitching" attribute is 183/200 and his Reputation is "Legendary") and both were shockingly good – Apple was 24-11 with a 2.47 ERA while Hildebrand was 18-6 with a 2.77 ERA. Hildebrand’s output was especially surprising, as he was never once a regular starter in eight years of semi-pro ball before pitching a handful of innings in the MWBA in 1896.

From there the Saints faced Excelsior in the President’s Cup for the second year in a row, and for the second year in a row they beat the Knights in five games. The series MVP was Brogan Williams, who was simply absurd – 13/22 (1.518 OPS), 5 runs, 3 doubles, 2 triples, 2 RBI, and 5 steals. Once again a mid-September parade and party was planned for Rhode Island’s biggest city, and the Saints had proven once and for all that they were baseball’s greatest dynasty.

[tm1681]

MILWAUKEE WINS THE LMC AGAIN, BUT “DER KAISER” IS FINALLY DETHRONED AS MWBA HURLER OF THE YEAR

On the face of it, 1897 was a typical year in the Midwestern Baseball Association. Milwaukee had the best record in the MWBA, the Eastern League had the most talent and best competition from top to bottom, and the Bavarians won a highly competitive Lincoln Memorial Cup – their third in four years. However, there was one major shock when it came time to give out the awards after the end of the season.

Hans Ehle was the favorite to win the Hurler of the Year award for the eighth year in a row, and it was long assumed that if Ehle were to be finally knocked off his sky-high perch it would be by Detroit ace Martin Kearns, nine times the MWBA strikeout king and five times the Hurler of the Year runner up. Indeed, Ehle had yet another amazing season for the MWBA champions: 27-11 with a 2.56 ERA while leading the MWBA in innings (341.2), complete games (33), K/BB ratio (2.9), and pitching WAR (11.5). Ehle’s pitching WAR title was his thirteenth in a row.

However, Ehle and Kearns were trumped by perhaps the best pro debut season by any pitcher since Ehle’s in 1885.

Going into the last half of the 1890s, Henry Danforth was widely believed to be the best pitcher in semi-professional baseball. To prove that reputation true he was making a pro starting rotation member’s wage – $2,100 per year – to play for the Cantabrigians in the NEBA as the league’s highest paid player by far. To really prove it, this was his semi-pro record as of the end of 1896:





He’d won three Hurler of the Year awards over the previous four seasons, and Danforth seemed content to stay in National Base Ball Organization leagues given that star hurlers in semi-pro ball who signed for ABA teams wound up glued to the bench as often as not. However, with the invent of the four-man rotation offering up increased jobs for pitchers, Danforth took a chance and signed with the Minneapolis Lakers in early December. For their part, the Lakers certainly didn’t think they were taking a big gamble as they signed Danforth to a five-year deal and immediately placed him in the #1 spot in the rotation.

How did Henry Danforth do in his first season at the sport’s highest level?

28-13, 2 SV, 2.07 ERA (175 ERA+), 50 G, 338.1 IP, 32 CG, 8 SHO, 63 BB, 170K, 1.13 WHIP, 2.7 K/BB, 9.2 WAR (6.1/225 IP)

It was easily the best debut season a for a hurler in one of the two American Baseball Association leagues outside of Hans Ehle’s, with Hawk Nielsen’s 1896 for Excelsior (27-13, 2.27 ERA, 8.3 WAR) the only one that came close. In contrast with Danforth’s 28-13 record, the Minneapolis Lakers were 37-50 when the decision wasn’t credited to him. Because Danforth led the MWBA in wins pitching for a team that was otherwise very mediocre and backed that up by leading the league in ERA, the 31-year-old was named MWBA Hurler of the Year. This meant that for the first time in the 1890s Hans Ehle – Der Kaiser – wasn’t given the award for the league’s best pitcher. The previous man to best Ehle for HotY was Detroit's Charlie Higgins in 1889, and it took a 28-5 record for a team that was the league champions by sixteen games for him to earn it that year.

It was going to take a season’s worth of historic-level performance to keep baseball’s most renowned pitcher from giving his annual award acceptance speech, and Henry Danforth did exactly that in 1897.

[tm1681]

THE PRAIRIE LEAGUE GOES TO A ONE-GAME PLAYOFF

During 1897, of the five semi-professional member leagues of the National Base Ball Organization the Prairie League had the most competitive season from top to bottom. Perhaps that was because the league had only ten teams instead sixteen or twenty like the Northeastern circuits, but the standings after the final day spoke for themselves:

Kansas: 61-47 (.565)
Wichita: 61-47 (.565)
Des Moines: 59-49 (.546, 2 GB)
Sioux City: 58-50 (.537, 3 GB)
Lincoln: 54-54 (.500, 7 GB)
Dubuque: 54-54 (.500, 7 GB)
Council Bluffs: 52-56 (.481, 9 GB)
St. Joseph: 51-57 (.472, 10 GB)
Davenport: 45-63 (.417, 16 GB)
So. Missouri: 45-63 (.417, 16 GB)

To contrast, in the NEBA’s eight-team New England Championship the Vermont Green Stockings (77-35) were forty-six games better than last-place Portland (31-81), and in the ten-team namesake side of the Northeastern League there was a forty-one game gap between #1 Philadelphia (71-43) and #10 Delaware (30-84).

In a league that relatively competitive, it should come as no surprise that the Prairie League championship had to be decided by a one-game playoff. What’s more: Wichita was chosen to host via a flip of the coin as the two teams tied for first place – the Wranglers and the Kansas Blue Stockings – won six of the twelve games against each other during the 108-game season.

So, the day after the end of the regular season in early September, the two Kansan members of the Prairie League squared off to decide who could boast of being the PL champions for 1897. The result: the Kansas Blue Stockings went home champions thanks to an outburst of six runs over the seventh and eighth innings.





The man named Player of the Game was Kansas starter Charles Pinkney, who didn’t have the best of seasons (15-20, 4.40 ERA, 1.72 WHIP) but came up huge with the PL title on the line, going the distance and striking out six Wichita batters while throwing 151 pitches. First baseman Harry McDonald also had a big game, going 3/5 with a stolen base and four RBI, including a bases-loaded double in the seventh inning that was the key point of the Blue Stockings’ late-game rally. Light-hitting catcher Dan Klingenhorn (.213 AVG, .567 OPS, -1.6 batting WAR) stunned the hosts by hitting a two-run homer in the top of the eighth that put the game away for Kansas.

The victory gave the Blue Stockings their first Prairie League championship since joining the PL in 1890. One more and they’ll catch up to the elder Kansan side they had just defeated.

[tm1681]

A PITCHING TRIPLE CROWN WINNER IN THE SEAL

The best league outside of the two ABA competitions, the Southeastern & Atlantic League, saw some pitching history made in 1897 as second-year starter Timothy Boyum of the Charleston Battery won the Pitching Triple Crown. His record for the season:

25-10, 2.52 ERA, 313.2 IP, 31 CG, 2 SHO, 56 BB, 169 K, 1.15 WHIP, 1.6 BB/9, 3.0 K/BB, 7.2 WAR

It wasn’t a particularly dominant season by pitching standards since the SEAL has been offense-heavy for three to four years (1897: .283 AVG, .725 OPS), but history is history nonetheless.

What made Boyum such a surprising Triple Crown winner was that he wasn’t highly regarded going into the season. The Canadian was signed by the Bunker Hill Cannons in the NEBA out high school in 1890 and never pitched for them before his release in the middle of the 1892 season. The Battery took a flyer on him, signed him to their Reserve Roster, and Boyum then didn’t pitch a single inning until he was moved into the three-man rotation during 1896. He was good (12-10, 2.98 ERA in 187 innings) but secondary metrics – 1.27 WHIP, 1.5 BB/9, 2.6 K/BB all led the SEAL – and a developing changeup showed him to be capable of taking a step further and supplanting Lloyd Eisner as the ace of the pitching staff.

The next season Boyum did just that, becoming the first Pitching Triple Crown winner in the thirteen-year history of the Southeastern & Atlantic League while helping lead Charleston, along with Charleston Kirk and Sullivan Nolan, to the SEAL championship by a handful of games.

[matttb324]

The logos and uniforms in this thread are just incredible. I really love baseball uniforms and read a book about baseball uniforms, must have been 20 years ago, called (I think?) Dressed to the Nines which this thread reminded me of...amazing stuff. If I understand correctly, there is no way in OOTP to view the players in full uniform except for the example player? That's kind of a shame, especially with uniforms like these...I hope they add in that ability in future versions.

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by matttb324

The logos and uniforms in this thread are just incredible. I really love baseball uniforms and read a book about baseball uniforms, must have been 20 years ago, called (I think?) Dressed to the Nines which this thread reminded me of...amazing stuff. If I understand correctly, there is no way in OOTP to view the players in full uniform except for the example player? That's kind of a shame, especially with uniforms like these...I hope they add in that ability in future versions.

You can actually visit a virtual Dressed to the Nines exhibit at the Baseball Hall of Fame's website:

http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.o...troduction.htm

[tm1681]

THE PHILADELHPIA PATRIOTS EXIT THE APBL – REPLACED BY THE NEL’S PHILADELPHIA TIGERS

During the offseason meetings after the end of the 1897 season, the Philadelphia Patriots became the second team to leave the APBL – the first being the Manhattan Orangemen in 1880. This happened due to numerous factors.

First, while Patriots were never particularly successful on the field they had become particularly bad over the last five years. This was their record over 27 seasons in the APBL:





Overall, their combined NBBO & APBL won-loss record as of the end of play in 1897 was 1283-1615, good for a measly .443 winning percentage. Their record over the past five seasons was 239-421. That’s a .362 win percentage, and their performance over that timespan resulted in four last-place finishes in the Metropolitan Conference while never being less than 32 games out of first place at the end of the season. The Patriots were consistently that poor even though they’d employed some of the best players in the sport over the years:

• Two time Hurler of the Year, five-time champ, and 300-game winner Charles Wilkerson spent the first six years of his career there.
• Five-time Team of the Year member and 1893 league MVP Lindsey Christensen had spent his whole career (12 years) with the team.
• Marcus Burkhart earned three Team of the Year nods during a decade in Philadelphia.
• The team employed ten-time Batsman of the Year Konrad Jensen in 1877 & ’78, finishing 3rd and 5th in the then ten-team league during his two seasons there.
• Catcher Carl Lowe earned three TotY nominations in five years (1778-82) after signing out of an indy league, then left as soon as he hit Free Agency.
• The Pats had career 300-game winner Leland Thurston (315 W, 92.0 WAR) for three years in his early 30s, but couldn’t keep him.
• They let Alex Silver leave via Free Agency after the minimum four years, and he proceeded to win 225 games & two HotY awards with the Knickerbockers.

In spite of employing such talent, their highest finish in the standings, even after the split into two conferences, had been third place. Even then, The Patriots only accomplished that three times in 27 years, and only twice were fewer than ten games out of first to end the season. Their entire history can be summarized with front offices that either didn’t know the quality of the talent they had or couldn’t surround the talent they knew they had with suitable players.

The team had become so bad in recent years that a common joke among the fanbase was that Patriots home games were exciting because you could go watch the opposing batters put on a show.

Another issue was money. Starting in 1883 the team was in the red fourteen out of fifteen years with the sole exception being 1896, when the team turned a modest profit while losing two thirds of their games. In four or five of those years the team suffered five-figure losses, which at the time would have been large enough to have to borrow money to pay the bills. While other teams in the APBL, and especially the M.C., didn’t mind having a team they knew they could reliably beat, what those teams’ front offices did mind was having to regularly loan money to another team so it could fulfill its basic obligations.

The third issue: there was another team in Philadelphia that could easily replace the Patriots if worst came to worst. While the third APBL team in Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Industrials, long had the same two issues the Patriots have had, there was an extremely successful semi-professional club based in the city: the Northeastern League's Philadelphia Tigers.





The Philadelphia Tigers joined the NBBO in 1871 as the baseball arm of the Philadelphia Tigers Social Club (NOTE: name taken from here), where apparently “cultured gentlemen” went to smoke cigars and discuss whatever it was such people liked to talk about. Whatever the social club was doing to back its baseball club worked, because after just three seasons the Tigers won the Tucker-Wheaton Cup. From there they were fairly successful until the NBBO split into three leagues, and after becoming a founding member of the Northeastern League they were consistently excellent:





Their NEL record altogether: 574-399 (.629), five Northeastern Division titles in eight years, and twice winners of the Adams Trophy. The team was well run, typically offsetting losses over one or two years by running profits over the next year or two. Also, their home venue of Broad Street Baseball Park could sit over 10,000, so the Tigers already had an APBL-ready venue.

What this meant was that in early October the owners of the APBL’s other fifteen clubs secretly asked the Tigers organization if they’d be willing to jump to professional baseball, waited for an affirmative response, and then at the Offseason Meetings told the Patriots to take a hike due to both poor performance and financial mismanagement. Not surprisingly, the Patriots took the Tigers’ place in the Northeastern League.

To shed salaries, prevent mutinies, and fund their future, the Patriots sold their best players. Lindsey Christenson went to Brooklyn for $5,000, 1894 TotY member Joseph Singer went to Boston for $4,150, and quality young first baseman Arthur Rousey (3.8 WAR in 1897) went to the Athletics for $3,500. The team was so talent-poor that much of the rest of the squad would fit in as quality players in the NEL without looking too good for the league.

For the Philadelphia Tigers, they had taken the final step in their evolution. Whereas they were once the side concern of a high-class gentlemen’s organization in the 1850s and 60s, they were now playing their baseball at the sport’s highest level.

[tm1681]

1898 BRINGS EXPANSION AND RECONFIGURAITON IN THE MWBA - THE TWO BEST PRO LEAGUES NOW EQUAL IN SIZE

The APBL wasn’t the only league that underwent changes ahead of the 1898 season. During the 1897 offseason the executives of the Midwestern Baseball Association were looking for two teams to add to the league in order to bring it up from fourteen to sixteen and make it equal in size to the senior pro circuit. While previous expansion teams came from the Prairie League - Kansas City, Minneapolis, Omaha, & St. Paul - this time the execs had a couple of teams from the Great Lakes Baseball Conference in mind.

By the end of the 1890s, the Ohioan cities of Columbus and Toledo had grown to be comfortably over 100,000 people each, and that meant they were big enough for MWBA baseball. While the Columbus Capitols and Toledo Mud Hens weren’t the only two notable teams in the GLBC, because of their market sizes they were really the only two teams the MWBA considered adding.

Toledo was an obvious fit on the face of it. Their city was big enough (131,822 as of 1900), their players had won thirteen major individual league awards in the GLBC (Batsman of the Year, Hurler of the Year, MVP), their venue held enough fans (8,100+) even if it was a bit small, and they’d won seven of the sixteen GLBC championships with an all-time record of 960-624 (.606). Columbus had the size (125,560 as of 1900) and their home park sat over 8,800, but success had eluded them. The Capitols had only finished in the top three twice in the history of the GLBC and their all-time record was under .500, so adding them would be placing a gamble that they could compete in the future due to market size.

The two newest MWBA teams:




The two teams were officially added to the MWBA roster at the 1897 Offseason Meetings, which put the MWBA at sixteen teams. However, Columbus and Toledo would be two of the cities furthest to the east of the league’s markets. Simply adding them to the Eastern League would make for nine teams in the EL and seven in the Western League, so the league had to think about how to balance things out. Initially the thought was to move Indianapolis to the Western League, but that would deprive them of games again main rival Louisville as well as contests against teams in two new markets that were relatively close. Then, a plan was floated to move one of the two Chicago teams – the Griffons or Lake Michigan Gales – to the Western League to set up the chance for an all-Chicago Lincoln Memorial Cup, but the two clubs quickly quashed that idea because they liked the extra gate receipts that came with intra-Chicago matchups. Finally, a plan was settled on that would see the two Chicago teams moved to the Western League while the Milwaukee Bavarians moved the other way.

The Bavarians ownership and front office weren’t at all keen on the league’s official idea, which made perfect sense given they’d won all eight Western League titles and four Lincoln Memorial Cups since the MWBA split in two for the 1890 season. There were also travel concerns since the presence of Lake Michigan meant games at Eastern League teams weren't just straight-line train trips from Milwaukee. However, a vote of 13-1 for the proposal meant Milwaukee was going to move to the more competitive Eastern League whether they liked it or not.

With the changes to the MWBA complete, it was now official that the two member competitions of the American Baseball Association were the same size and had the same configuration: sixteen teams split into a pair of eight-team divisions. This meant they could run the same schedule and start offseason business at the same time. This also meant that interleague trades were a possibility, and perhaps even an end-of-year series to see who the best pro team of all was wouldn’t be far off.

With regard to the Great Lakes Baseball Conference, they did what other leagues have done when member clubs have moved up to pro ball or switched leagues: they brought in highly regarded clubs from the amateur fold. The two were a pair of Illinois clubs from Chicago and Rockford. The Chicago club was the Cook County Railriders, founded in 1870 and named for the city’s railway and streetcar systems. The Rockford club was the Rockford Red Oaks, named after the city’s reputation as “The Forest City”.

The newest members of the GLBC:

[matttb324]

Thanks for the Dressed to the Nines link. very cool. Love the Philly Tigers logo, definitely matches the era...

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by matttb324

Thanks for the Dressed to the Nines link. very cool. Love the Philly Tigers logo, definitely matches the era...

You're welcome!

This is getting a bit into the weeds, but the Philly Tigers logo is a rotated and recolored alternate Clemson Tigers logo that they used decades ago and recently started to use again. The old-format jersey template I use has a "Wide Pinstripes" layer, so I figured that would be perfect for a tiger-themed team.

[tm1681]

ANOTHER EARLY STAR OF PRO BALL, EDWARD FITZSIMMONS, CALLS IT A CAREER

The 1897 MWBA season ended up being the twentieth as a professional for Edward Fitzsimmons, as well as the 42-year-old’s last.





"Fitzy" had a unique career in that it occurred during a three-decade span that started when the APBL played 90 games per season as the only pro league and ended with pro teams playing 130+ games per season in large markets all over the Eastern and Midwestern United States. The Massachusetts native’s career began in 1878 when he signed for the Brooklyn Kings after graduating from Boston College. From there he immediately became a superstar in the APBL and was a key part of four President’s Cup winners with the Kings (1879, 80, 83, 85) before joining the Boston Shamrocks as their replacement superstar when Alva Burgess made his famous move to Detroit in the MWBL. He won another P.C. in Boston (1887) before playing with Jacob Milburn in St. Louis for three seasons (1890-92), moving back to Boston (1893-94) and then playing his final three seasons as a diminished role player for the Kansas City Bulls (1895-97).

Like Edward Huntley before him, Fitzsimmons started his career as a hard-hitting shortstop with Golden Glove defense who transitioned to third base as his range started to decline, only to continue to rack up accolades on the left side of the infield at his new position. He never led the APBL or MWBA in any of the major batting categories, but his combination of batting and defense at a middle infield position made him one of the most valuable players in either league for the better part of fifteen years before Fitzsimmons’ skills started to fall off in his late 30s.

At the time of his retirement, Fitzsimmons stood as the third most award-decorated pro player, after Konrad Jensen and Alva Burgess. His WAR was tied with Alva Burgess for the all-time lead among retired position players who only played pro baseball, while both his eleven Team of the Year nominations and nine Golden Glove awards were records for retired professional infielders.

Fitzsimmons’ career record:





5x APBL President’s Cup winner (1879, 80, 83, 85, 87)
1x APBL President’s Cup MVP (1879)
1x APBL Most Valuable Player (1879)
11x Team of the Year at SS or 3B (9x APBL, 2x MWBA)
9x Golden Glove at SS or 3B (9x APBL, 2x MWBA) – professional record

85.2 WAR – tied for all-time lead among retired pro position players (Alva Burgess)
6.6 WAR per 162 games during career
Career Zone Rating of +360.7 over 2,055 games at SS/3B
9x league leader in Zone Rating at SS or 3B (7x APBL, 2x MWBA)
4x league leader in Position Player WAR (3x APBL, 1x MWBA)
1x APBL leader in Runs Batted In (1888: 77)
1x APBL leader in Total Bases (1887: 205)