For much of the 1894 season, the legendary Red Stockings of Cincinnati were --
meh. It looked like they might not make the Centennial Cup playoffs for the first time since the tournament began in 1875. But they rebounded, made the playoffs, and took their eighth Cup. So, when the Reds started slow in 1895, hanging at mid-table by the end of May, there wasn't much cause for concern in the Queen City: the club would turn things around, maybe win another Cup, right?
Right?
In June, it all started to come apart when Cincy lost 21 of 28 games, including six in a row, to push the club down near the dreaded relegation zone. Then, they lost 14-11 in Detroit on the fourth of July, kicking off a fifteen-game losing streak, putting the Red Stockings firmly in 19th place -- just ahead of the hopeless White Sox.
The league was in a horrible position: would they really relegate the defending Centennial Cup champions? And not just
any Cup champions, but the
Red Stockings? Just a year after cashiering the equally legendary Forest Citys of Cleveland...? Newly-appointed Commissioner of Baseball Jim Creighton met with the club owners in August, but, unsurprisingly, they were not very sympathetic to the Cincinnati club who had been beating them, again and again, for two decades. Also, they were annoyed that the
other Stockings -- the
White ones -- were about to use their relegation exemption for the fourth straight year.
So, Creighton made two announcements: (1) no club would be allowed to use a relegation exemption for more than five consecutive years; and (2) no defending Centennial Cup winner could be relegated against its will. These new rules would take effect in...1896. So, the Reds were doomed, at least for 1895, if they didn't right the ship. They managed to play near-.500 ball for the rest of the year, but it wasn't enough: 18th-place Cincinnati would drop down to the American Association, along with one of their long-time rivals, Tri Mountain of Boston, and the Dayton Veterans, who had been promoted just the year before.
Meanwhile, at the
top of the table, the Brooklyn Eckfords, AA pennant winners two years earlier, grabbed the National flag, six games in front of Fort Wayne. Toronto brought Cup playoffs back to the Dominion with a 8-2 win over Newark in a one-game playoff:
In the American, the Phillies took the top spot and ensured they would be the second team from the City of Brotherly Love to play in the top tier in '95. Another surprise was the Forest City club, whose fans fully expected the Clevelands to quickly return to the NA -- but they only finished in
ninth, and they needed to win eight of their last ten just to get that high:
And in the Union Association, the incredible Pete O'Brien crushed 45 homers and drove in 172 runs, leading Fall River to their first pennant:
