Category: September

Sep 27: Browns fade to black

SEPTEMBER 27,  1953 | ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI – Befitting their history, the St. Louis Browns lost the final game they ever played on this date in 1953. Their loss to the Chicago White Sox in 11 innings was the 100th of the season. They left St. Louis that winter for Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

Until the team moved to Baltimore, where they remain, the franchise had a somewhat vagabond history. It was established in 1901 in Milwaukee as the Brewers – one of the charter franchises of the American League. The Brewers, not to be confused with the current Milwaukee Brewers, stayed a year. The team moved to St. Louis for the 1902 season and became the Browns, a name relinquished a few years earlier by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Confused? Suffice it to say, the Browns are now the Orioles and in Baltimore. The Brewers, who were the Seattle Pilots for one year, have been in Milwaukee since 1970, and the Cardinals remain where they’ve always been – St. Louis (unless you’re talking about the football Cardinals, but that’s a story for TODAYinFOOTBALL). And, oh, the Baltimore Orioles of 1901 – not to be confused with the current Orioles – moved to New York in 1903 and became the Highlanders (today’s Yankees).

Contributing sources:
September 27, 1953 box score/play-by-play
MLB team histories
Major League Baseball

Sep 24-Fixing the fix

SEPTEMBER 24, 1920 | NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK – An editorial in the New York Times on this date in 1920 admonished Major League Baseball to clean up its act in the wake of the Black Sox scandal. The message reminded baseball of “the financial value of honesty.” A few days earlier prosecutors in Chicago lent credence to rumors that several Chicago White Sox players took money to intentionally not play up to their abilities during the 1919 World Series. The New York Times editorial almost exactly a year after the ill-fated World Series reminded baseball of its own inflexibility with gambling when the National League was in its infancy in the late 1800s:

“Prompt action at almost the very beginning of National League history removed a group of players who made a business of ‘throwing’ games, and ever since then the average American has been as sure of the purity of the national sport as he was of the corruption of national politics, and as proud.”

The Times went on to say that by cracking down on gambling years earlier, baseball “realized that big profits and huge salaries” were only assured if the public had no suspicion games were fixed.

Despite eight members of the 1919 White Sox eventually being acquitted of taking money to lose the World Series, mainly because key evidence was lost, all eight were banned from baseball by commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis August 3, 1921.

Source:
New York Times, September 24, 1920

Sept 23: “Base-ball” evolves

SEPTEMBER 23, 1845 | NEW YORK, NEW YORK – The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York published the first known set of rules for the game of “base-ball” on this date in 1845. The club’s goal, under the leadership of Alexander Cartwright, was to codify and differentiate “base-ball” from similar games, such as “rounders,” “townball and “The New York Game.” 

Serious baseball historians, such as Leonard Koppett, author of Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball and John Thorn, author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden, The Secret History of the Early Game, are reluctant to call anyone “the father” of baseball, or any place its “birthplace.” Baseball wasn’t invented. It evolved. And historians agree, the game was not invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York.

It’s amazing how many rules laid down by the Knickerbocker Club more than 150 years ago remain with the game today, for example:

  • Four bases laid out in a diamond.
  • Bases are approximately 90 feet apart.
  • Balls hit outside of first or 3rd base are foul.
  • Three “hand” outs per inning.
  • Teams play an equal number of “hands,” or innings.
  • The striker (batter) must swing and miss three times to strike out.
  • On the third swinging strike, the “striker” (batter) may run to first if the catcher does not catch the ball before it hits the ground.
  • Runners may be put out by being tagged or forced.
    • A runner cannot be put out by “soaking” (hitting them with a thrown ball).
    • Throwing at a runner is prohibited.

Here are some differences between the Knickerbocker rules and today’s:

  • Foul balls were not considered strikes
  • The game continues until one team scores 21 “aces” (runs), (but only ends after an equal number of hands (innings) have been played.)
  • The ball must be pitched underhand.
  • A “striker” (batter) is out if a fair or foul ball is caught on the fly or the first bounce. All base runners may advance on a fair ball caught on the first bounce.
  • There are no called strikes.

Contributing sources:
Knickerbocker Rules
Koppett’s Concise History of Major League Baseball, by Leonard Koppett, 1998, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York.
Baseball in the Garden of Eden, The Secret History of the Early Game, by John Thorn, 2011, Simon & Schuster
Encyclopedia Britannica-Baseball

Sep 22: Rumors of a fix

SEPTEMBER 22, 1920 | CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – By the fall of 1920 rumors that the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series were rampant, but nobody was in trouble, until today. A prosecutor in Chicago heard enough grand jury testimony on this date in 1920 to say the 1919 World Series between the Sox and the Cincinnati Reds “was not played on the square.” Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle went on to say, “From five to seven players on the White Sox are involved.” Replogle wouldn’t say what the evidence was, but it later surfaced that nine “Black” Sox took money from gamblers in exchange for intentionally losing World Series games. Underdog Cincinnati went on to win the series 5 games to 3 (the series was best of nine in those days).

Eight White Sox players were indicted and put on trial in 1921:
Joe (Shoeless Joe) Jackson
Eddie Cicotte
George (Buck) Weaver
Fred McMullin
Charles Risberg
Oscar (Happy) Felsh
Arnold (Chick) Gandil
Claude Williams

Thanks to the “mysterious” disappearance of incriminating evidence against them, all were acquitted. Baseball’s first Commissioner, former federal judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis, however, wanted to make a dramatic statement to rid the game of any hint of gambling so he banned the players for life. None ever played major league baseball again.

Over the years, supporters of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Buck Weaver tried to clear their names. Jackson admitted taking money but denied throwing any games.  Buck Weaver denied taking any money or letting up during the Series, but Judge Landis banned him for not speaking up about what he knew. Their names were never cleared.

CONTRIBUTING SOURCES:
New York Times, September 23, 1920, Page 17, “Says 1919 World’s Series was fixed,”

The Shoeless Joe Jackson Society
Joe Jackson Grand Jury testimony

Sep 21: Out of left field

SEPTEMBER 21, 1888 | CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – According to Mark Lamster‘s book, Spalding’s World Tour, three Chicago White Stockings (later known as the Cubs) players were arrested on this date in 1888 for flirting with Mrs. Seth Blood, the proprietor of a house just beyond the wall at old West Side Park. Word of the “flirting” apparently got back to husband Seth, and the next thing you know the police started arresting people. What kind of “house” Mrs. Blood ran was was never clarified.

West Side Park, or West Wide Grounds, as it was sometimes referred to, was located near what is now Cook County Hospital, just south of the Eisenhower Expressway on Chicago’s west side. Until 2016, it was the site of the last Chicago Cubs World Series championship in 1908. There were actually two different parks on the site, one from roughly 1885 to 1891, and a second West Side Park from 1893 to 1915.

West Side Park is also said to be the origin of the saying “that came out of left field,” meaning preposterous, irrational or crazy. As the story goes, just beyond the left field fence of the ball park in the early 1900’s was a mental hospital called the Neuropsychiatric Institute. Irrational comments could be heard emanating from the insane asylum, as it was referred to at the time, hence the idiom, “that came out of left field.”

Contributing sources:
Spalding’s World Tour, by Mark Lamster, 2006, published by Public Affairs, New York
West Side Park
Chicago Sun-Times, April 2, 2006, by Mark Hoekstra