A "Minor" League?
More on the 1900 American League
I grew up believing that having two major leagues was inevitable, as if it were a basic fact of life.
As we saw yesterday, of course, none of this had to be. The birth of the American League was largely the result of Ban Johnson’s aggressive strategy.
And it all started with the Chicago White Stockings.
1900 American League
The American League entered 1900 with new teams in Cleveland and Chicago, having moved away from Grand Rapids and St. Paul:
And this was the actual first game in Chicago’s American League history:
A “Minor” League?
Here’s the boxscore from that game:
Now, I want you to pay attention to the names on that Chicago team. Compare them to the boxscore I posted yesterday, from Chicago’s first American League game in 1901:
I say this in an effort to dispel this idea that the 1900 American League was a minor league not worth any attention. In fact, some of the original Chicago White Stockings wound up playing in the American League for several years. Take a look at this, from Baseball Reference:
This is the 1900 Chicago White Stockings roster. Of the 23 players on the roster, 22 of them (every player in bold) had a major league career, either before or after 1900 (in some cases, both before and after).
And don’t think this was just a Chicago phenomenon! The 1900 Minneapolis Millers roster looks like this:
I’m no expert on baseball in this era — and yet there are some players here that even I recognize, particularly Zaza Harvey and Fred Jacklitsch.
Having said that — is there really a good reason to discount the 1900 American League as a “minor” league? That Chicago roster, in particular, is not all that different from the 1901 Chicago American League team, which also won the pennant.
Kings of Chicago
Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know any of this about the 1900 American League. I didn’t.
In fact, it wasn’t until I started doing original newspaper research for my 1900 National League replay a few years ago that I realized just how big the American League was in Chicago.
Unfortunately, nobody (that I’m aware of) has taken the time to compile Chicago’s home attendance data in 1900. However, a cursory glance at the numbers that were reported show that the White Stockings were averaging around 2,000 to 3,000 fans a game, with a few major showings like this:
Now, 10,000 is probably an exaggeration — but probably not as much of an exaggeration as you might think.
In contrast, the National League crowd a week later was apparently much more modest:
That was 5,000 supporters on a Saturday, for a team still in the pennant race (Chicago was 41-41 after this loss, in 4th place and 11 1/2 games behind Brooklyn) playing against the National League champions after a long home stretch.
Even with all that, it seems that the “minor” American League team was drawing better crowds.
In the beginning, the National League team took the more prominent position in the sports page, on the leftmost side. By September, though, the positions had reversed as the National League team faltered:
You did read right, by the way: the pennant-bound White Stockings apparently drew 9,000 for this Monday afternoon game.
Johnson’s experiment, in short, was a huge success.
Dirty Play
Now, you can’t read anything about the 1900 National League without coming across descriptions of just how dirty the Brooklyn team was.
The reports you’ve undoubtedly heard about Ban Johnson wanting to turn baseball into a more family friendly game are true. And it’s no wonder, considering stories like this:
The article is just as compelling:
Brooklyn, which had won the 1899 National League pennant, emerged victorious again in 1900, though there is a reason why Brooklyn baseball fans tend not to remember those years. The team was dirty, filled with thuggish ballplayers who made a mockery of the game.
I mean, could you imagine something like this happening today?
This wasn’t a random game in the middle of the summer, mind you. This was one of those hard-nosed Brooklyn-New York games that time forgot, played in late September while Brooklyn was battling it out with Pittsburgh for the pennant.
Since it’s The Sun, the writing is simply superb:
Brooklyn had such a rowdy team that even the Brooklyn newspapers were dismayed:
You’ll notice that Brooklyn not only couldn’t sell out a game against its rival in the heat of the pennant race, but that most of the fans seem to have been Giants fans.
The description of the fight is also interesting:
And that wasn’t all:
Now, if you were Ban Johnson, and you knew that the reigning National League champions were a party to scenes like this, you would be licking your lips in anticipation.
There are so many examples of this, particularly in September 1900, that I can’t begin to list them all here. Every couple of games that Brooklyn played resulted in some sort of fight.
Legacy
Among the forgotten tidbits about the 1900 American League is James Hart’s late-season challenge:
The original challenge, as alluded to in this article, was to have both Chicago teams play each other. Hart, knowing very well that the American League season was going to end on September 18, proposed a series of exhibition games for October.
The American League couldn’t agree to the challenge, even with the condition that any American League player could take part. This is because the season was already over, and the clubs had disbanded.
It makes you wonder how serious Hart’s proposal really was. At any rate, we came very close to having an early “World Series,” one that would have at least given us an idea of how good the 1900 American League really was.
And, hey — if somebody does finally do the research necessary to put together complete 1900 American League statistics, maybe we can make that dream a reality.