Baltimore Orioles (19th century) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Baltimore Orioles were a 19th-century American Association

American Association (19th century)

The American Association was a Major League Baseball league that existed for 10 seasons from to . During that time, it challenged the National League for dominance of professional baseball...

and National League

National League

The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League , is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball, and the world's oldest extant professional team sports league. Founded on February 2, 1876, to replace the National Association of Professional...

team from 1882

1882 in baseball

-Champions:*National League: Chicago def. Providence 5 games to 4*American Association: Cincinnati Red Stockings*League Alliance: New York MetropolitansInterleague*Chicago vs. Cincinnati tie 1 game each*Chicago def...

to 1899

1899 in baseball

-National League final standings:-Events:*May 15 - Willie Keeler, known as one of the smallest players and best bunters in baseball, drives the ball past startled left fielder Ed Delahanty of the Philadelphia Phillies for an inside-the-park grand slam and an 8–5 victory for the Brooklyn...

. The club, which featured numerous future Hall of Famers, finished in first place three consecutive years (1894–1896) and won the Temple Cup

Temple Cup

The Temple Cup was a trophy awarded to the winner of a best-of-seven, post-season championship series in the National League, from 1894–1897. The 30-inch-high silver cup was donated by coal, citrus, and lumber baron William Chase Temple, the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time...

championship in 1896 and 1897. Despite their success, the Orioles were contracted out of the league after the 1899 season.

History

The team was founded in 1882

1882 in baseball

as a charter member of the American Association

American Association (19th century)

The American Association was a Major League Baseball league that existed for 10 seasons from to . During that time, it challenged the National League for dominance of professional baseball...

, which was then a major league. After several years of mediocrity, the team dropped out of the league in 1889

1889 in baseball

-Champions:*World Series: New York Giants 6, Brooklyn Bridegrooms 3*National League: New York Giants*American Association: Brooklyn Bridegrooms-National League final standings:-American Association final standings:-National League statistical leaders:...

, but re-joined in 1890

1890 in baseball

-Champions:*World Series: Brooklyn Bridegrooms 3, Louisville Colonels 3, 1 tie*National League: Brooklyn Bridegrooms*American Association: Louisville Colonels*Players' League: Boston RedsInter-league playoff: Brooklyn declined challenge by Boston...

to replace the last-place Brooklyn Gladiators

Brooklyn Gladiators

The Brooklyn Gladiators were a Major League Baseball team in the American Association during the 1890 season. They finished ninth and last in the league with a 26-73 record....

club which had dropped out during the season. After the Association folded, the Orioles joined the National League in 1892

1892 in sports

1892 in sports describes the year's events in world sport.-American football:College championship* College football national championship – Yale BulldogsEvents...

. The beginnings of what was to become a legendary team can be traced to June 1892, when Harry Von der Horst

Harry Von der Horst

Harry Von der Horst was an executive in Major League Baseball and a former owner of the Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas. He was one of the principal founders and owners of the old 19th century Baltimore Orioles ballclub and when the team was running out of steam he managed to engineer a...

hired Ned Hanlon to manage the Orioles, giving him stock in the team and full authority over baseball operations. Ned moved his growing family to a house that stood a block away from Union Park.

After two years finishing near the bottom of the league, the Orioles won three consecutive pennants with several future Hall of Famers under player/manager Ned Hanlon from 1894

1894 in baseball

-Champions:*Temple Cup: New York Giants defeated Baltimore Orioles, 4 games to 0*National League: Baltimore Orioles-National League final standings:-Events:...

to 1896

1896 in baseball

-Champions:*Temple Cup: Baltimore Orioles defeated Cleveland Spiders, 4 games to 0*National League: Baltimore Orioles-Statistical leaders:*Batting: Jesse Burkett .410*Home Runs: Ed Delahanty & Bill Joyce 13*Wins: Kid Nichols 30*ERA: Billy Rhines 2.46...

. They followed up the title run with two consecutive second-place finishes. Accordingly, they participated in all four editions of the Temple Cup

Temple Cup

series, winning the final two in 1896 and 1897. After the team's 1898 second-place finish, Hanlon and most of the team's stars (though not John McGraw or Wilbert Robinson

Wilbert Robinson

Wilbert Robinson , nicknamed "Uncle Robbie", was an American catcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball...

) were moved across to the Brooklyn Dodgers of the National League

National League

by the joint ownership of the clubs.

Following a fourth-place finish in 1899, the National League eliminated four teams from the circuit, the Orioles among them. First-year player/manager John McGraw followed through on his threats to abandon the NL and form a club in the rival American League

American League

The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, or simply the American League , is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league based in the Great Lakes states, which eventually aspired to major...

, doing so beginning in . (Those newly formed Orioles only stayed in Baltimore for two seasons before moving to New York and becoming the Highlanders

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

and eventually the New York Yankees

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

.)

A high-minor league franchise in the Eastern League

International League

The International League is a minor league baseball league that operates in the eastern United States. Like the Pacific Coast League and the Mexican League, it plays at the Triple-A level, which is one step below Major League Baseball. It was so named because it had teams in both the United States...

filled the void left by the Orioles in 1903, including local product and future baseball icon Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth

George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...

, but top-level professional baseball would not return to Baltimore until the St. Louis Browns

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles are a professional baseball team based in Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. They are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball's American League. One of the American League's eight charter franchises in 1901, it spent its first year as a major league...

relocated to the city in .

Ballpark

The Orioles played briefly at the old Oriole Park

Oriole Park

Oriole Park is the name of several former major league and minor league baseball parks in Baltimore, Maryland.It is also half the name of the current home of the Baltimore Orioles of the American League, its full name being Oriole Park at Camden Yards....

, in Harwood at 29th and Barclay Streets, from 1890 to 1891. (The 1901 AL Orioles-turned-Highlanders

New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...

would play at the site a decade later.) During the 1891 season, the Orioles moved a few blocks away to Union Park

Union Park

Union Park is the name of a former baseball ground located in Baltimore, Maryland. The ground was home to the Baltimore Orioles during their first "glory years" in the 1890s. It was located at 25th and Barclay St....

on 25th Street, where they would play until they were removed from the NL after the 1899 season. For further info see List of baseball parks in Baltimore, Maryland.

Stars

The original Orioles were one of the most storied teams in the history of the game. Managed by Ned Hanlon, they won NL pennants in 1894

1894 in sports

-American football:College championship* College football national championship – Penn Quakers, and Yale Bulldogs Events* The 1894 Harvard–Yale game, known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath", results in crippling injuries for four players; the contest is suspended until 1897. The annual Army–Navy...

, 1895

1895 in sports

-American football:College championship* College football national championship – Penn Quakers and Yale Bulldogs Events* 3 September – the earliest known professional football game is played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania where Latrobe YMCA defeats the Jeannette Athletic Club 12–0.-Association...

and 1896

1896 in sports

-American football:College championship* College football national championship – Lafayette Leopards and Princeton Tigers -Association football:England...

, and sported some of the most colorful players in history including John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler

Willie Keeler

William Henry Keeler in Brooklyn, New York, nicknamed "Wee Willie", was a right fielder in professional baseball who played from 1892 to 1910, primarily for the Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas in the National League, and the New York Highlanders in the American League.- Biography :Keeler's...

, Hughie Jennings

Hughie Jennings

Hugh Ambrose Jennings was a Major League Baseball player and manager from 1891 to 1925. Jennings was a leader, both as a batter and as a shortstop, with the Baltimore Orioles teams that won National League championships in 1894, 1895, and 1896. During the three championship seasons, Jennings had...

, Joe Kelley

Joe Kelley

Joseph James Kelley was an American left fielder in Major League Baseball who starred in the outfield of the powerful Baltimore Oriole teams of the 1890s.-Career:...

, Wilbert Robinson

Wilbert Robinson

Wilbert Robinson , nicknamed "Uncle Robbie", was an American catcher, coach and manager in Major League Baseball...

, and Dan Brouthers

Dan Brouthers

Dennis Joseph "Dan" Brouthers was an American first baseman in Major League Baseball whose career spanned the period from to , with a brief return in...

.

They were rough characters who practically invented "scientific" baseball, the form of baseball played before the home run

Home run

In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to reach home safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team in the process...

became the norm in the 1920s. Like the style known today as "small ball

Small Ball

In the sport of baseball, small-ball is an informal and colloquial term for an offensive strategy in which the batting team emphasizes placing runners on base and then advancing them into position to score a run in a deliberate, methodical way...

", the "inside baseball" strategy of Orioles featured tight pitching

Pitcher

In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throwsthe baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw a walk. In the numbering system used to record defensive plays, the...

, hit and run

Hit and run (baseball)

A hit and run is a high risk/high reward offensive strategy used in baseball.When the offense has a baserunner on first base , the runner on first breaks for second as the pitch is thrown...

tactics, stolen base

Stolen base

In baseball, a stolen base occurs when a baserunner successfully advances to the next base while the pitcher is delivering the ball to home plate...

s, and precise bunting. One such play, where the batter deliberately strikes the pitched ball downward onto the infield surface with sufficient force such that the ball rebounds skyward, allowing the batter to reach first base safely before the opposing team can field the ball, remains known as a Baltimore Chop

Baltimore Chop

The Baltimore Chop was a hitting technique used by batters during Major League Baseball's dead-ball era which was an important element of John McGraw's "Inside baseball." Popularized by and named after the original Baltimore Orioles, the batter would intentionally hit the ball downward to the hard...

.

Matt Kilroy

Matt Kilroy

Matthew Aloysius Kilroy was an American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-Rookie season:...

pitched a no-hitter

No-hitter

A no-hitter is a baseball game in which one team has no hits. In Major League Baseball, the team must be without hits during the entire game, and the game must be at least nine innings. A pitcher who prevents the opposing team from achieving a hit is said to have "thrown a no-hitter"...

for the Orioles on October 6, 1886. Bill Hawke

Bill Hawke

William Victor "Bill" Hawke was an American Major League Baseball player who pitched for three seasons, all in the National League, with a career record of 32 wins and 31 losses.-Career:...

threw one on August 16, 1893, the first from the modern pitching distance of 60 feet, 6 inches. Jay Hughes

Jay Hughes

James Jay Hughes was an American Major League Baseball pitcher, who played four seasons from to .Hughes was born in Sacramento, California...

threw a no-hitter for the Orioles on April 22, 1898.

Tricky and dirty play

What one might call the tricky, dirty or “anti-social behavior” on the field, of the 1890 Orioles, was chronicled and quantified at length in a 2005 book, Cap Anson 3: Muggsy John McGraw and the Tricksters: Baseball's Fun Age of Rule Bending.

One of the book’s strongest conclusions is that “in amount of vile language, they were perhaps three times as bad as any other team.” A main reason is that they had John McGraw. In 1899, the Pittsburg [sic] Times said McGraw off the field is “one of the most pleasing gentlemen playing professional ball. He is not in the least swelled over his position and can intelligently discuss the game from any point.” On the field, though, he becomes “so wrapped up in the sport that for the time being he makes breaks that he would never think of at other times.’’

Around that time, National League President Nicholas E. “Nick” Young, while roasting McGraw's treatment of umpires, said he respected his playing. Also, McGraw is “well read, witty, and brilliant and makes many bright points in his conversation.’’ And, he said, McGraw pays his fines promptly.

“Flying spikes” rhetoric about the 1890s Orioles – meaning that they went around spiking other players and even umpires—may have helped solidify their reputation as among the baddest teams in the sport’s history, but the contemporaneous record does not support it.

One of a series of articles in 1934 under McGraw’s byline in a magazine named Liberty, but written by Edgar Forest Wolfe, contained prose about using spikes to intimidate: “On that old Baltimore club we used to keep a row of files hanging on the wall back of a bench just outside the visiting players’ dressing rooms, and as the visiting team came out to start its practice we’d be sitting there sharpening up our spikes.”

The 2005 book found no 1890s reporter who said the Orioles tried to intimidate opponents that way. The book concluded, “Surely, an opposing player would have had a funny story to tell about that to a non-Baltimore newspaper. No such story seems to exist. Recaps in the 1890s, including from the newspapers of Baltimore’s opponents, show one deliberate spiking by a star Oriole in the entire decade. That was by McGraw against Cincinnati’s Arlie Latham in July 1893, and he did so after a play was over, by putting his foot on Latham’s hand. He did not draw blood.”

Instead of “flying spikes,” it was really “flying mouths” that most made the 1890s Orioles stand out.

In 1896, retired pitcher Jimmy “Pud” Galvin said that as a player, “I never heard such disgusting and vile language as [Cleveland’s Patsy] Tebeau, [Jack] O’Connor and several of the Baltimore players’’ are now using. He added, “I am astonished that a quiet, unassuming fellow like [Baltimore manager] Ned Hanlon ever tolerated it in his club. Of course there were players in the old days who lost their temper and swore at the umpire, but they didn’t carry it to extremes.’’

In 1895, after a Baltimore game at Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette had said, “It’s very funny to see the Baltimore players scrap and jaw with each other when a ball gets away. Yesterday [Steve] Brodie, [Joe] Kelley and [Willie] Keeler had a grand jawing match in the outfield.’’ In vain the following day, Brodie tried to stop a ball with his feet. Kelley, Keeler, Hughie Jennings, Kid Gleason and McGraw "all began telling Brodie what a lovely dub he was, that he should go back to carrying the hod [manual labor], etc. Brodie got mad and gave them just as good as he got."

McGraw is said to have sometimes held a runner’s belt to keep him from scoring, but the 2005 book found no contemporaneous reporting on the subject.

Other stories the book deemed funny, but not confirmed by contemporaneous coverage, include a claim, first made by J. Raymond "Jim" Price in Baseball Magazine in 1910, that the following took place during an 1896 Brooklyn game at Baltimore. With the bases full, shortstop Jennings threw a ball wildly to the plate. After striking a pebble, the ball landed in a water bucket on the field. Catcher Wilbert Robinson, in sticking his hand in the bucket, first produced a sponge. He tossed the sponge to pitcher Sadie McMahon covering home, who "put the sponge, still soaked, on [runner] Mike Griffin, who came sliding in desperately. Mike walked to the bench looking like a drowned rat."

The 2005 book did unearth a tin can story from 1900, by imaginative writer Charles Dryden, that loosely resembled the above. Dryden said Cincinnati, a few years earlier, lost an exhibition game at Maysville, Ky., when a fly ball to the outfield became lodged in a tin can. With the ball inside, the fielder threw the can. Can in hand, a Cincinnati player tagged a runner with it, and the umpire called him safe. The umpire’s reasoning was that the ball itself had not touched the runner. Dryden wrote, "“Of course, the visiting [Cincinnati] players were very indignant, and [Cincinnati first baseman] Jake Beckley declared that if the time ever came when professional ball players had to carry can openers on the field he would quit the business. One of [Cincinnati coacher-nonplayer] Arlie Latham’s jobs at exhibition games this [sic] year was to hunt around and throw all tin cans over the fence before play was called."

Also dismissed in the 2005 book for not having been reported on contemporaneously is a story that may have first appeared in Fred Lieb’s “The Humorous Side of Baseball’’ in Baseball Magazine in 1921. In his 1955 The Baltimore Orioles, Lieb says Price is his source for the following. When St. Louis's Tommy Dowd hit a ball to left center field, the runner at first, Joe Quinn, ran to third. Using a hidden ball, outfielder Joe Kelley threw him out, with McGraw catching the throw. "But just as the single umpire was about to call Quinn out, [fellow outfielder] Brodie, who had pursued the real ball to the fence, whipped it in, rather botching this inside play.’’ The end of the story is, “After an argument, the umpire forfeited the game to St. Louis.’’

Lieb, the 2005 book concludes, was on firmer ground in his 1950 The Baseball Story, when he wrote that manager Hanlon “instructed the groundkeeper to keep the grass high in the outfield, and balls were planted in the thick grass. A visiting player would hit into the deep underbrush, and Keeler or Kell[e]y would come up with one of the planted balls, hold the hit to a single, or cut down the base runner at second." The 2005 book noted that, "While Baltimore's outfield grass was definitely high at times, as contemporaneous reports show, the contemporaneous record does not support any claim of ball planting.”

First United States soccer champions

In the 1890s the major Baseball franchises were keen to find ways to keep their venues, and players active in the winter months. One solution was to launch a National soccer league containing the same teams names as, and even some players from its Baseball parent. Soccer was growing rapidly in popularity in the United States at the time but a combination of poor advertising, low media coverage, midweek kick off times and most importantly, the failure of the Baseball stars of the day turning up, as promised, to try their hand at the kicking game, led to attendances rarely growing above 1,000 per game. When all was said and done Baltimore were declared champions and despite positivity from owners and fans alike, a second championship was never organised and the first of several false dawns for American soccer came to an end.

External links

Team index at Baseball Reference
Excerpt from Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life And Untimely Death Of The Original Baltimore Orioles by Burt Solomon at BaseballLibrary.com

Sources

Solomon, Burt (1999), Where They Ain't: The Fabled Life And Untimely Death Of The Original Baltimore Orioles. New York, NY: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-85451-1

Rosenberg, Howard W. (2005); Cap Anson 3: Muggsy John McGraw and the Tricksters: Baseball’s Fun Age of Rule Bending. Arlington, VA: Tile Books. ISBN 0-9725574-2-3

History

Ballpark

Stars

Tricky and dirty play

First United States soccer champions

External links

Sources

See also