| | They were, in baseball historian Lee Allen's words, "the sorriestshell of a team ever seen in the major leagues." They lost 24games in a row, had six streaks of 11 or more losses, andfinished a record 84 games behind the league leaders. They wononly half as many games as the 1962 New York Mets, usuallyconsidered the worst team of this century. They spent the lasthalf of the season on the road, afraid to appear in front oftheir hometown "fans". No, they weren't the 1991 edition of the Cleveland Indians. They were a Cleveland team, however. The 1899 Cleveland Spiders of the National League were so badthat a local sports writer named Elmer Bates wrote half of aprehistoric Top Ten list to describe the good points of followingsuch a terrible team: - There is everything to hope for and nothing to fear.
- Defeats do not disturb one's sleep.
- An occasional victory is a surprise and a delight.
- There is no danger of any club passing you.
- You are not asked 50 times a day, "What was the score?" People take it for granted that you lost.
Make no mistake, the 1899 Spiders had it all; bad players, bad management, and bad ownership. Bates claimed that the players became so shell-shocked by losing that "theypracticed for dear life". Only once did the team win two in a row, which enriched some gamblers given four-to-one odds against such an event ever happening. The ownership of the club spent so much time insulting the Cleveland fans that the total attendance for the first 16 home games was 3,179. When attendance dipped in 1898, the owners announced that the fans did not deserve a winner, and that they intended to "punish" the fans by moving home games to other cities. What happened to the team that had won the Temple Cup, predecessor to the modern World Series, only four years before? How could a team that employed Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in baseball history, and other magnificent players manage to win only 20 of their 154 games?
 This photo of the Spiders was taken in 1895, the year they won the Temple Cup.
The late 1890s were turbulent times for baseball and for the country. Attendance suffered everywhere due to the Spanish-American War, an economic recession, and increased rowdyism among fans and players.The National League had driven all competitors out of business and operated under a clumsy 12-team structure. The bottom four teams of the league, including Cleveland, suffered from poor play and attendance. Sunday baseball was still controversial, and in 1897 the Cleveland and Washington teams had been arrested and jailed for playing on Sunday. Denied large Sunday crowds, the Spiders in 1898 shifted many Sunday games to other cities, and wound up playing all their games on the road in the last half of the season. The final blow to Cleveland baseball came early in 1899. Frank Robison, Cleveland owner, bought the St. LouisBrowns at a sheriff's auction and decided that a good team would draw better in St. Louis than in Cleveland. He then transferred all of Cleveland's stars to the Browns, which he arrogantly renamed the Perfectos. Pitching great Cy Young, batting champion Jesse Burkett, and all the other Spiders stars were replaced by minor-leaguers and semi-pros. Other teams followed Robison's lead; the Brooklyn Dodgers bought the Baltimore Orioles, absorbed their best players, and renamed themselves the Superbas. Four different teams held stock in the New York Giants. Ownership of major-league teams represented a jumble of conflicting allegiances which resulted in the weaker teams serving as farm teams for the stronger ones. Robison put his brother Stanley in charge of the Cleveland branch of his baseball business, and Stanley angered the Spiders fans by announcing hisintention to "operate the team as a sideshow." Perhaps the only good player left on the team was Lave Cross, who played third base and managed the team. On Opening Day, the Spiders drew fewer than 500 fans for a doubleheader. They lost both games, and the disaster was on. After the first 38 games the Spiders had 30 losses, and Manager Cross was relieved of command and exiled to St. Louis. This would be the high point of the season, because the Spiders won only 12 of their remaining 116 games. After this the Spiders transferred all their home games to opponents' cities, and played no more in Cleveland.
The players left behind in the exodus to St. Louis compiled some of the worst statistics ever seen in the game. Pitcher Jim Hughey led the staff in wins with 4 while losing 30 games, 16 of them in a row. Charlie Knepper also won 4 and lost 22, Frank Bates won one and lost 18, Fred (Crazy) Schmitt was 2-17. Willie Sudhoff lost 27 games for St. Louis in 1898 and found himself demoted to the Spiders for 1899. He won 3 of his 11 games for the Spiders, good enough to earn his ticket back to St. Louis, where he won 13 more games before the season ended. His replacement, Frank Bates, lost 4, won 1, then lost 14 in a row. The team hit only 12 home runs, while former Spider star Bobby Wallace hit 12 by himself for St. Louis.On July 15, 1899, the Spiders accomplished the rare feat of playing a doubleheader against the Orioles without scoring a run, losing 10-0 and 5-0. The Spiders allowed more than 8 runs per game while scoring only 3 per game themselves. Second baseman Joe Quinn, appointed manager after Cross' firing, batted .286 and led the league in fielding at his position, but other promising players were quickly shuttled to the Perfectos. The Spiders wound up the season losing a record 87 percent of their games. Baltimore, the other decimated team, had managed to hide some of their good players from their Brooklyn parent club and surprised the league by running in the first division. In June, Baltimore pitcher Jerry Nops showed up for a game against Cleveland with a hangover and was battered for one of the Spiders' few wins. Orioles manager John McGraw fined and suspended Nops, and the embarrassed Orioles won the next game by a score of 21 to 6. Word around the league was that teams worked extra hard to beat the Spiders to avoid losing to the worst team in baseball history. As the season dragged on, the Superbas and the Boston Beaneaters battled for the pennant while the Spiders traveled the country, referred to in the newspapers as the Exiles or the Wanderers. The St. Louis Perfectos, described in a local paper as "not worth a 5-cent Reina", disappointed Robison's plans for a superteam by dropping out of the race despite Cy Young's 26 wins. In the end, Brooklyn won the pennant with 101 wins. The Spiders played their last game of the season against the Cincinnati Reds; they employed 19-year-old Eddie Kolb, a cigar-stand clerk and local amateur player, as pitcher. He lost to the Reds 19-3. Legend says that the Spiders gathered at a Cincinnati hotel after the last game and presented the team's traveling secretary, George Muir, a diamond locket because "you had the misfortune to watch us in all our games." After the season the National League dropped the four most unprofitable clubs (Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington, and Louisville) and operated as an eight-team league for the next 62 years. The American League, founded in 1901, restored major league baseball to Cleveland. The Indians have won only five American League pennants in 107 years, but at least they play all their home games. Syndicate ownership, the owning of stock in several teams at once, was outlawed, preventing a disaster like the 1899 Cleveland Spiders from ever happening again. |
