Along Came The Spiders

With a loss in Green Bay on Sunday, the NFL’s Detroit Lions finished an ‘imperfect season’ at 0-16. While a winless season in the major leagues is near close to impossible, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders came pretty close.

The Cleveland Spiders wrapped up their 1898 season on October 15 ^th with a 5-4 loss in Louisville. Despite the defeat, the Spiders finished the year 81-68 and the outlook for next year was bright. Pitcher Cy Young and outfielder Jesse Burkett were in their primes; plus pitcher Jack Howell and third baseman Bobby Wallace were just 23 and 24 years old respectively. The club seemed poised to contend for the National League pennant in 1899. Everyone seemed happy and satisfied with the team.

Everyone that is, except for Spiders’ owner Frank Robison. The Spiders had a low attendance and they weren’t making much money, if any at all. In May 1897, Cleveland and Washington players were arrested for playing a game on Sunday in Cleveland.  In 1898, with the team still outlawed from Sunday games (and in turn, big crowds with lots of money for Robison), the owner moved many of the Spiders’ weekend series on the road. Robison found the team more profitable on the road and the Spiders ended up spending almost the entire second half of the season away from home.

In March 1899, the financially troubled St. Louis Browns were sold at an auction to a pair of creditors for $33,000. However, the creditors put the team up for sale again and two weeks later, the team and Sportsman’s Park were sold to Frank Robison and his brother, Stanley. By purchasing St. Louis, the Robisons’ didn’t see a club riddled in debt, but a team in a city with good attendance and a place where their players wouldn’t be arrested for playing on Sunday. They saw a money-making machine in St. Louis and not in Cleveland.

So the brothers began to build a talented team in St. Louis by merging the best players on both existing teams and giving them Browns’ uniforms. Cleveland stars such as Young and Burkett were sent to St. Louis and they were replaced by cheaper, semi-pro players. The brothers’ made it no secret what they were doing and even announced that the Spiders were being run as a ‘sideshow,’ angering baseball fans in Cleveland. Frank even decided to rename St. Louis, the Perfectos.

The Robisons weren’t the first to do what is called ‘syndicate baseball,’ however.  Earlier that season, the owners of the Brooklyn and Baltimore franchises entered a joint ownership agreement where the best players would be sent to Brooklyn while Baltimore got the leftovers. In this case, a few Baltimore players, including John McGraw and Wilbert Robertson, refused to leave and stayed as Orioles. That year, Baltimore finished in fourth place with a winning record, a hard accomplishment given the cards they were dealt.

The Spiders, however, were not the Orioles. In all, seventeen Spider players were sent to play in St. Louis along with their manager, Patsy Tebeau. The man sent down to replace Tebeau as manager was veteran infielder Lave Cross, one of the few veteran players on the Spiders. Cross was entering his 13 ^th season in the major leagues and the year previous with the Browns, he had hit .317 as the club’s starting third baseman. His job was possibly the hardest in baseball at that time, readying the Spiders for opening day.

Coincidentally, the Spiders opened up the season in St. Louis against the Perfectos. In the newly-renamed Robison Field, the Perfectos defeated the Spiders, 10-1. Cy Young was the winner for St. Louis while one of the hurlers sent to replace him in Cleveland, Willie Sudhoff, took the loss after being smacked around the yard. Meanwhile, the Robisons were smiling as 15,000 spectators showed up for the season opener.

After starting 0-4, Cleveland achieved its first victory in Louisville on April 22 ^nd , 6-5. However, the celebration did not last long as in the second game of the doubleheader, the lowly-Colonels drubbed the Spiders, 15-2. The team was 1-7 when it came home for the first time all year and the club was victorious, winning 5-4 over the Colonels in an exciting extra-inning affair. The Spiders ended up splitting the four-game series with Louisville in front of an average attendance of only 500.

But Louisville seemed like the only team Cleveland could beat. The team finished the month of May with a 16-10 loss in Boston; dropping their record to a putrid 8-26, four of those wins coming against Louisville. Some people thought teams were beating up on the Spiders with no apparent effort. Others thought teams tried even harder than usual so they wouldn’t have the distinction to losing to the Spiders.

In June, the Robisons decided to make a few changes. With the Perfectos in need of a third baseman, Frank told Cross to pack his bag and catch the next train to St. Louis. Along with Cross came pitcher Willie Sudhoff, who had won three of Cleveland’s eight games. Replacing them were Ossee Schreckengost and Frank Bates. Schreckengost hit .313 in 48 games with the Spiders before being ‘recalled’ to St. Louis. Sadly, Bates was never ‘recalled;’ he went 1-19 with an ERA over 7 during the remainder of the season.

When Cross left, the club was 8-30 but, for the Spiders, that ended up being the club’s high point in the season. Joe Quinn, a fine veteran second baseman became the new manager but things got ugly. The team went 3-19 in the month of June after Cross left and, to make matters worse, their July 1 ^st doubleheader against Boston turned out to be their last home game in nearly two months. Not that it mattered really, no one was watching anyways.

The team only had eight more home games and played an unprecedented 112 games on the road. The Spiders played their last two games of the season in Cincinnati and got walloped by scores of 16-1 and 19-3. Pitching in the last contest was a local 19-year-old cigar-stand clerk named Eddie Kolb, who was probably a better choice than anyone else. Thanks to losing 40 out of their last 41 games, Cleveland finished with a horrid record of 20-134. Of those 112 road games, they won only 11 of them. Cleveland lost 69 games by five runs or more and concluded the season an astonishing 84 games back of first place.

As a team, the Spiders hit 12 home runs. That is the same amount of four-baggers hit by ex-Cleveland star Bobby Wallace, now with the Perfectos. The club had terrible pitching, led by Jim Hughey and Charles Knepper, who had records of 4-30 and 4-22 respectively. During the season, a local sportswriter named Elmer Bates wrote five things that were good about following this horrible 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.

As for the other club, the Perfectos, they weren’t so perfect after all. The team had the second highest attendance in the league, which made the Robisons happy, but the club wasn’t that great on the field. They finished fifth in the National League, winning only 84 games. Realizing his team wasn’t perfect, Frank changed the clubs’ name to the ‘Cardinals.’

In January 1900, the National League had a meeting in Cleveland where it bought out four teams and folded them, the Spiders being one of them. It took another ten years until syndicate baseball was abolished from baseball. Hopefully, for everyone’s sake, another team will never have the kind of season the Spiders had.

(OK, maybe the Yankees.)