Cleveland Baseball at the Turn of the Twentieth Century and the Path to the American League
This article was written by John Bauer
This article was published in The National Pastime: Baseball on Lake Erie (2026)
Along with his brother, Stanley Robison mined the Cleveland Spiders for talent and sent the best players to the St. Louis Cardinals, the other team the brothers owned. (Wikimedia Commons)
The central issue was attendance. Cleveland had never been one of the bigger draws in the National League, partially due to the Blue Laws which forbade Sunday baseball. But even when finishing runners-up in 1895 and 1896, the Spiders were one of the weaker attractions. As the team’s fortunes declined in 1897 and 1898, attendance followed. Brothers Frank and Stanley Robison, the owners of the Spiders, responded by transferring almost the entire second half of the 1898 home schedule to other cities. So began three years of proving and disproving that Cleveland was worthy of major league baseball.
The Robisons owned the Spiders since their inception as an American Association outpost in 1887. They grew wealthy from streetcar and railway investments, and parlayed that into baseball. The Robisons constructed League Park near one of their streetcar lines, thereby collecting fares for the ride as well as the game. The Spiders joined the National League for the 1889 season, and had been competitive throughout the 1890s, but never took the pennant. As local support for the Spiders dwindled, so did the Robisons’ interest in Cleveland.
The Robisons had not lost interest in baseball, however. By the late 1890s, the once-powerful St. Louis Browns had fallen into bankruptcy. In that club’s misfortune, the Robisons found opportunity. At the time, St. Louis (approx. 600,000 residents) was a significantly larger city than Cleveland (approx. 400,000 residents), and the Robisons believed there was greater potential for success in the Gateway City. To take advantage of the opportunity, though, the Robisons had to acquire the Browns. Winning a bankruptcy auction was no sure thing, especially with other interested parties, including emerging Western League president Ban Johnson and player-turned-owner Charles Comiskey. Plus, Johnson stated that if the National League did not appreciate Cleveland, his circuit would. Frank Robison, perhaps thinking that the Spiders might be the only way to remain a baseball magnate, declared that “Cleveland will be in the National League the coming season. There is no doubt of it.”1
As clubs undertook preparations for the 1899 season, the Spiders were not bereft of talent. The roster included future Hall of Famers Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and Bobby Wallace. Manager Patsy Tebeau spoke confidently about the coming season, “We will have a few words to say about winning the pennant.”2 Frank Robison backed up his manager, adding that the club “will be on deck this year and in the front rank all the time.”3 As the players headed to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for preseason training, the bankruptcy auction in St. Louis decided the fate of the Browns. Working through local agents, Frank Robison gained control. On March 29, 1899, the Robisons then executed one of the largest trades in baseball history when they swapped almost the entirety of the Browns and Spiders rosters. That the 1898 Browns had finished dead last with a 39-111 record did not bode well for the new 1899 Spiders.
The St. Louis-Cleveland combination under the Robisons ushered in baseball’s experiment with syndicate baseball. Between the brothers, Frank assumed the leading role in St. Louis with Stanley overseeing operations in Cleveland. The Plain Dealer ridiculed the Robisons’ efforts to maintain interest in Cleveland, writing, “The management of the alleged Cleveland Baseball Co. that controls the alleged Cleveland team has done absolutely nothing to create local enthusiasm.”4 Stanley retorted, “You can say emphatically that it is our honest intention to build up in Cleveland a club that will rank with the one that has been transferred to St. Louis.”5 With third baseman Lave Cross installed as manager, Cleveland lost the season opener, 10-1, in St. Louis of all places. Despite the Robisons’ claims to support Cleveland, Franklin Lewis in The Cleveland Indians relayed the story of Cross’s request for players being met with rejection. In Lewis’s telling, Frank Robison responded, “I’m not interested in winning games here. Play out the schedule. That’s your job.”6
The Spiders played their home opener May 1. Already 1-7, only 500 could be bothered to attend the doubleheader against Louisville. Home crowds remained in the low single hundreds throughout May, and players generated pity more than anything. Instead of Spiders, the team was more commonly referenced as Outcasts, Exiles, Wanderers, and Castoffs. The effect of syndicate baseball became clearer when Cross and pitcher Willie Sudhoff were “assigned” to St. Louis in early June. Second baseman Joe Quinn managed the Outcasts for the balance of the miserable season.
Meager crowds in Cleveland affected visiting teams, specifically their take of the gates. Other clubs knew “[t]hey will not make their carriage here in this city, and the owners of the local team knew it well.”7 Cleveland became a focus in discussions about whether to reduce the NL from 12 clubs to eight. By the end of June, chatter increased about transferring the club to another city. Following a late June series against Boston, the Cleveland team was rarely seen in Cleveland through the balance of season as the Robisons again moved games to other cities.
Frank Robison was part-owner of the Cleveland Spiders at the turn of the century, though he and his brother were better known as the owners of the St. Louis Cardinals. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Robisons may have forsaken Cleveland, but the Western League and a rumored American Association revival kept watch. Tom Loftus, owner of the Columbus franchise and close ally to Johnson and Comiskey, viewed Cleveland as a better home for his club. With Cleveland unavailable without provoking the ire of the NL, Loftus moved his team instead to Grand Rapids in July for the balance of the 1899 season. The Spiders returned to Cleveland in late August for games against New York and Boston, but few bothered to show. Home attendance barely topped 6000 for the season. With nothing to play for and management behind in paying salaries, the uninspired Spiders won a single game among their final 39 to close the season at 20-134.
During the offseason, Cleveland became of hub of more baseball intrigue than its paltry attendance might have warranted. Despite their abandonment of the city, the Robisons did not want to surrender Cleveland if there might be a payoff through the NL’s contraction efforts. Cleveland was often included on lists of the cities for the nascent AA. Ban Johnson’s Western League renamed itself the American League in a bid for greater status and, as the midwestern circuit looked east to expand its reach, Johnson reaffirmed his interest in Cleveland. The NL was expected to drop Cleveland along with Baltimore, Louisville, and Washington, but doing so required costly buyouts. Negotiations consumed the winter months. Meanwhile, the American League’s Comiskey was determined to transfer his St. Paul club to his hometown of Chicago. The AL’s interest in Cleveland became tied to reaching an understanding with the NL Orphans (later Cubs) without rupturing the National Agreement.
As much as Johnson desired an AL club in Cleveland, he would need to overcome the damage done by the Robisons. That required a winning team to attract alienated fans and local ownership with the wherewithal to make that happen. A discussion with local banker and former Spiders secretary Davis Hawley led Johnson to Charles W. Somers and John F. Kilfoyl.8 Somers had deep pockets as the heir to a coal and shipping fortune; Kilfoyl owned a local men’s clothing store. Both loved baseball. Though business remained unsettled with the NL, Johnson welcomed Somers and Kilfoyl—and Cleveland—into the AL in early March 1900. At the time, Cleveland technically remained in the NL and the Robisons threatened to block the AL unless there was a settlement between the two leagues.
By the end of March, Johnson, Comiskey, and Chicago’s NL magnate Jim Hart reached an agreement that allowed the AL to claim the South Side of Chicago. The NL bought out its four undesirables, including $25,000 to the Robisons for both the Spiders as well as League Park. Somers and Kilfoyl had scouted for alternate sites on which to build a ballpark, in part to avoid any association with the Robison club, but purchased League Park from the NL for about $10,000.9 The duo hired former Spiders outfielder Jimmy McAleer as manager, promising ample backing. Kilfoyl said, “Mr. McAleer will have free sway and he can put together the best aggregation in sight, no matter what the expense may be.”10
Cleveland assumed Grand Rapids’ place in the AL, which had been vacated when the franchise was officially returned to the league. Several Grand Rapids players made the switch to Cleveland, including second baseman Lou Bierbauer, third baseman Charlie Buelow, and outfielders Frank Genins and Ollie Pickering. McAleer further supplemented the roster with players such as first baseman Candy LaChance and pitchers Bill Hoffer and Bill Hart. Without time to plan for a warm weather training site, McAleer directed the players to report to League Park. He seemed pleased with his team, stating that “the material on hand is far better than I hoped for. The men are all willing to work and anxious to succeed.”11
Without preseason games, it was anyone’s guess how the new team would fare against live competition. For its first game, the AL scheduled Cleveland away against the defending champion Indianapolis Indians on April 20. Cleveland prevailed, 7-6, in a surprise. Local interest was high for the new club, though technically minor league, and it was called by nicknames such as Lake Shores, Babes, Infants, and Revivals. For the April 26 home opener against Detroit, long ticket lines and a brass band contributed to a festive day. Around 5,500 provided a “royal welcome; an indisputable avowal that Cleveland wants baseball.”12 Cleveland won, 5-4.
Cleveland played solid ball to good crowds for the first month of the season. Buelow and Pickering were proving to be among the AL’s top hitters. By the end of July, injuries were proving difficult to overcome. Cleveland fell under .500 and stayed there. The slide continued through August, with McAleer occasionally away from the club scouting for players. By September, Cleveland was firmly in sixth place, where it would finish. Much of the initial enthusiasm had dampened by then, but “[t]he fact has been proved that Cleveland is not dead to the baseball world.”13
During the 1900-01 offseason, the AL elevated itself to major league status. That move, however, required more than a simple declaration of intent. By Opening Day 1901, the AL dropped Buffalo, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis in favor of new clubs in the larger eastern cities of Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington. Johnson declared the AL was not a minor league dependent on the protection of the NL, but an equal deserving of a partnership. As Johnson elevated the AL, Somers was indispensable to the effort. As biographer Eugene Murdock wrote, “Ban Johnson built the American League, but Charles Somers paid the bills.”14 Somers became increasingly involved in AL affairs, joining the league’s circuit committee, accompanying Johnson on eastern trips to establish the new teams, and assuming the AL vice presidency. His financial largesse secured AL efforts in Philadelphia and Boston. Somers become so involved in Boston that he became the team president. He intended to turn over the team to local owners but, when he could not do so, he transferred his Cleveland shares to Kilfoyl and McAleer to avoid charges of syndicate baseball.15
With Somers now otherwise engaged, Kilfoyl and McAleer prepared Cleveland for the 1901 season. In the battle for players, Cleveland found itself in the NL’s crosshairs first when it rejected Cincinnati’s attempts to exercise major league drafting privileges over pitcher Earl Moore and second baseman Erve Beck, and later when it nabbed third baseman Bill Bradley and outfielder Jack McCarthy from Chicago as well as pitcher Ed Scott from Cincinnati.
McAleer declared optimistically that the team would give “all these teams as hard a fight as they care to have.”16 Players started to arrive at League Park around April 1. One practice drew 500 fans on a nice spring day, significant progress from the nadir under the Robisons. Cleveland dropped three of four in Chicago to start the season. For the April 29 home opener, Kilfoyl eschewed the ceremony that accompanied most curtain raisers. He declared, “We do not care to march our players through the streets like circus animals. Their business is on the diamond and not in cages.”17 Eight thousand turned out for a come-from-behind 4-3 win over Milwaukee. The team faltered quickly, however, dropping 14 of the next 16, sinking to last place. The pitching staff suffered sore arms and the offense struggled to generate runs.
Amid the losing, Cleveland managed to provide 1,250 of their fans with a thrill on May 23. Trailing Washington, 13-5, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Cleveland rallied feverishly. When Pickering crossed home plate with the winning run on a McCarthy single, “hats, umbrellas, canes, cushions went up as if a cyclone had struck” in celebration of a 14-13 win. One week later, a Decoration Day doubleheader against Philadelphia witnessed the “cushion riot.” In the seventh inning of the second game, rain halted play and fans from the bleachers sought cover in the grandstand. At some point, a cushion was hurled into the crowd, starting a 10-minute melee in which the players assisted the two on-duty officers in restoring order.18
Kilfoyl’s enhanced responsibilities as team president conflicted with his business interests, and he considered offers from a local consortium headed by businessman J.J. Buckley. Kilfoyl proclaimed, “I am always ready to sell out at a good profit and if I can get my price, the club will be sold.”19 Discussions dragged through the early summer months, but ultimately the sale came to naught. McAleer speculated that Kilfolyl changed his mind when he realized he had a valuable investment after all.
As the losses piled up, rowdyism was an increasing feature of games at League Park. After being swept by Boston in an ugly doubleheader on July 17, Cleveland players faced abuse from the crowd. LaChance and shortstop Frank Scheibeck were singled out for particular opprobrium. LaChance had enough. After the games, he packed his belongings and quit the team before McAleer calmed him down and talked him into staying. Days later, Cleveland police announced plans to increase their presence at League Park.
Cleveland’s struggles continued. On September 13, Cleveland played its final home game, a 7-0 loss to Detroit characterized by “stupid baserunning and an inability to hit with men on bases.”20 The same day, McAleer sold his shares to Kilfoyl with plans to retire from baseball after the season because of business interests in his hometown of Youngstown. For the final roadtrip, Cleveland dropped 11 of 14 games to finish 54-83. Only hapless Milwaukee kept Cleveland out of the cellar. Milwaukee was on its way to St. Louis to challenge the NL in another city, and McAleer soon reemerged—his business issues apparently resolved—with the charge of luring players from the NL Cardinals to join the new Browns. At several points, rumors suggested Cleveland would be the club to move to St. Louis, almost bringing full circle what the Robisons had started. Instead, Cleveland has endured as an AL city to this day.
JOHN BAUER is empty-nesting with his wife in Bedford, New Hampshire, while his two children are “launching.” By day, he is general counsel of an insurance group headquartered in Manchester, New Hampshire, with specialties in insurance, corporate, and regulatory law. By night, he spends many summer evenings watching the San Francisco Giants, and he is a year-round avid reader of baseball, history, and baseball history. He is a past and ongoing contributor to various SABR projects.
Sources
In addition to the sources cited in the notes, the author also consulted the following:
Baseball Reference
Case Western University, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, case.edu/ech/articles/b/baseball.
Harold and Dorothy Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (Oxford University Press, 1960, 1989 reprint.)
David Quentin Voigt, American Baseball: From the Gentlemen’s Sport to the Commissioner System, Volume I (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.)
David Quentin Voigt, The League That Failed (The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1998.)
Warren N. Wilbert, The Arrival of the American League: Ban Johnson and the 1901 Challenge to National League Monopoly (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2007.)
Timothy J. Zarley, 1901: The War of the Baseball Magnates, 2024.
Notes
1. Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 26, 1899, 12.
2. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 4, 1899, 8.
3. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 7, 1899, 8.
4. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 15, 1899, 8.
5. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 16, 1899, 14.
6. Franklin Lewis, The Cleveland Indians (Kent University Press, 1949, 2006, reprint), 31.
7. Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 17, 1899, 6.
8. Lewis, 32.
9. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 21, 1900, 6.
10. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 16, 1900, 6.
11. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 9, 1900, 3.
12. Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 27, 1900, 6.
13. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 7, 1900, 6.
14. Eugene C. Murdock, Ban Johnson: Czar of Baseball (Greenwood Press, 1982), 50.
15 Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 13, 1901, 6.
16. Cleveland Leader, March 15, 1901, 8.
17 Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 29, 1901, 3.
18 Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 24, 1901, 8.
19. Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 21, 1901, 6.
20. Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 14, 1901, 6.