Major League Clubs on Lake Erie During the Late Nineteenth Century
This article was written by Woody Eckard
This article was published in The National Pastime: Baseball on Lake Erie (2026)
Many historians assign the 1884 Toledo club a special place in baseball history as the first major league team with a black player. That player was Moses Fleetwood Walker, who was the first string catcher for the first half of the season. He played openly as a Black man, appearing in 42 Toledo games in his only major league season. (Wikimedia Commons)
Major league baseball’s nineteenth century period extends from the National League’s 1876 founding to 1900. In 1901 the American League entered as a major to form the basic NL-AL structure of the current major leagues. Relative to today, it was mostly a period of significant instability, with teams coming and going almost annually prior to the National League mono-poly being established in 1892. At one time or another during the previous 16 years, there were no fewer than four different major leagues.
This article examines major league presence on Lake Erie during this 25-year formative period. Three cities were involved: Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo (yes, Toledo). Cleveland was in for 19 years, Buffalo for eight, and Toledo for two. In seven of these years there were at least two Lake Erie major league teams and in 1890 there were actually four.
The article proceeds as follows. First is a review of nineteenth century major leagues. The next section describes the major league membership of the three Lake Erie cities, followed by a summary of their club records. The fourth section presents the National Hall of Fame players on these clubs. The main data source is Baseball Reference. It identifies late nineteenth century major leagues; member clubs and their players; club and player records; and club nicknames.
MAJOR LEAGUES DURING 1876-1900
The first professional baseball organization was the National Association of 1871—75.1 However, it is not today considered to be a major league mainly because of its haphazard organization and operation. Cleveland’s Forest City Club participated in the NA’s first two seasons but then dropped out after weak showings. The National League is the first to be recognized as a major league today, operating continuously since its 1876 inception.2 Despite some difficulties in its first few years, it achieved success, and dominated the pre-modern period. The Cleveland Blues and Buffalo Bisons both joined in 1879, with the Blues departing after the 1884 season and the Bisons after 1885.
The NL’s creation “inspired” the formation of other professional leagues. First was the minor International Association of 1877-80. It was poorly organized and operated, similar to the NA, and additionally hampered by its membership of mostly small eastern cities.3 After three tumultuous seasons, the IA, which had been renamed to the National Association in 1879, began 1880 with only three clubs, collapsing mid-year. The Tecumseh Club of London, Ontario, was a member for the first two years, winning the IA’s initial championship. The Maple Leaf club of Guelph, Ontario, was a member for 1877 only. Also, Buffalo was a member in 1878, winning the championship before joining the NL the next year.
Next, the American Association was formed in 1882 as a major league.4 The AA adopted the NL’s organizational and operational model and had a fairly successful ten-year run. A new Cleveland club joined in 1887 and Toledo was a member in 1884 and 1890. Then in 1884 the Union Association entered the fray as a third major league.5 However, it barely survived that single season, largely a victim of the turmoil caused by its own entry. No Lake Erie cities were involved.
The next five years were a period of generally peaceful and prosperous coexistence between the NL and AA. This ended in 1890 when again a third major league entered, the Players’ League. Both Buffalo and Cleveland were members.6 It was a creation of the players union that had been formed a few years previously, and its on-field playing success was due largely to the support and participation of its union members. Many today consider it to be stronger than the NL and especially the AA. Nevertheless, serious financial difficulties resulting from the three-way AA-NL-PL “war” caused the PL to fold a few months after the 1890 season. The player market turmoil created by the PL’s entry carried over into 1891, affecting particularly the already weakened AA. The result was an unsuccessful season that ended with the AA’s demise and four of its teams being absorbed by the NL.7 The NL then operated as a 12-team monopoly from 1892 to 1899.
LAKE ERIE CITY MAJOR LEAGUE REPRESENTATION
A key determinant of baseball club viability and thus the likelihood of having a successful major league club is the potential fan base, roughly measured by host city population. Table 1 shows the 1880 and 1890 US Census populations of our three Lake cities: Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo. Cleveland’s population was 160,146 and 261,353, respectively, with Buffalo slightly smaller in each year. Toledo was much smaller, roughly one-third the size of the other two cities in each year. The national population rankings of the three cities was almost identical in 1880 and 1890, with Cleveland at 11th and 10th, respectively, Buffalo at 13th and 11th, and Toledo at 35th and 34th. Only Cleveland and Buffalo could reasonably be considered as “major league” in size.
Table 2 summarizes Lake city major league membership from 1879-90. There were no major Lake teams during 1876-78. From 1879 to 1884 the Buffalo Bisons and Cleveland Blues were together in the NL, with Toledo’s AA club in 1884 adding a third major league team. After Cleveland and Toledo were dropped from their leagues in 1885, Buffalo was the only major league Lake club that year. Then in 1886, after Buffalo departed the NL, there were no Lake city major league members. Following a two-year major league hiatus, in 1887 Cleveland again was represented in major league when a new club joined the AA. Two years later that club switched to the NL and was known as the Spiders. Cleveland’s NL membership continued until 1899 after which they were dropped as part of the NL’s 1900 contraction from 12 to eight clubs.
Table 1. Lake Erie City Populations: 1880 and 1890
Table 2. Lake Erie Major League Cities: 1879–90
In 1890, with the PL’s creation, there were no fewer than four Lake city major league entries. A new Buffalo Bison club joined the PL that year and the new Toledo club joined the AA.8 Cleveland also sported a new PL club in addition to its continuing NL entry, giving it two major league clubs. After 1890, the two Lake city PL members were gone when the PL folded and the Toledo club was dropped from the AA, leaving the Cleveland Spiders as the only Lake city in the major leagues until its demise after the 1899 season. In 1900, again, Lake Erie had no major league representative. None of the nineteenth century Cleveland clubs were antecedents of the modern Guardians. They were “born” in 1901 as a charter member of the AL, although not adopting the “Indians” name until 1915.
CLUB PERFORMANCE
We now summarize the performance of the clubs representing the three major Lake cities. With one significant exception, it is best described generally as only “fair to middling.” The NL Clevelands of 1879–84 in 549 games were 242–299–8 (.447) and AA-NL Clevelands of 1887–99 were 827–938–37 (.469) in 1802 games. But during their peak period of 1892–98, the Spiders’ record in 967 games was a very good 548–396–23 (.581), “goosed” by the presence of several Hall of Fame players (Table 3). Nevertheless, the 1899 Spiders earned everlasting notoriety by producing the worst record in major league history for a club playing at least 100 games, winning only 20 against 134 losses, a .130 win average.9 Buffalo’s overall record for 656 games during its seven NL seasons was 314–333–9 (.486). However, it finished above .500 five times, with a .556 win average for those 459 games. Its 1890 PL club was a weak 36–96–0 (.273). Toledo’s two teams in their two AA seasons had similar records, totaling 114–122–0 (.483) in 236 games.
Table 3. Hall of Fame Members on Lake Erie Major League
Many historians assign the 1884 Toledo club a special place in baseball history as the first MLB team with a Black player, six decades before the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson in 1947.9 Moses Fleetwood Walker was the first-string catcher for the first half of the season, playing in 42 games in his only major league season. However, other baseball historians suggest William White as a possible candidate. At age 18 and while a member of the Dartmouth College nine, his only major league appearance was in a single home game for the nearby 1879 NL Providence club as a fill-in for an injured regular player. He apparently lived his life “passing” as a White man, a fact discovered in the twenty-first century. There is no evidence that anyone present at his sole major league game was aware that he was Black.10
No Lake Erie major league club managed to win its league’s championship during the nineteenth century. However, in 1895 the Cleveland Spiders came close. They finished the regular season in second place, three games behind the first place Baltimore Orioles, then won a postseason series with the Orioles, ostensibly for the NL championship. But the series was an ad hoc bilateral arrangement between the two clubs, not an official league-sanctioned event. At the annual NL meeting in November that year, the league Directors formally awarded the 1895 championship to Baltimore based on regular season records.11 The Spiders had two other second place finishes and a third place finish in the five-year period 1892-96 while members of the 12-club NL. These teams, managed by the feisty Patsy Tebeau, gained notoriety by challenging the three-time NL champion Baltimore Orioles both in the standings and in rowdy behavior.12 The NL Buffalo teams never finished higher than third, although they achieved that four times in their seven years in the league. The best Toledo finish was fourth place in the 1890 PL.
Buffalo and Cleveland shared league membership on seven occasions (see Table 2). They played 78 head-to-head games in their six NL seasons together. Buffalo won 45 of these and Cleveland won 33. However, outside of 1884 when Buffalo won 14 of 16 games, the two clubs were dead even at 31 wins each. In the 1890 PL season, Buffalo was 7-9 versus Cleveland.
HALL OF FAMERS ON NINETEENTH CENTURY LAKE ERIE CLUBS
Table 3 shows the National Baseball Hall of Fame members on Lake Erie major league clubs 1876-1900. Buffalo and Cleveland both sported HOF members, logging 23 and 31 player-seasons, respectively. Buffalo had four individuals and Cleveland had seven. Toledo had no HOFers. The name most recognizable to modern fans in this HOF group is, of course, the great Cy Young. He was born in Gilmore, Ohio, about 100 miles south of Cleveland, and began his unparalleled career at age 23 with the Spiders in 1890. He had several outstanding seasons there before moving on to St. Louis in 1899, thereby avoiding the Spiders’ history-making debacle that year.
Cleveland had a remarkable run of nine years, 1890-98, with at least three HOF members in each year. There were four in 1892 and 1893, and five in 1894. As noted above, during 1892-98 their winning percentage was .581, finishing second three times. The streak included all 31 of Cleveland’s HOF player-seasons. Seven individuals were involved: Cy Young (9), Jesse Burkett (8), Bobby Wallace (5), John Clarkson (3), George Davis (3), Buck Ewing (2), and Ed Delahanty (1, the 1890 PL club). Nevertheless, they never finished first. Buffalo had four consecutive years, 1881 to 1884, with four of its five HOF players present in each year: Dan Brouthers, Pud Galvin, Jim O’Rourke, and Deacon White. Brouthers is considered by many to be the leading power hitter of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the Bisons never managed to place higher than third in the NL during that span.13
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
During the 1876-1900 period professional baseball experienced significant instability caused by experimentation and essentially trial and error development, including its organizational structure. As it happened, Lake Erie cities were well represented. Cleveland was the most prominent, with two clubs covering 19 of the 25 years: the 1879-84 NL Blues and the 1887-99 AA-NL Blues-Spiders. A third Cleveland club, the Infants, was a member of the one-and-done 1890 Players’ League. The Buffalo Bisons were NL members for the seven years from 1879 to 1885 and a second Bisons club was a PL member. Last, Toledo had two separate clubs in the AA, in 1884 and 1890. Since 1890, Cleveland has been the only Lake Erie major league city, except for 1914-15 when Buffalo belonged to the major Federal League.
Generally, the performance of pre-1901 Lake clubs was only mediocre. No league championships were won. However, during 1892-98 the Cleveland Spiders were usually strong contenders, finishing second three times and third once in the 12-team NL. A Lake Erie city would not win a league championship until 1920 when the Cleveland Indians took the AL title.
DR. WOODY ECKARD is a retired economics professor living in Evergreen, Colorado with his wife Jacky and their two dogs, Petey and Violet. Among his academic publications are 13 papers on sports economics, five of which relate to Major League Baseball. More recently he has published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, Nineteenth Century Notes, and The National Pastime. He is a Rockies fan and a SABR member for over 30 years.
Notes
1. William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871-1875 ( McFarland & Company, 2016, Revised Edition).
2 Neil W. MacDonald, The League That Lasted: 1876 and the Founding of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (McFarland & Company, 2004).
3 Woody Eckard, “The International Association of 1877-80: The Third Professional Baseball Organization,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1 (Spring 2024).
4. David Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association—Baseball’s Renegade Major League (The Lyons Press, 1994), 21.
5. Justin Mckinney, Baseball’s Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th Century Major League (McFarland & Company, 2022).
6. Robert B. Ross, The Great Baseball Revolt: The Rise and Fall of the 1890 Players League (University of Nebraska Press, 2016); and Rob Bauer, Outside the Lines of Gilded Age Baseball: The Origins of the 1890 Players League (Self-published, 2018).
7. Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League, chapters 12 and 13.
9. In 1899, the Spiders and the NL’s St. Louis Browns had the same owner, who decided to concentrate the best players on the two teams with St. Louis. As a result, the 81-68 1898 Spiders imploded to 20-134 in 1899 and the St. Louis club, formerly the Browns but became known as the Perfectos, rocketed from 39-111 to 84-67. See David L. Fleitz, Rowdy Patsy Tebeau and the Cleveland Spiders: Fighting to the Bottom of Baseball, 1887-1899 (McFarland & Company, 2017), Chapter 13.
10. For example, see Bruce Allardice, “William E. White,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, accessed June 1, 2026, at https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/william-e-white/. See also John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2011), 185; and Peter Morris and Stefan Fatsis, “Baseball’s Secret Pioneer: William Edward White, the First Black Player in Major League History, Lived His Life as a White Man,” Slate.com, February 4, 2014 at https://slate.com/culture/2014/02/william-edward-white-the-first-black-player-in-major-league-baseball-history-lived-his-life-as-a-white-man.html.
11. Spink’s history of baseball indicates that the idea for the Temple Cup series was broached at league meetings, so it might not have been league-sanctioned, but it was at least league-approved. Alfred Spink, The National Game (National Game Publishing Company, 1910), Google Books.
12. William H. Johnson, “The Magnates Expand Their Control: The 1895 Owners Meetings,” in Base Ball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857-1900, Jeremy K. Hodges and Bill Nowlin, eds. (SABR, 2018), 337.
13 Fleitz, Rowdy Patsy Tebeau.