Felber: The Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Spiders
From SABR member Bill Felber at The National Pastime Museum on November 29, 2016:
From a baseball standpoint, there was nothing gay about the 1890s. Stylistically, it was a rough-and-tumble decade producing teams famed as much for their willingness to brawl as for their superiority. Nowhere was this more true than in Baltimore and Cleveland.
In numerous respects, the franchises’ courses paralleled one another. Both teams were owned by men who saw their baseball interests more as sidelights than full-time careers. Frank and Stanley Robison, operators of an extensive Cleveland streetcar business, operated the Spiders as a means of generating traffic along their lines. Their team hit its stride only when hard-bitten veteran Patsy Tebeau was named manager. Similarly, Harry Von der Horst, owner of a successful Baltimore brewery, ran the Orioles in largely hands-off fashion, particularly after he hired Ned Hanlon, a knowledgeable veteran player, to handle the day-to-day details.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/baltimore-orioles-and-cleveland-spiders
Originally published: November 29, 2016. Last Updated: November 29, 2016.