Wednesday, May 23, 2007

As bad as it got

Each spring, I go into the garage with the intention of clearing away all the junk that's out there. I cam close this year, until my wife saw some of the stuff and insisted it go right back inside.

Of course, along with the masses of junk come little treasures, and I found one while rooting through an overstuffed cabinet.

Several years ago, I somehow found the time to collaborate with fellow SABR Forbes Field Chapter member Tom Baxter on a research project involving Pittsburgh's worst baseball team ever, the 1890 Alleghenys (aka Alleghenies, Innocents, Infants and Colts, but not yet the Pirates). And I found the file that chronicles, day by day, that miserable season when the team managed to lose 113 games while winning 23.

In other words, if you thought the Pirates teams of the past 15 years have been awful, think again.

The problem with the 1890 team is that it lost most of its better players to the Brotherhood, the first players' union, which decided to strike out on its own and form the Players League that year. The Alleghenys basically had to start from scratch, trying an endless series of unproven ballplayers who, as the season wore on, seemed to get worse and worse.

Just a few tidbits from the cover sheet of the project:

• Pittsburgh finished last in batting average (.239 vs. league average of .254), fielding percentage (.896, the last team ever to finish below .900) and earned run average (5.97). The last category is somewhat deceiving, as opponents scored more than nine runs per game. When your team commits 607 errors, many of those runs will be unearned.

• The Alleghenys drew a documented 16,064 fans. That's for the whole season. The low for one game was an officially announced 17, although I found information to the contrary published several decades later in the Baltimore Sun. A.G. Pratt, Pittsburgh's business manager in 1890, claimed: "The Sun's count of 17 spectators at that record-breaking game is absolutely correct, but I have some information that makes the attendance that day even more of a record. The paid admissions totaled only six. There were 17 persons at the game. J. Palmer O'Neil, Willis Orth and I were the only spectators in the boxes, there were six in the grandstand and eight in other parts of the park. Only the six in the grandstand paid to see the game, and I believe they were not Pittsburghers at that, but traveling men."

• Pittsburgh played the first (of three in major-league history) tripleheader, losing all three contests on Sept. 1 at Brooklyn, a team that obviously wanted to get in as many automatic wins as possible. Brooklyn went on to win the National League pennant.

Anyway, next time Pirates fans see their team play a sloppy, uninspired game like the one that took place last night in St. Louis, they can rest assured that the situation never is going to get as dire as it was in 1890.

At least, they can hope.


For the previously unpublished and unfinished (it goes only through Aug. 19) manuscript "Striking Bottom: The Terrible Season of 1890," click here. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find the account of what happened after Aug. 19.

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