The 1910’s
The ’Teens saw the advent of the modern
ballpark. Starting in 1910, teams began replacing
their small, wooden, temporary housing with
palatial concrete-and-steel structures built to
last for half a century or more. By 1916 every
team except Buffalo, Cleveland, and New York was
playing in a majestic new edifice that would
remain their home for the following 40+ years, at
least.
Baseball entered a new era this season. Since the
league’s inception teams had been playing in
inexpensive wooden structures which were easily
susceptible to fire, rot and termites. Having long
since established itself as a viable commercial
commodity, the game was overdue to move into
permanent housing. In 1909 a number of clubs drew
up plans for multi-decked facilities built of
concrete and steel, and by Opening Day, 1910,
three of them were ready: Seton Hill Stadium in
Baltimore, which housed 29,500; Flatbush Park in
Brooklyn, which accommodated 28,000, and the Roman
Arena in Cincinnati, which had seats for 32,000.
The immediate and dramatic success of these three
parks provided all the motivation necessary to
motivate the other club owners to follow suit, and
within a few seasons every team in the league
would be playing in a new park or a refurbished
old one.
The new parks provided the excitement that the
pennant race could not; only the fans of the
repeating divisional champions, Chicago and
Brooklyn, had much to cheer about. The Traders won
108 games and took the West by 17˝ games over
Cincinnati, while the Bluebirds won 106 to better
Philadelphia by 11.
Brooklyn’s Rupert Allen led the league both in
batting, at .353, and home runs, with 13. His
teammate Dooley Sauer was the RBI champ with 95.
Chicago’s Matthew Sullivan again paced the circuit
in wins with 34 and strikeouts with 287, but he
yielded the ERA crown to his teammate Jacob
Norwood, who posted a 1.40 ERA. Sullivan’s 1.59
was the league’s second best mark.
Cincinnati’s Edmund Godfrey finished the season
with 2,999 career base hits, second most all-time,
just 135 shy of Pierre Ellsworth’s career record.
Teammate Prince Lyon, third on the all-time list,
retired at the age of 41 with 2,943.
The World’s Series was a rematch, but this time
the hard-hitting Bluebirds were deemed to be more
or less on equal footing with pitching-rich
Chicago. Curiously, the slugfests went the
Traders’ way while Brooklyn won most of the
pitchers’ duels. Chicago bombed Brooklyn in the
opener, 14-0, and also won games by scores of 6-0
and 5-1; Brooklyn won Game Two 2-0, Game Four 4-3,
and Game Five 4-0. They saved the best game for
last; Game Seven was nail-biter that was tied 2-2
at the end of regulation. In the bottom of the
11th Chicago center fielder Horace Tompkins lined
a two-out single over the outstretched glove of
Brooklyn’s Pinkney Bingham, a pitcher forced into
shortstop duty due to injuries to both Bluebirds
short fielders. The clutch single brought home
right fielder Marcellus German with the winning
run and another championship for Chicago, their
eighth.
Season
statistics
A livelier cork-centered ball was introduced, and
the league batting average, which had hovered
around .245 for the previous seven seasons, shot
up to .267; home runs increased by over a hundred.
The Wolverines opened Wolverine Field, the
largest ballpark in the nation for the time being,
with seats for 37,500 patrons; Pittsburgh unveiled
a cozier entry, Allegheny Field, which seated
26,750.
There was a good two-team race in both divisions.
Brooklyn won 101 games but that only got them
second place, a game behind Eastern champion
Philadelphia; Cincinnati battled Chicago all year
in the West before pulling away and edging the
Traders by three games.
For the third straight year Brooklyn’s Dooley
Sauer and Rupert Allen teamed up to sweep the
hitting Triple Crown categories; Sauer led in
batting at .384 and RBI with 132, while Allen
pounded 19 round-trippers. With Chicago’s Matthew
Sullivan shelved for much of the year with an
elbow injury, it was up to his teammate Jacob
Norwood to tackle the pitching Triple Crown
awards; he proved up to the task, leading the
league handily in ERA (1.72), wins (32), and
strikeouts (274).
Edmund Godfrey passed Pierre Ellsworth for first
place on the all-time hits list. The 38-year-old
Godfrey collected 188 for the season to finish
with 3,187.
Cincinnati had bettered Philadelphia in the 1900
and 1901 World’s Series, but the City of Brotherly
Love’s faithful got their revenge a decade later
when the Quakers took the ’11 Fall Classic in five
games for their fourth title.
Season
statistics
Two more modern concrete-and-steel ballparks
sprang up, Boston’s Atlantic Avenue Grounds, which
held 31,500, and Philadelphia’s massive Penn’s
Landing Park, which seated a record (for the time)
41,250.
Brooklyn, New York, and Philadelphia pitched a
competitive battle for the Eastern crown through
much of the summer, but the Bluebirds pulled away
from the pack by going 24-7 after September 1st,
leaving the Quakers six games back. Cincinnati
cruised to a repeat Western Division title,
winning a league-high 98 games and finishing seven
games ahead of Chicago.
St. Louis’ 28-year-old rookie second baseman
Francis Presley surprised everyone by hitting .358
to capture the batting crown, while his teammate
Dean Sullivan matched Chicago’s Carl Kessler for
the home run title with 10. Another “experienced”
rookie, 29-year-old Lyman Williamson of Baltimore,
led the loop in RBI with 109. On the slab
Chicago’s Jacob Norwood repeated as the league’s
ERA champ (2.09) and top winner (31), but gave way
to Philadelphia’s Joshua Crowder in the strikeout
derby. Crowder fanned 224, 4 more than Norwood.
In the World’s Series, Brooklyn exacted revenge
for the sweep they suffered at the hands of
Packers in 1908. After splitting the first six
contests, Dooley Sauer’s record three triples in
Game Seven led the Bluebirds to a 5-0 victory and
their third world title.
Season
statistics
St. Louis, a solid team in the ABBA in the 1880’s
but a loser most years since, celebrated their
first season in sparkling new 33,000-seat Castle
Point Field with their second consecutive winning
season—a feat the club had not achieved since
1887. The league-wide stadium-building frenzy
subsided a bit after 1913, but there would
continue to be new facilities unveiled through
1930.
Cincinnati battled Cleveland for awhile in the
West but eventually left the Bobcats—and the rest
of the division—in their dust. At season’s end the
Packers led all competition by 12 games or more.
The Eastern race was much more exciting. Boston
and Brooklyn battled all summer, the Terriers
finally clinching on the second-to-last day of the
regular season and winning the first division
first flag in their history by 3 games.
Fish Bassett of New York hit .357, edging
Cleveland’s Maurice Rivers by one point to earn
the batting crown. Perhaps aided a bit by
Brooklyn’s cozy Flatbush Park, Rupert Allen hit 21
home runs—a league record. He also led the league
in RBI with 105. Cincinnati’s Elijah Graves won
the pitchers’ Triple Crown, posting a miserly 1.74
ERA, notching 29 victories (a mark he shared with
Hampton Bunker of St. Louis), and 235 strikeouts.
It was another exciting World’s Series, won by
Boston, their second league crown. In an epic Game
Seven, the Packers, trailing 5-3 in the ninth, had
the bases loaded with no outs and one run already
in against Terriers’ starter Crab Paxton, but
Paxton retired the next three batters on flyouts
to notch a compete-game victory and Boston’s first
title since 1889.
Season
statistics
The deadball era returned from its short
vacation—the league average dropped to .249 and
the league scored 500 fewer runs than in 1913.
Chicago and Brooklyn won their divisions with
relative ease, the Traders finishing six games
ahead of Cincinnati and the Bluebirds ending up
eight games better than Buffalo and Philadelphia.
Boston not only failed to defend their title, they
dropped all the way to last place; but the
Terriers weren’t actually that bad a team,
finishing just 10 games under .500. The West
housed the two teams that turned in truly
dismal records: Detroit and Cleveland, who lost
201 games between them.
Octave Hood of Philadelphia hit .344 to win the
league’s batting crown; Ebenezer Holbrook of
Brooklyn hit the most home runs, 11, and Gustav
Claiborne of Baltimore drove in the most runs, 92.
Pittsburgh’s Mudcat Noland posted a league-best
1.93 ERA, while Brooklyn rookie Clay Baldwin paced
the circuit both in wins (30), and strikeouts
(223).
Edmund Godfrey announced his retirement after the
season. The longtime Cincinnati star, who finished
his career with a 5-game stint with Baltimore,
retired as the all-time leader in hits (3,507),
doubles (522), triples (344), and home runs (153).
The World Series was a quick five-game affair, as
Brooklyn dropped the first game at Chicago, 9-0,
but then bounced back to win four close ones in a
row. Baldwin pitched two complete game victories,
including the clinching Game Five shutout, to cap
off an extraordinary debut season.
Season
statistics
In the 34th year of their existence, the St.
Louis Explorers finally made a postseason
appearance for the first time. A team that had
lost 100 games as recently as 1909 was suddenly
the best in the league, going 101-57 and streaking
to the Western Division crown with a 21-game edge
over second place Cincinnati. In the East, New
York edged Brooklyn by 3 games.
It was another pitcher-dominated season, with
home runs extremely scarce: Pittsburgh’s Fennimore
McCaffree was the only player to reach double
digits in four-baggers. MaCaffree, who hit 16, hit
twice as many as any other player and in fact
out-homered Boston and Detroit. The batting champ
was Boston’s Eddie Hensley, who hit .338, and the
RBI king was Buffalo’s Frenchy Irving, who paced
the circuit with just 79. Cincinnati’s Joel
Solomon won the ERA title with a 1.68 mark while
Brooklyn’s Milton Boyett was the top winner with
30 victories and his teammate Clay Baldwin topped
the loop in strikeouts with 201.
The Explorers were heavy favorites in the World
Series, and they did not disappoint, although the
Knicks played them tough; only one game was
decided by as many as three runs. The decisive
Game Six was a thriller, as the Knicks plated a
run in the top of the ninth to tie it 6-6 only to
see a .238 hitter, shortstop Jake Tripp, single
and steal second in the bottom of the frame,
setting up Francis Presley’s game winning
RBI-single.
Season
statistics
The NBBL became the NBL as the league acquiesced
to the growing consensus that what once was
sporadically known as “base ball” should be
standardized as “baseball”. The nation’s
typesetters and copy editors rejoiced.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Traders joined the
building boom, unveiling 36,500-seat Union Field
on Opening Day.
Cincinnati unseated St. Louis in the West,
outdistancing the Explorers by a comfortable 11
games. In the East it was a close race from
beginning to end, with New York outlasting
Philadelphia by 3.
Fenn McCaffree of Pittsburgh was again the home
run king, for the second year in a row matching,
nearly matching, or outright beating the total put
up by several other teams. With 16, he was one of
only two players in double digits. Randolph Swift
of Philadelphia was the batting champion with a
.335 average and Togie Alford of Chicago won the
RBI derby, driving in 99. Buffalo’s Seth Stewart
didn’t start a single game but relieved in 86 of
them, logging 158 1/3 innings, just enough to
qualify for the ERA crown, which he won handily
with a 1.53 mark. Cincinnati’s Joel Solomon was
the loop’s top winner with 29 victories and
Brooklyn’s Clay Baldwin made it three strikeout
titles in his first three seasons, fanning
235.
The World Series featured closely-contested
battles in all but the first game, which New York
won 5-0. With the Knicks taking the first two
contests at Cincinnati, the Packers were in a hole
from the get-go, and ultimately could not emerge
from it. New York won it in six, their eighth
league title.
Season
statistics
The United States entered the Great War eleven
days before the NBL season started, but aside from
the unintentionally humorous display of
ballplayers performing close order drills with
baseball bats substituting for rifles that some
teams insisted upon prior to games, it was
business as usual for the league in 1917.
Chicago won a tight race in the West, beating St.
Louis by 1 game and Cincinnati by 5, while
Philadelphia made a shambles of the Eastern race,
finishing a not-insubstantial 13 games ahead of
second-place Boston.
Chicago’s Jake Bradley was the batting champion
with a .325 average. Haywood Glover of Pittsburgh
and Wiley Woodcock of Cincinnati topped the loop
in home runs with 11 apiece, and Philadelphia’s
Randolph Swift was the RBI king with 81. St.
Louis’ Edgar Bath posted a league-leading 1.63
ERA, as Soloman Carlson of Philadelphia was the
circuit’s top winner with 30 triumphs and Boston’s
Milton Boyett fanned 211 to earn the strikeout
title.
In the World Series the home team won the first
six games, putting the momentum on host
Philadelphia’s side in Game Seven, but Chicago
stunned the Quakers with two runs in the top of
the ninth to win 5-3. It was the Traders’ ninth
title.
Season
statistics
“Work or Fight” was the mandate; draft-eligible
men in “non-essential” occupations (which, alas,
included professional baseball) were required to
either apply for employment directly related to
the war effort or enlist. The draft would sort out
those who failed to comply, with the not-so-subtle
implication that draftees would soon find
themselves on the front lines. The deadline was
set at July 1st, which threatened to put quite a
crimp in the baseball season; NBL owners
negotiated a reprieve, agreeing to shorten the
season so that it would be over by Labor Day. The
result was a 128-game whirlwind campaign that
indeed ended with a doubleheader in every park on
Monday, September 2nd.
St. Louis swamped its Western competition,
running away from the pack and finishing ten games
ahead of Chicago and Detroit. Philadelphia won the
East in a much more hotly contested battle, but
still put six games between themselves and
second-place Brooklyn.
Howard Russ of Brooklyn hit .335 to win the
batting crown. Fenn McCaffree’s five home runs was
more than anyone else could muster, and Bump
Mullin of Cincinnati drove in 83 runs, 20 more
than his closest competitor. Brooklyn’s Clay
Baldwin’s 1.79 ERA was the best in the league,
while St. Louis’ Edgar Bath led in both wins (23)
and strikeouts (146).
The Explorers won the first two World Series
games at home, but dropped the next two in
Philadelphia; Game Five looked like a must-win for
both teams. St. Louis took it decisively, 9-2, and
returned home needing only one win over the next
two games. But the Quakers won Game Six in extra
innings and seemingly shifted the momentum,
setting the stage for Clay Easton’s dominating
complete game 4-1 win in the finale and
Philadelphia’s fourth world title.
Season
statistics
With the war over, the league resumed its
standard 158-game schedule, although as far as the
pennant races were concerned, the added games
seemed redundant; both of last year’s winners ran
headlong into their World Series rematch, wrapping
up repeat divisional titles early: St. Louis went
101-57 to win the West by 21˝ games, while
Philadelphia went 99-59 to take the East by 14.
Chicago’s Smith Cambell won the batting title
with a .351 average while Pittsburgh’s Fenn
McCaffree led the circuit in home runs with 18,
and Chicago’s Kary Wilkin topped the loop in RBI
with 92. St. Louis’ Pinkney Quinlan was the ERA
champ, posting a miserly 1.82, while
Philadelphia’s Leon Hawkins paced the loop in
victories with 26. St. Louis’ Edgar Bath was the
strikeout king, fanning 187.
Philadelphia repeated their 1918 World Series
victory with another seven-game series triumph,
led by shortstop Frosty Young, who hit .438
against the Explorers.
Season
statistics
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