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Veteran2009 to 1909--What was the Baseball Scene 100 Years Ago?
(I accidently erased my first iteration of this blog...Here goes the second attempt)
My grandpa whom I have never met, was born around 1890. He lived in the greater Boston area. Did he follow baseball? Did he care about sports? Did they have radios then?
One hundred years from now, will my grandchildren know me?
I would like my future posterity to have access to this someday.
Thanks Foxsports.
A hundred years ago there were only 16 major league teams, all in the eastern, mostly northeastern United States. The farthest western team was St Louis on the west banks of the Mississipppi. Not quite half way across the continent.
Now there are six up and down the Pacific Coast, plus two in Texas, and others in Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado and Arizona. There are many more teams now (30 total) and the institution of baseball is fully entrenched not just in our land but in more than 20 other countries across the world, including expansion into China.
The NL had 8 teams. From top winners (104 victories) to worst (45) that season, here are those teams:
Pittsburgh Pirates
Chicago Cubs
New York Giants
Cinncinnati Reds
Philadelphia Phillies
Brooklyn Superbas
St Louis Cardinals
Boston Doves
From that list, maybe only five remain as they were a century later.
They are the Cards, Cubs, Pirates, Phils and Reds. The other three moved on...
In the AL, there were these eight teams:
Detroit Tigers
Philadelphia Athletics
Boston Red Sox
Chicago White Sox
New York Highlanders
Cleveland Naps
St Louis Browns
Washington Senators
Five of the American League teams still exist.
Washington lost its team twice over the century, but then the expansion Montreal Expos morphed into the current day Nationals.
St. Louis, Boston and Philly lost their two team status, while Chicago and New York kept two when creating the Mets in the 1960s, even though the Giants left for San Francisco and the Dodgers (formerly Superbas) left for Los Angeles.
Also, sadly, the Ne*gro Leagues were running until well after World War II, so a large part of the American population was not a part of the Major Leagues in that respect, most likely reflecting lack of ML presence in the American south.
Today there are teams in Baltimore, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa Bay, and of course there are minor league teams across the entire nation except Hawaii and Alaska.
That year the Pirates proved to be the best team in the land, the National Leage representative proving superior to the Tigers winning four to three games, all boiling down to a game seven.
These two cities are historically steel and automotive centers, places where our nation outpaced much of the rest of the world.
Back then, many baseball players worked in the offseasons to make ends meet.
The world had not yet known the first Word War, a sign of terrible devastation and fear that would guide the rest of our 20th century in many ways.
A more innocent time? The US had completed the Spanish-American War a decade prior, most western American Indian campaigns were ended three decades before (almost like our distance from the Vietnam War now), and a good two generations had left behind the awful experience of the vivid aftermath of the the Civil War. 50 year olds and older grandparents could remember that era in 1909, as well as the Lincoln assassination, much like the Kennedy generation of today remembers those times.
What would you have been doing 100 years ago?
Would work have been your main concern, not having time for the leisure of sports? Would the newspaper have been a big part of your day? The box scores of the teams you liked?
Would you have been living in Texas, California, Oregon or Washington?
What would you do at the end of the day? Eat and go to bed? How about the weekends? Go on a picnic? To the beach? To a concert? To a church dance? To a game?
This weekend I played a couple games of basketball for the first time in a long time. I watched a good share of first round playoff basketball in the NBA on television. I also followed a bit of the NFL draft. And I saw some MLB baseball scores, both on TV and the Internet.
Will baseball still be played in 2109? Will we still have painful wars?
Time will tell. By my take on history, things will continue for the good and bad.
Baseball, despite the cheating at times, is still a good thing.
And maybe Shanghai or Chungking will be in the World Series in 2109. Maybe my grandkids will speak Mandarin by then.
But that is my conjecture, much more pronounced on the future than upon the unknowns of the past. But both are substantially mysterious, no?
Enjoy your Sunday.
PapaClinch
PS: Did I get any errors? Past balls? Please let me know. Thanks.
