Part 3: The glory years, Act I (1885-1886)
Part 5: The fall from the top (1889)
Part 4: The glory years, Act II (1887-1888)
Coming off back-to-back titles, and with most of its regular lineup from the previous
season returning, Comiskey and the Browns were the strong favorites to win yet another
Association title in 1887. After hitting .206 in 1886, Hugh Nicol was released during
the off-season to sign with Cincinnati. He was replaced in right field by a tandem of Bob
Caruthers and Dave Foutz. The only other significant change was due to another contract
dispute between Von der Ahe and a pitcher. Nat Hudson held out in the spring for more
money, and didn't sign until mid-June, after which he was only lightly used. To replace
Hudson, Von der Ahe signed 19 year-old rookie Charles Koenig, better known as Silver King,
who had played briefly with the Kansas City Cowboys of the National League in 1886. The
Browns started slow at 2-3, but then rapidly pulled away from the field by going 29 and
2 for a 31-5 start. Not even a mid-season injury to catcher Doc Bushong, which forced the
Browns to use rookie Jack Boyle behind the plate, could keep the Browns from running away
from the rest of the league. They totaled 95 wins and 40 losses and won the title by 14
games over the Cincinnati Reds. Overall, the 1887 Browns were possibly the strongest club
in the history of the Association. Tip O'Niell hit .435 to lead both leagues. (A rule
in place at the time counting walks as hits originally resulted in his average being a
lofty .492 for the season). He also led the Association in almost every other offensive
catagory. They featured three top pitchers - Caruthers (29-9), Foutz (25-12), and King
(32-12); Caruthers and Foutz also both hit over .350, justifying the release of Nicol.
The Browns winning percentage (.704) is second only to the 1885 Browns (.705) in the
Association, and they won more games in a season than any other club in the ten-year
existance of the league. They were also the first major league club to score over 1000
runs, as they averaged more than eight runs per game.
1887 Browns stats
The 1887 World Series was a fifteen game marathon between the Browns and the Detroit
Wolverines. The Woleverines had jumped out to a fast start and held on to win the National
League title by 3.5 games over the Philadelphia Phillies. Wolverines owner Frederick
Stearns proposed an elaborate, travelling World Series, which Von der Ahe agreed to (along
with increased ticket prices of $1.00 for general admission and $1.50 for reserved seats).
The teams split the first two games in St. Louis, and the Browns lost game three in Detroit
in thirteen innings on an error by Comiskey. The clubs then hit the road on more of a tour
than a World Series. The Browns rapidly collapsed following the Game 3 loss and fell
behind irreversibly 8-3. They managed to regroup split the last four, but lost the Series
10-5. Von der Ahe was so upset about the poor showing that he threatened to withhold the
players' share of the earnings. Comiskey intervened, but the season which had gone so well
ended on a sour note.
The 1887 World Series
| Date | Location | Score |
| Game 1 | Oct. 10 | Sportsman's Park (StL) | StL 6 | Det 1 |
| Game 2 | Oct. 11 | Sportsman's Park (StL) | Det 5 | StL 3 |
| Game 3 | Oct. 12 | Recreation Park (Det) | Det 2 | StL 1 |
| Game 4 | Oct. 13 | Recreation Park (Pit) | Det 8 | StL 0 |
| Game 5 | Oct. 14 | Washington Park (Bro) | StL 5 | Det 2 |
| Game 6 | Oct. 15 | Polo Grounds (NY) | Det 9 | StL 0 |
| Game 7 | Oct. 17 | Baseball Grounds (Phi) | Det 3 | StL 1 |
| Game 8 | Oct. 18 | South Side Grounds (Bos) | Det 9 | StL 2 |
| Game 9 | Oct. 19 | Baseball Grounds (Phi) | Det 4 | StL 2 |
| Game 10 | Oct. 21 | Swampoodle Grounds (Was) | StL 11 | Det 4 |
| Game 11 | Oct. 21 | Oriole Park (Bal) | Det 13 | StL 3 |
| Game 12 | Oct. 22 | Washington Park (Bro) | StL 5 | Det 1 |
| Game 13 | Oct. 24 | Recreation Park (Det) | Det 6 | StL 3 |
| Game 14 | Oct. 25 | West Side Park (Chi) | Det 4 | StL 3 |
| Game 15 | Oct. 26 | Sportsman's Park (StL) | StL 9 | Det 2 |
Just weeks after the World Series, a fire burned down a portion of the Sportsman's Park
facility. It was an omen for things to come. In November, Von der Ahe held a fire sale
of his own, trading or selling five key players in a purge that gutted the club and
stunned the baseball world. He started by selling Bob Caruthers to Brooklyn; he released
catcher Doc Bushong at the same time so that he could also sign with Brooklyn. Von der
Ahe then sold Curtis Welch to the Athletics and traded longtime Browns shortstop Bill
Gleason to the A's for three players: catcher Jocko Milligan, outfielder Fred Mann, and
infielder Chippy McGarr. To complete the purge, he sold Dave Foutz to Brooklyn. At the
time, it was thought that the moves were made to save money, but later it was revealed
that Comiskey had requested the players be removed from the club and it was speculated
that he had lost control of the quintet of stars. Brooklyn, the main beneficiary of
the deals, immediately became a favorite for the 1888 season after finishing sixth
in 1887.
During the 1887 season, conflicts between the Association owners continued to mount. After
league president Wheeler Wyckoff interceeded in a dispute between St. Louis and Brooklyn
over a bad call, Von der Ahe led an attempt to oust Wyckoff as president. The attempt
failed when only four owners attended the meeting, but it illustrated the tensions that
were at work behind the scenes in the Association. Von der Ahe reportedly called John Day,
owner of the New York NL franchise, after the failed coup and offered to transfer the Browns
to the National League. (This incident also permanently turned Opie Caylor against the
league, as he was barred from a key meeting of the owners due to his status as a reporter.)
As the season wound down, Charlie Byrne, owner of the Brooklyn franchise, bought the New
York Mets and gutted the club by transfering all its stars to his Brooklyn club. He also
fired Caylor, who had taken over the Mets as manager. Caylor used his position as a reporter
to skewer the Association in the press, first over Sunday baseball, and then blasting the
Browns for their showing in the World Series and Von der Ahe's dismantling of his club.
Byrne dumped the Mets in the offseason, and the Association lost control of New York to
the National League. A franchise was awarded to Kansas City to fill the slot for the
1888 season.
To replace the traded stars for the 1888 season, St. Louis turned to a collection of
rookies. Bug Holliday, who had never played in the majors, was expected to replace Welch
in center field, but before the season started he signed with Des Moines after a salary
dispute. Holliday would break into the majors the next season with Cincinnati and patrol
the outfield for them for ten years. Rookie Harry Lyons got the starting job instead.
A second rookie, Ed Herr was installed in the lineup to replace Bill Gleason, the only
shortstop the club had known. He was the starter until the midseason acquisition of Bill
White from Louisville. But the biggest holes were left by the departure of Bob Caruthers
and Dave Foutz, the backbone of the Browns pitching for the past three years and also
the rightfield tandam for 1887. Tommy McCarthy, who had played briefly in the majors in
each of the two previous seasons, took over the outfield slot. Silver King, winner of 32
games the previous season, was back, as was Nat Hudson, who had won 16 games in his rookie
season of 1886 but had pitched in only 9 games in 1887. The Browns turned to a pair of
young pitchers, Jim Devlin and Ed Knouff, to bolster the pitching staff. Still, the Browns
went into the 1888 season with so many unproven players that Von der Ahe formed the
St. Louis Whites to play in the Western Association as a
psuedo farm team.
Despite the dramatic changes and the preseason predictions, in mid-July the Browns
(37-17, .685) were percentage points ahead of Brooklyn (41-20, .672) atop the league
going into a four game series with Brooklyn in St. Louis. Behind Caruthers and Foutz,
the Bridegrooms (as Brooklyn was called due to the number of newlyweds on the club) swept
the Browns to open a 4.5 game lead. Brooklyn left St. Louis for Kansas City, where they
proceded to start a slump that dropped them into the middle of a four-way race with St.
Louis, Cincinnati and Philadelphia. In the middle of August, the Browns began to pull away
from the pack, led largely by pitchers King and Hudson and the hitting of Tip O'Niell.
King picked up 45 wins on the season; his ERA of 1.64 was the lowest in the Association's
history outside of the inaugual season of 1882, when four pitchers posted a lower number.
Nat Hudson won 25 games before leaving the club to get married late in September; he would
pitch in only a handful of games in 1889 before dropping out of baseball for good.
Offensively, O'Niell wasn't as dominent as the 1887 season, but he did lead the league
in batting average, was third in slugging and second in on-base percentage. The league
leader in OBP was Yank Robinson with only a .231 batting average but 116 walks, a major
league record at the time. (1888 was the last season in which five or more balls were
required for a walk; in 1889 the familiar 4 balls, 3 strikes ratio was finally settled
upon.) By the end of August, the Browns owned a 6.5 game lead over Philadelphia, enroute
to a 41-16 finish. In mid-September, the Browns acquired Icebox Chamberlain from Louisville.
Chamberlain (14-9 at the time) joined the club right as Hudson left and won 11 games for
the Browns. The team ran their lead up to 9.5 games late in September before winning the
division by a comfortable margin of 6.5 games over Brooklyn. The Browns were off to their
fourth World Series in four years, this time against the New York Giants.
1888 Browns stats
The 1888 World Series was another long affair - this time ten games - with the first six
games to be played at east coast locations. The Browns had only Silver King and Icebox
Chamberlain to pitch in the series against the Giants trio of Tim Keefe, Mickey Welch,
and Cannonball Crane. Tim Keefe was a 35 game winner in 1888 for the Mets, with an ERA
almost as low (1.74) as King's. He outdueled Silver King in three games, and Welch and
Crane each added a victory, while Chamberlain talied the loan win for St. Louis. The
Browns returned home down 5-1 in the series. King beat Crane in Game 7, but Keefe made
it a perfect 4-0 for the the Series winning Game 8 to clinch the championship for the
Giants. The Browns won the last two meaningless games, but lost the series 6-4.
The 1888 season finished with the biggest gap between the first division (St. Louis,
Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati) and the second division (Baltimore, Cleveland,
Louisville, and Kansas City) yet in the Association. Cincinnati won 80 games, finishing
fourth 11.5 games behind St. Louis. In fifth place was Baltimore, with 57 wins and 36
games behind the Browns. Prior to the season, the Association set a minimum $0.50 admission
price and guarenteed visiting clubs $130 per game. By August, it allowed clubs to go back
to a quarter, but kept the minimum payment to the visiting team. The second division clubs
immediately began shifting home games to road games with clubs that were still charging
$0.50. Cincinnati wound up with 79 homes games, while Baltimore only played 56 at home
just a year after an Orioles ticket was hard to come by. At the end of the 1888 season,
Cleveland bought the Detroit Wolverines and jumped to the National League. Columbus returned
to the Association for the 1889 season.
Part 3: The glory years, Act I (1885-1886)
Part 5: The fall from the top (1889)