St. Louis Maroons

Union Association (1884)
National League (1885-1886)

Roster

The formation of the American Association in late 1881 led to a brief period of turmoil in professional baseball as the new Association and the older National League battled over players, teritory, and control of professional baseball. By early 1883, the two leagues reached a temporary truce, and following the 1883 season a permanent settlement was adopted. Along with the Northwestern League (a minor league with teams based in the midwest), the American Association and National League entered into the National Agreement of Professional Base Ball Clubs to govern professional baseball. In this arrangement, the National League recognized the American Association as a major league, and the three leagues agreed to respect each others contracts and territories. However, even before the final arrangement was reached, another league formed to challenge it.

The Union Association was formed in September, 1883, in part to challenge the reserve rule which bound players in the National League and the American Association. The major force in forming the league was Henry Lucas of the Lucas family of St. Louis. (Henry's brother, John B. C. Lucas II, was the president of the Brown Stockings during that club's foray into the National League in 1876-1877.) Lucas wanted a major league team, but the American Association already had the St. Louis Browns, and the National League was not allowed to place a club in St. Louis under the terms of the National Agreement. Lucas also believed that professional players would rise to revolt against the reserve clause if an alternative existed. (He was right, but not at the right time, as the Player's Rebellion of 1890 showed.) He pursuaded Mike Scanlon, who was trying to get an American Association franchise in Washington D.C., to join forces with him. They assembled a group of other investors - including two other leading St. Louis businessmen, Ellis Wainwright, owner of the Wainright Brewery Company, and Adolphus Busch, head of Anheuser-Busch - and started a new league to challenge the dominance of the existing leagues. The new league started the 1884 season with teams in St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Washingon, and Altoona.

The National League and the American Association were quick to respond to the challenge represented by the formation of the Union Association. The American Association (at the urging of the National League) expanded to 12 teams for the 1884 in an effort to tie up as much talent as possible and secure new territory. The move backfired, as all four of the new clubs fared poorly in 1884, and one (Washington) was replaced in mid-season. The Association teams also formed reserve clubs for the 1884 season composed of younger players and semipros. The players were salaried, and the reserve teams played scheduled games against one another. These reserve clubs were viewed by some owners as a possible source of new talent, and thus foreshadowed the farm systems established in the early 1900s by major league clubs. The reserve club system dissolved as the 1884 season progressed. The Northwestern League was hardest hit by the Union Association, mainly due to the loss of players. Most of its clubs folded as the 1884 season progressed, and the final two, St. Paul and Milwaukee, joined the Union Association late in the 1884 season.

The Maroons were easily the best team in the new league, starting the season with a twenty game winning streak that effectively ended any race for the pennant. Lucas built his juggernaut around a core of veterans signed from the other two leagues. The best of these was Fred Dunlap, the second baseman for Cleveland the previous four seasons. Dunlap was considered to be one of the best second basemen in the 1880s, and he dominated the Association, leading in every major offensive catagory. Orator Shaffer, a nine-year veteran also ranked near the top in every catagory. Jack Gleason played 3B for the Maroons, the third different St. Louis franchise he played with in his career. The pitching staff was initally led by veteran Billy Taylor, who posted 25 wins and an ERA of 1.68 for the Maroons before bolting back to Pittsburgh. After Taylor and a second player, Buttercup Dickerson, jumped back to Association teams, Lucas signed Charlie Sweeney from the National League Providence club. Sweeney won 17 games with Providence and another 25 with the Maroons in just his second full season in the majors. Lucas complimented his veterans with several successful rookies. The most notable of these was Joe Quinn, who started at first base for the Maroons in his first major league season. Quinn, the first Australian in the majors, played all three seasons for the Maroons and wound up playing seventeen years total in the majors. He also had a brief stint managing the St. Louis Browns in 1895. Rookie pitchers Perry Werden and Charlie Hodnett each won twelve games for the Maroons. Niether would pitch again in the majors, although Werden would play six more seasons as an outfielder. Rookie Henry Boyle played left field after Dickerson left, and he also won 15 games and finished third in ERA in the league. The Maroons dominated the Association with a 94-19 record and finished 21 games ahead of second place Cincinnati.

While Lucas was successful in building his club, one of the biggest stars he signed never played a game for the Maroons. Prior to the start of the season, Lucas lured Tony Mullane away from the St. Louis Browns and Chris Von der Ahe. Von der Ahe was worried Mullane would draw fans away from the Browns, and so he arranged for Mullane to sign with the Toledo club, one of the four expansion franchises in the American Association in 1884. After Toledo played its first game against the Browns (with Mullane starting), the Maroons obtained a court injunction preventing him from playing more games in St. Louis; the injunction remained in effect until 1887. The legal victory was one of few victories the Unions won in their battle against the established leagues. A similar appeal in Cincinnati was thrown out by the judge in the U.S. Circuit Court because he believed baseball wasn't a business but a sport, and thus the matter was too trivial for his court. The new league never really took hold, and clubs began dropping out early in the 1884 season. In the end, only five of the orginal eight Union franchises finished the season. A total of eight other clubs occupied the remaining three slots during the season, including the Wilmington Quicksteps, who jumped to the majors from the Eastern League and lasted only 18 games (with a 2-16 record), and the St. Paul club from the Northwestern League, which played all of its 9 games on the road, thus becoming the only major league franchise to never play a home game. At the end of the season, two of the surviving five original clubs folded and a third (Washington) dropped from the league, leaving only two of the original clubs (St. Louis and Cincinnati) solvent.

Final standings for the Union Association of 1884

Team                      W    L     PCT    GB
St. Louis Maroons        94   19    .832    --
Milwaukee Brewers         8    4    .667   35.5
Cincinnati Outlaw Reds   69   36    .657    21
Baltimore                58   47    .552    32
Boston Reds              58   51    .532    34
Chicago-Pittsburgh       41   50    .451    42
Washington Nationals     47   65    .420   46.5
Philadelphia Keystones   21   46    .313    50
St. Paul White Caps       2    6    .250   39.5
Altoona Mountain Cities   6   19    .240    44
Kansas City Cowboys      16   63    .203    61
Wilmington Quicksteps     2   16    .111   44.5
Following the 1884 season, Lucas opened negotiations to transfer his club from the Union Association to the National League. Some at the time felt that the entire Union Association was orchestrated by Lucas as a means to gain entry into the more establlished leagues. In any case, the National Agreement of 1883 prevented either major league from placing clubs into territories with existing clubs in the other league, and the addition of Lucas' Maroons to the National League violated this arrangement. Von der Ahe ultimately agreed to the arrangement after a private meeting with Lucas, most probably after Lucas paid some financial compensation. With his permission secured, Lucas bought out the Cleveland franchise in the NL for $2,500 and transfered his club, abandoning the Association. Lucas' defection from the league he created killed the Union Association; at the January meeting, only two Association clubs showed up and they voted to disband. The Maroons were the only franchise to survive in the majors, becoming the second club to represent St. Louis in the National League. The Washington club, backed by Mike Scanlon, failed to get a berth in the American Association for 1885, and ultimately he placed a club in the National League for the 1886 season. Some of the other clubs transfered to a minor league, the Western League, which reorganized fifteen years later and became the American League.

When Lucas purchased the Cleveland franchise, he thought he was getting their players as well. However, when Brooklyn (AA) signed the top five Cleveland players prematurely, the rest scattered to other teams and Lucas was left with nothing to show for the price. He did manage to pick up two players from Cincinnati who had jumped to the UA from Cleveland during the 1884 season. Jack Glasscock and Fatty Briody (along with a third player, Jim McCormick) turned Cincinnati from a .500 club to the second best in the UA in 1884, and their addition to the already strong Maroons led many to predict an NL pennant for the club in 1885. However, Sweeney won only 11 games due to an elbow injury and their second starter Henry Boyle won only 16 all season after winning 15 in the second half of 1884. The offense fell apart, Dunlap and Lucas clashed, and the Maroons dropped to the bottom of the NL with a 36-72 record.

In 1886 the Marrons were allowed to charge $0.25 for admission (a concession from the normal $0.50 required for all National League clubs). They suffered through another dismal season (43-79, 6th place), and were unable to draw fans from the Browns, who were winning their second of four straight Association championships. (Even in their pennant winning 1884 season, the Marrons were unable to compete with the Browns; fans prefered to watch the Browns finish fourth in a tight race rather than the Marrons running away with the title.) Star Fred Dunlap was sold to Detroit in early August, admist rumors that the club was going to disband. Henry Lucas sold his stake in the club on August 18, 1886, claiming losses of almost $70,000 in baseball. For the next week, the fate of the club was unknown; a group of local businessmen led by William Stromberg organized a stock company to take over the club on August 23, 1886, and at a meeting of the League on August 25, 1886 it was resolved that the club would finish the season. The club did finish the season, and after the season concluded, played a seres of exhibition games against the Browns, followed be three games against Little Rock in early November, 1886.

In November, 1887, the National League admitted Pittsburgh from the American Association as a ninth franchise. Questions immediately arose about either a tenth team joining or one club dropping to restore the League to eight clubs. In January 1887, rumors began that the Maroons were being sold to Indianapolis. In February, a rumor spread that Kansas City was buying the Maroons. Finally, at a League meeting in March, the St. Louis franchise was sold to a group from Indianapolis and Kansas City was dropped from the League. The St. Louis Maroons, the second entry from St. Louis in the National League, was gone. It was six more years before St. Louis joined the National League again, this time making it work.

Season-by-season statistics for the St. Louis Maroons
1884 Maroons statistics
1885 Maroons statistics
1886 Maroons statistics

The Maroons never really had a chance of competing against the much stronger and already established Browns. Lucas' foray into baseball cost him a large portion of his fortune. Over the summer of 1886, Lucas divested of almost all of the property he owned in and around St. Louis. He sold the club in ugust 1886. By late 1886, Lucas had moved to St. Paul and taken a job with a railroad company. He died almost broke in 1910, forgotten by baseball, just twenty-five years after his venture has set the baseball world afire.

Season-by-season record for the Maroons franchise
YearWonLostGBPlace
1884 (UA)9419-1st out of 12
1885 (NL)3672498th out of 8
1886 (NL)4379146th out of 8
3 yrs172170

There is some uncertainty as to where the Maroons played their games. Philip Lowry reports that the Maroons played their games at "Union Grounds" in all three of their seasons, although he does not specify where this was. Peter Golenbock reports that Lucas built the 10,000 seat Union Park (also known as the Palace Park of America), at Cass Avenue and Jefferson (bounded by Cass, Jefferson, West 25th and Madison). This park was described by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as "larger than three fourths of the ball grounds of the country". This location was at the intersection of two street car lines operated by the Mound City Transportation Company, of which Lucas was the president. Much as Von der Ahe had used the Browns as a means to promote sales at his beer garden, Lucas hoped to dovetail the Maroons with his other business interests. Other reports indicate they played their home games at Lucas Park in 1884 (bounded by 13th, 14th, Lucas and Locust), built on Lucas' private estate. Joan Thomas presents a listing from the 1880 St. Louis City Directory for the "Union Base Ball Park" at Cass and Jefferson, which she says was also referred to as Lucas Park. This listing appears to pre-date the Union Association and contradicts reports that the park was built for Henry Lucas' Maroons.
After joining the National League, the Maroons moved to a park located at Vandeventer and Natural Bridge. Chris Von der Ahe would later build the New Sportsman's Park at the site before the 1892 season, and the St. Louis Cardinals would play their home games there until 1920.

Addendum
It should be noted that Bill James, in his book The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (2001), makes a compelling arguement that the Union Association should not be considered a major league. He demonstrates that the level of play in the Association was clearly below that of the other two leagues at the time. With few exceptions, most of the best players in the Association were never stars in the other leagues before or after 1884, and only a handful could be considered major league players outside of the Association. The Maroons, the best club in the league, failed miserably in the National League the following summer. He also notes that none of the major publications covering baseball at the time regarded the Union Association as a mjaor league in their coverage. In fact, the only point he concedes which supports the claim that the UA was a major league is that some of their franchises were located in major league cities. Ultimately, he compares the Union Association to the Pacific Coast League in the 1920s and concludes that the Pacific Coast League was clearly the stronger league with far more of a claim to 'major league' status than the Association. After close to ten pages of discussion, he conlcudes that the Union Association was erroniously granted major league status in the 1920s by the first baseball encycolpedia (The Baseball Cyclopedia in 1922).

I mention all this in the interest of fairness. For close to 80 years the Union Association has been listed as a major league by all of the major publications of baseball records and statistics, and no one has questioned this notion before Bill James (that I have heard of, at least). From the sources I have read, it seems that the two existing major leagues took the intent of the Union Association to exist as a major league seriously. Further, the Union Association itself aspired to major league status and recruited players actively from the other two major leagues. That the Union Association failed to live up to the billing is also obvious. By modern standards it did not meet almost any definition of major league you can think of, in quality of players or in the quality of the organization as a whole. Perhaps if it had survived, it may have established itself as a true equal, rather than a pretender which failed to capture the crown. In any case, it is one more chapter in the history of baseball in St. Louis. Lucas' premise that the players would welcome an alternative to the reserve clause was correct, but the league he founded was ill-conceived and ultimately poorly backed. The players did rebell against the reserve clause in 1890, establishing the player-owned and operated Player's League.

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