Spiders Spiral Down

On this date in 1899 the Cleveland Spiders, playing at home, beat the New York Giants 4-2.  It was their 19th win of the season against 94 losses.  Cleveland was in 12th and last place in the National League, 55 games behind the first place team.

After that, the season started to go really bad.

Cleveland played 41 more contests in 1899, losing 40, the last nine by a combined score of 111-22.  The last 36 contests were on the road.  For the season, the Spiders recorded 20 wins versus 134 losses, playing only 42 games at home (including only 8 of the final 92 games), 84 games behind the pennant winning Brooklyn Superbas. 

The Spiders had not always been a terrible franchise.  Joining the National League in 1889, the team had played below .500 its first three seasons but then above .500 for seven consecutive years, including 3 second place finishes and one in third place.  Its greatest star was Cy Young, baseball's leader in pitching wins then, now, and forever, who was joined by two other future Hall of Famers, Bobby Wallace and Jesse Burkett.

The prior year, the team finished at 81-68, good enough for 5th place, 21 games out.  Even then, as late as August 11, the Spiders were in third place, only 3 1/2 games out of first.

What happened?  And why?

The demise of the Spiders can be attributed to two factors.  The first was the ban on Sunday baseball in Cleveland and the second was allowing team owners to own more than one franchise.

Since the inception of the franchise it had been owned by Frank and Stanley Robison, with Stanley being the driving force.  Despite fielding competitive teams, the Spiders always had one of the lowest attendance in the league.  At a time when almost 100% of team revenue was dependent upon the fans in the ballpark this was a problem.  The biggest obstacle was the Sunday baseball ban.  In a world where most men still worked a six day week, Sunday was always the day that drew the biggest crowds to a ballgame.

The ban was state law in Ohio, but in Cincinnati enforcement was ignored and the Reds played at home on Sundays without interference.  Cleveland was another story with longtime major Robert McKisson supporting the ban and, in a version of the Baptists and bootleggers theory of government regulation, strongly supported by churches and local saloon owners.

In 1896, the second place Spiders drew 152,000 fans (2,450 per game average), 11th out of 12 teams.  The following year, the Robisons decided to file a legal challenge to the law; they lost and drew only 115,000 fans (1,800 per game average), dead last in National League attendance.

The following year, the Robisons began to execute on what they believed to be a more profitable strategy while planning their exit from the Mistake By The Lake.  The 1898 club played only 55 of 149 games at home, including only 3 of its last 42 contests.  Attendance for home games was down to about 1,300 on average.

Prior to the 1899 season, the Robisons took the next step, purchasing the St Louis franchise (which a year later they renamed the Cardinals).  St Louis permitted Sunday baseball and was a larger market, and Stanley Robison transferred all the best players on the Spiders, including Young, Wallace, and Burkett to the Gateway City franchise.  Though they still owned the Cleveland franchise, it was a wreck, a shell of a competitive baseball team which staggered through the 1899 season.  Average attendance for the 42 home games was 145 (that is not missing a digit!).

The unstable 12 team configuration of the National League, seasons in which most of the teams never competed for the pennant, and the dual owner shenanigans of the Robisons and the owner of the Pittsburgh and Louisville franchises and the Giant-Reds dual ownership led to changes in league structure.

For the 1900 season, four franchises were dropped from the league (Cleveland, Louisville, Washington, and Baltimore) leaving eight teams.  The turmoil also created an opportunity for an upstart league, the American, which declared itself a major league in 1901 and created a new franchise in Cleveland, now known as the Indians.