[legendsport]

The Colonels ran away with the pennant, winning 121 games and dominating the League to such an extent that the excellent season of the Boston Beaneaters (103 wins) saw them finish eighteen games off the pace.

Unsurprisingly, based on the number of victories amassed by Louisville, both the top pitcher and top hitter were members of the Colonels squad. Pitcher Ronald Mason won an amazing 41 games (tops in the league) and also had the best earned run average with a 1.75 mark. Stanley Sweetwater of Boston was nearly as dominant, winning 40 games and posting a 1.81 ERA, both good for second-best to Mason. Louisville also had the league's top hitter, with (just turned) 26-year-old second baseman Bruno Barbella leading the circuit in batting at .361 for the season. Barbella began his career at the young age of 17 and in nine seasons has gone from a .226 average to posting averages above .360 in four of his last five seasons. He has improved his career mark to .322 and his 1619 hits.

Milwaukee took the pennant in the Western League, finishing with an 84-52 record, six games better than the 78 wins amassed by St. Paul. Milwaukee's Mike Bergeron won 24 games to lead the league - not bad for a fellow who lost 22 games in 1894 for the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League. St. Paul boasted the league's top hitter in 33-year-old Trey Duren, who hit .420 to lead the circuit. This is the same Trey Duren who held down the keystone in Louisville for almost ten years until he was supplanted by a certain young man named Bruno Barbella. With a .293 lifetime National League average, it wouldn't be a surprise for the veteran Duren to get a long, hard look from some Big League clubs for the 1899 season.

In the Eastern League, the recent dominance of the Wilkes-Barre Coal Barons continued. The Barons won 92 games, eleven better than the runners-up from Montreal. The Barons built their 1898 pennant on pitching; although posting no league leader, the club boasted the runner-up in ERA (rookie Lionel Frace, 2.58) and victories (Myron Groves, 27). Wilkes-Barre was good enough in both hitting (3rd best overall) and pitching (2nd best) to win the pennant. The batting title went to 36-year-old Toronto catcher Clayton Greenway. Greenway swatted for a .318 average in 201 at-bats for the Reds back in 1893, but has hit .362 and now .418 in two seasons in the Eastern League. Perhaps he might be worthy of one last shot at the National League should he decided to continue his career.

[legendsport]

Following an offseason of upheaval which saw two owners buy stakes in other clubs in "better" markets and then proceed to trade their good players to their new clubs, has had an interesting effect on the standings.

The Louisville Colonels, the powerhouse club of 1898, was essentially dismantled, its best parts shipped to the great metropolis of New York, with the pitchers almost the only thing left of the championship club. Someone apparently forgot to tell the "new" Colonels that they weren't the same club any longer. Though the season is still very young, the Louisville club is in its accustomed spot near the top of the standings, sitting at 11-4 right behind the 11-2 Boston Beaneaters.

Though Ronald Mason, the ace of the Colonels, has gotten off to a bumpy start, allowing 25 walks and 29 hits in his three starts - all three of those starts were victories for the Colonels. Young keystone star Sean Murphy is living up to his nickname "The Mighty Mite" as he is powering the new-look Colonels lineup with a .390 average. Dave Duthie, one of the few 1898 backups left behind when the shop moved to Gotham, is thriving in a starting role, hitting .380 thus far. Ex-Giant Pete Bruner, at age 37, may have found the fountain of youth with a .358 average, 12 runs and 10 driven in after 14 games. Will it last? Probably not... but it sure is fun for the fans in Louisville who cried in their mint juleps when the cream of the club was dispatched to New York in the dead of winter.

Louisville's surprising resilience begs the question: what of the ex-Colonels who now call New York home? Well, the Giants, long the doormats of the League are slowly rounding into shape with the infusion of new talent and are 7-6 thus far, in the fifth place in the standings. Clive Hines, the holdover pitcher who lost 28 contests in 1898, apparently likes his new teammates: he's 2-1 with a 1.38 ERA thus far. Dell Coyne finds the Polo Grounds to his liking: after a middling .281 in 1898, he's rapping out hits at a .385 clip this spring. Once 1898 Batting Champ Bruno Barbella (.304 thus far) and young Billy Nelson (.232) round into shape, this Giants team should be dangerous.

As for the league's front-runners, the Beaneaters have found a magic elixir for 38-year-old King Karl Quinlan. The third baseman is battling Father Time and winning with a .431 average so far as he seeks to become the first batsmen to reach the magic mark of 3000 for a career. He's been playing professionally since 1879 and his experience shows. Heinie Staudenmaier has been making strudel of opposing pitchers as well, as his .481 mark will attest while John Walton rounds out a trio of outstanding hitters in Beantown with a .423 mark himself. With all that offense, you wouldn't think you'd need much pitching, a thought which no one bothered to tell Stanley Sweetwater. Following a 40-win campaign in 1898, Sweets is at it again, with a 4-0, 1.82 to show for it in April.

Looking at the rest of the Big League, the revamped St. Louis squad sits in third place at 9-3 while the Philadelphias are surprisingly strong in the early going: 8-5 and in fourth place. Behind the Giants are the Pirates (6-6) as the final team winning at least half their games. If Louisville is the surprise success of the early portion of the schedule, the Brooklyn club is the disappointment: 3-10 and in 11th place. This is the same club which was dominating League play not too long ago. Only the basement-dwelling Chicago club, 4-13 and in the midst of a much needed roster revamping, is worse than Brooklyn thus far.


"King" Karl Quinlan

[legendsport]

The New York Giants used a 22-4 May to shake off the doldrums caused by a massive roster shakeup following their purchase by the magnates who also own the Louisville Colonels and as the calendar page turns to June the Gothamites lead the Big League by four games with a 30-10 record.

Veteran backstop Squirrel Downs is off to the best start of his career and is hitting .376 to lead the Giants (and the League) while the ever-dangerous Bruno Barbella is rounding into his usual shape and has raised his mark to .358 following a slow start. Both Bernard Berry and Aidan O'Day sport 7-2 records and all five of the team's hurlers have at least five victories.

Boston's veteran club remains very much in the hunt as well: their record is 25-13. Karl Quinlan (6 home runs), Heinie Staudenmaier (.357 average) and Mick O'Halloran (35 runs driven home) are all big factors in the Beaneaters' success thus far. On the mound, Stanley Sweetwater continues to excel and has racked up nine victories against just one defeat.

Cleveland is a surprise this season. The club struggles at the gate, leading to rumors they may be merged with another club or dropped entirely following this season, but the players on the field are excelling, especially True Fairhead who leads the League in victories with 10. At 27-16, the Spiders are very much in the hunt.

Speaking of Cleveland, the Spiders' long-time star Tom "The Erie Eel" Ewart is just ten safeties shy of eclipsing the mark of 2894 hits achieved by Hick Rogers. With the Hick now tending his vegetable garden following a long and productive career, the Eel is about to become the most successful hitter in the history of the game. At his current clip (.316), expect Ewart to become the hit king sometime in the next ten contests. Perhaps that will bring the fans out to League Park.

He's tall and has red hair, which is why the scribes have dubbed him "Big Red" in Philadelphia, but the Phillies young pitcher Lee Cardinal had come up big in his first season off the sandlots of Milwaukee. Cardinal leads the National League in earned run average at 1.70, and were the Phillies' offense more potent, would certainly have a better mark than 5 victories against 3 defeats. In three of those five victories, Big Red has shut out the opposing batsmen - in another he allowed one unearned run. Aside from a seven-run outburst by the big bats of the Giants, Cardinal has dominated opposing lineups with regularity - no mean feat for a man who had never faced top hitting before this spring.


Lee Cardinal, Phillies Pitcher

[legendsport]

The Giants completed a 20-4 month of June, as the team which dismantled the league last year is doing it again, albeit in a different uniform. Currently New York is 50-14 and holds a 12.5 game lead on the second-place Beaneaters.

Bruno Barbella has taken his place atop the batting list again, with a .404 mark, good for a 21-point lead on Boston's Staudenmaier. New York's pitching, which is about the only holdover from the former regime, has been good but not overpowering, which is something of a relief for a league which is routinely battered by the ridiculous array of talent in the New York lineup. True Fairhead of Cleveland and Boston's Stanley Sweetwater each have 12 wins to lead the loop while St. Louis pitcher Harry Tague, who came over from Baltimore this past winter, has the League's top earned run mark with a 1.91 average.


Harry "Rebel" Tague, St. Louis

[legendsport]

The fact that the New York Giants enter August with a ten game edge on Boston in the National League standings despite a middling 14-11 record in July speaks volumes about how hot the Gotham nine was during May and June. The overall record of the Giants is at 64-25, a figure not as impressive as the 50-14 they held one month ago, but still good enough for winning percentage of .719 and that double-digit lead in the pennant race.

In the batting race, New York's Bruno Barbella hit a mere .303 in July and his average has dropped to .378, but he still leads the league, mainly on the power of the .481 mark he posted in June. St. Louis' Danny Murphy is now right on Barbella's heels at .370 with Boston's Heinie Staudenmaier's .366 also in the picture.

Cleveland sits in third place behind New York and Boston, 12 games off the pace, and owes a huge portion of that success to the right arm of True Fairhead. Fairhead has not been dominant, but he takes the ball often (29 starts) and wins more than he loses with 16 victories against 10 losses. Those 16 wins lead the League. Washington's Don Stenger remains in first place in the earned run average chase with a 2.16 mark while the Baxter Bullet, Cincinnati's Jasper Ellis, continues to fire the ball hard (though not always on target) to rack up 142 strikeouts, almost twice as much as the second-best mark in the League. Unfortunately for Ellis and the Reds, he also leads (and by a similarly large margin) the "race" for most free passes handed out with a staggering 147 so far.

Milwaukee leads the Western League with a 50-30 record, with Minneapolis right behind at 50-34 and Buffalo also in the picture. Trey Duren continues to be the most dominating hitter in the loop with a .443 mark. At 34, Duren is trying to regain a job in the National League, where he spent 10 years but hasn't been back since 1894.

In the Eastern League, Worcester (56-26) and Montreal (55-30) are battling for the pennant. Worcester has a new star on its hands in Sean McGonigle. The Mighty Mick, as he's known is new to the Eastern League, having been discovered as the top player in a Maryland Industrial League where the 24-year-old had been playing when not pipe fitting at the Washington Navy Yard. With a .412 batting average, it's likely that McGonigle won't stay in the Eastern League too much longer - and it won't be back to the Ship Yard for him.


SEAN MCGONIGLE, WORCESTER

[legendsport]

As the season enters its final full month, the situation hasn't changed much from the way things looked on the first of August. The Giants were 19-7 for the month, not completely overwhelming the competition as they were previously, but more than good enough to enter September with a nine-and-a-half game edge on the Boston Beaneaters.

Boston, which posted a 20-6 record in August is an outstanding team which was put in a large hole by the ridiculous play of New York in May and June. They've played slightly better than New York since then, but haven't been able to close much of that large gap.

Brooklyn, which surged in July, had a mediocre 15-11 in August and has fallen eighteen games back of New York while Cleveland, which was also in the mix early on, has struggled mightily lately (10-17 in August) and is 20.5 games back. St. Louis (61-57 overall, 19-10 in August) and Baltimore (58-58 overall, 13-11 in August) are the only other clubs to have won half their games this season.

In the batting race, Bruno Barbella hit .321 in August and is now tied for the league lead at .365 with Danny Murphy of St. Louis. Barbella is also tied for the lead in home runs with 8, joining team mate Martin Bird and Brooklyn's George Christian. Christian is the runs driven in king at the moment, sitting on 108 while Barbella and gritty veteran Charlie Shanafelt of Brooklyn are knotted for second with 101.

Stanley Sweetwater, Boston's ace of aces, has 21 victories to lead the League with Cincinnati's Jasper Ellis the only other hurler to have 20 wins so far. Sweetwater's 2.22 earned run average is also the best in the circuit while Ellis continues to frighten - and strikeout - hitters at a torrid pace. The Baxter Bullet has 175 strikeouts, far ahead of Cleveland pitcher True Fairhead's 91, but he has also walked an astonishing 176. If Ellis ever learns to put the ball where he aims it, the hitters will be in big trouble.

With Sean McGonigle (.393) and Mike Washington (.387) dominating opposing pitching, Worcester is in the top spot in the Eastern League, currently holding a 75-36 record and a 5.5 game advantage on Montreal. Lest someone get the idea they can't pitch in Worcester, both John Corbin and Chris Davis have 21 victories for the Farmers.

Out west, the Milwaukee and Minneapolis are locked in a tight battle for the pennant. The Brewers currently hold a slight advantage (3.5 games) but both Buffalo and Kansas City are within striking distance as well. Three hitters: Trey Duren (St. Paul - .406), Charlie "King" Cole (Mil. - .403) and Jim Lucier (Min. - .400) are hitting .400 or better, while Minneapolis pitcher Charlie Mitchell has amassed 23 victories, best in the West.

[legendsport]

September 8, 1899: Big news today as Cleveland's Tom Ewart became the first player in base ball history to eclipse the 3,000 hit plateau. Known as the "Erie Eel" for his speed (which has faded in recent years), the 37-year-old Ewart has a .313 lifetime average in his 21-year career which began when he was a fresh-faced 17-year-old breaking in with Buffalo in 1879.

Though he has never had more than 190 hits in a season, nor hit above .356, Ewart's consistently excellent play has led him to this historic moment.


Tom "The Erie Eel" Ewart

[legendsport]

Wake the kids and release the dogs - there's a pennant race in the National League after all! The Giants, who had been showing signs of becoming a juggernaut (being after all, mostly the same bunch who had been a juggernaut in Louisville), have struggled mightily of late, dropping nine of thirteen games in the latter half of September. Meanwhile the Boston nine has been red-hot, going 10-4 over the same span to close to within three-and-a-half games. With 11 games (Boston) and 12 (New York) to go, this thing is very much anybody's ballgame.

With the struggles of the Giants' club, it's not surprising that some of their powerful players would be struggling as well. Bruno Barbella, who has earned a reputation as the best batsman in the loop, hit .383 and .421 in May and June respectively, but since has been more "human" with monthly averages of .301, .321 and .303 for July, August and September respectively. His overall average of .354 has him tied with Pittsburgh youngster Michael Calice for fourth in the league batting race. Ahead of Barbella are Boston's Heinie Staudenmaier (.372), St. Louis' Danny Murphy (.359) and Pittsburgh's Fritz Behrens (.357).

The pitching side is dominated by two chuckers of the ol' horsehide: Boston's Stanley Sweetwater and Cincinnati's Jasper Ellis. Sweets and Ellis are tied for the league lead in victories with 25. Sweetwater's 2.31 earned run average is the circuit's best, while Ellis' fireball has sent 209 batters back to the bench without putting the ball in play.

The Western League has finished its 1899 campaign - and controversy reigns. Both Milwaukee and Minneapolis have lain claim to the pennant. Milwaukee finished the season 74-50, for a .597 winning percentage while Minneapolis won more games (78) but also lost more (54) with a .591 winning percentage. For now, league czar Byron Standish has awarded the pennant to Milwaukee.

Milwaukee's Charlie Cole won the West's batting title by being the loop's only hitter to club better than .400 (.403). Minneapolis' Charlie Mitchell won 27 games to lead that category.

In the Eastern League, the season wrapped up with Montreal edging Worcester by a scant half-game to claim the pennant. Worcester boasted the league's two top hitters in Sean McGonigle (.417) and Mike Washington (.389), while Montreal had the top pitcher in Gaston DeValois who won 25 games and finished second to Rochester's Hi Reed with a 2.49 earned run average (Reed posted a 2.30 ERA).

The eyes of the base ball nation now turn exclusively to the looming stretch battle between New York and Boston. Who will lay claim to the 1899 pennant? The answer will be found in the next fortnight's contests.


Stanley Sweetwater, Boston

[legendsport]

The 1899 season is in the books and it came to a surprising end. The New York Giants, who back in, oh, early June or so were all but crowned champions of the league, continued a fatal swoon begun in September, compiling a 4-8 record in October to finish 97-57. That may have been good enough to hold onto the pennant were it not for the powerful play of the Boston Beaneaters, who were 9-2 in October to finish 99-55 and claim the National League pennant.

Fittingly for a champion, the Boston club boasted not only the batting champion - Heinie Staudenmaier with a .369 average - but also the top pitcher in the circuit with Stanley Sweetwater, whose 28 victories and 2.15 earned run average were both the best in the National League.

Staudenmaier's .369 was good enough for a respectable cushion over the runners-up, St. Louis' Danny Murphy and Pittsburgh's Fritz Behrens who tied for second with .355 averages. Mike Calice of the Pirates (.351) and Bruno Barbella (.343) of the snake-bitten Giants rounded out the top five hitters. Behrens tied with Brooklyn's George Christian for the lead in round trippers, with 12 while Christian laid claim to the RBI crown with 133, seven more than Barbella's 126.

Sweetwater's 28 victories placed him two ahead of Cincinnati's electric (and wild) Jasper Ellis. St. Louis' Mac Colligan finished second in the ERA race with a 2.25 mark and Ellis placed far ahead of all competition with 227 strikeouts, an impressive mark offset by his astounding 230 walks.

Rumors abound that big changes are coming this winter. Bad attendance and lopsided competition, plus tangled ownerships has given birth to talk of cutting the league back to eight clubs for 1900. Which of the clubs will survive should this come to pass? And adding to the tumult is a rumor of a reborn American Association, possibly including clubs from the very successful Western League - though full disclosure requires the statement that Western czar Byron Standish has stated unequivocally that his circuit is uninterested in merging any of its clubs into a new American Association.


FRITZ BEHRENS, PITTSBURGH

[legendsport]

The National League's twelve owners, known to the media simply as the "Base Ball Magnates," gathered in New York for their annual winter meeting. It didn't take long for the topic on everyone's mind to be brought into the open: the twelve-team league simply did not work and to survive, the strong must get rid of the weak. At least two - and probably four - clubs needed to be jettisoned.

New York's Alton Fender, who until just a year previously had owned the Louisville club, had been vocal in previous meetings: the Giants club was of key importance to the health of the League as, in Fender's words, "the flagship franchise in the nation's greatest metropolis." The Giants had often been a poorly-performing club, only Fender's purchase and subsequent stripping of Louisville's best players to send to New York had reversed the club's sickly fortunes. Now Fender made a demand: either the weak sisters be removed or he would be forced to reduce his financial commitment to the Giants. Everyone recognized this would be disastrous.

Results on the field exacerbated the problem. The same teams won, the same lost, year after year. Boston, Brooklyn and Louisville (and New York, using Louisville's players in 1899) had dominated the 1890s. The Temple Cup, an artificial attempt at some form of postseason drama, had been a failure - no one outside the cities involved cared; after all, everyone "knew" who the real champions were - the regular season had proven it. All roads led to the same destination: four teams must go.

The easiest to dismiss was Washington. A weak sister, the Senators had never been particularly competitive, nor had they proven profitable in the nation's capital. Baltimore, which had briefly been a good club in the middle of the decade, had fallen on hard times and was mediocre at best and playing to indifferent crowds. Similarly, Louisville, once a league power had first been stripped of its best players by Fender and then sold off. What was left was neither competitive nor profitable. Finally Cleveland, which had been competitive though never a top-notch club, was named as the fourth club simply based on economic factors.

A potential wrench in the works was the possibility of a new American Association. The last things the magnates wanted was to dispatch four clubs only to have them show up as the core of a reborn major league challenger. Therefore, the four magnates would have to be "bought off" - the main issue was for how much. In the end, it came down to each of the eight surviving clubs contributing 5 percent of their gross revenues over the 1900 and 1901 seasons into a pot to be split evenly among the four cast-offs. The estimated total for each of the four was about $105,000.

So the National League, base ball's most successful organization, jettisoned four teams, slimming down an eight-team circuit as the new century approached. Moving into the 20th century would be Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.

Even as the surviving eight began fighting over the players left jobless by the contraction of their clubs, a new threat, greater than any ever before faced by the venerable 25-year-old pro loop, was growing right under their very noses.

[legendsport]

As the 19th century entered its final year, the National League stood unchallenged as the top-level of base ball competition. But the big league, now slightly less big after cutting four teams and returning to an eight-team circuit, had its full impact limited mainly to the large cities it occupied. The rest of the country, picking up news of the National League via telegraph, found their base ball enjoyment mainly in their own local teams, competing in what were finally becoming known as "minor" leagues.

One of these minor leagues had been wildly successful in the 1890s. It was called the Western League and it had risen to success despite the wreckage left after the Players League and American Association had failed in 1891-92, with the monopoly feeling no real need to heed past agreements with the minor leagues. The Western League featured clubs in Indianapolis, Detroit, Columbus, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Buffalo - all cities which had, at one time or another, been "big league" cities.

In 1894, the Western League acquired a new president, a newspaperman from Cincinnati named Byron Standish. Standish had numerous acquaintances inside the National League from his days as a baseball writer, especially the owner of the Cincinnati club James K. Thistle, who had little love for the opinionated and strong-willed Standish. One prominent National Leaguer who did have a good relationship with Standish was Tom Ewart of Cleveland on whom Standish had lavished much praise in print.

After the big league dropped four cities - including Cleveland - from its ranks following the 1899 season, Standish wasted no time in moving a team into Cleveland - with Ewart agreeing to not only play for the team, but also to act as both owner and manager. In addition to this coup, Standish pulled off a seemingly impossible feat when he convinced the National League to allow the Western League to put a club in Chicago. The White Stockings, so-called in honor of the very first professional club in the Windy City, was the former St. Paul club (Cleveland got the Grand Rapids club, which had begun the 1899 season in Columbus).

Standish also renamed his league the "American League" after brushing off overtures from a group of men interested in resurrecting the American Association. Standish would do things his own way. He made sure to quell National League concerns by vowing his league would not break the player agreement with the big league (a contract stating such would expire in December of 1900) and would honor NL contracts while still allowing the older league to purchase players from AL clubs.

Therefore as the 1900 season approached, Byron Standish's American League had a decidedly "big league" look to go along with its new moniker: seven of the eight clubs were in former (or in Chicago's case, current) National League cities.

And though still centered in the midwest, Standish was a man with a grand vision and that vision now had his eyes trained on Eastern cities as well, with both Baltimore and Washington now vacated by the National League.

[legendsport]

The effects of the National League's reduction from a twelve team league to a more modest eight team loop are starting to be shown. With the players from the four unlucky clubs now spread among the eight survivors, the impact on the pennant race for 1900 may be starting to become apparent.

Last year's apparent juggernaut club - the New York Giants - has struggled somewhat this year: 10-12 thus far. Is this a holdover from the swoon they suffered at the tail-end of last season - a swoon in which they lost what seemed to be an insurmountable lead to Boston? Or is this more reminiscent of the beginning of last season, when the club stumbled only to become a powerhouse in early summer? Or perhaps it's neither, but rather is simply the effect of the spreading of talent to some of the loop's other clubs.

Boston, the defending champions, are right back in the mix, currently sitting in third place but just one game off the pace set by the front-running Brooklyn club. The biggest surprise thus far has been the play of the Chicago Orphans. Along with Boston, the Chicagoans boast the longest pedigree of any League club, going back to the inaugural 1876 season. But they have fallen on hard times of late, finishing near the bottom of the league perennially over the past handful of seasons. Thus far 1900 has been a good one for the Windy City nine, as they are 15-10 and just one-half game behind Brooklyn.

The individual races are still shaping up, with four hitters with .400 or better batting averages and four pitchers with earned run marks below two per game. Jasper Ellis of the Reds is back to his usual shenanigans, striking out a league best 33 while walking 28. Owen Upjohn of Pittsburgh has thus far nearly kept pace with Jasper, with 31 strikeouts thus far (and a much more modest 10 free passes awarded).

[legendsport]

There must be something in the water in Chicago. The Orphans, who have spent the last few seasons in (or near) the basement, are riding high in the penthouse thus far in 1900. Their 24-16 mark has them a half-game ahead of Brooklyn in the (very young) pennant race. Boston, pennant-winners a year ago, are sitting third, just a game behind with New York (2.5 back) and St. Louis (3 back) also very much in the race.

Brooklyn's Buck Roberts is leading the batting race with a .392 mark with teammates in the third (Harvey Cart, .387) and fourth (George Christian, .386) and slots. Boston's Rocky Hennessey, .390, sits in second place. A trio of hurlers are knotted at eight victories apiece. Chicago's Timothy O'Dunady tops the pitchers in earned run average with a stingy 1.52 mark, nearly a half-run better than New York's Clive Hines.

In the American (nee' Western) League, the Chicago White Sox and Buffalo Bisons are battling tooth-and-nail for first place. Currently Buffalo has a one-game advantage. Chicago is being led by Pittsburgh cast-off Zane "Stony" Bridges. The 30-year-old is hitting .434, quite an improvement over the .286 he posted last season with the Pirates.

The Eastern League also features a tight race in the early going. Rochester and Worcester are all tied up at 21-11 and Montreal at 16-16 is the only other EL club which doesn't have a losing record. Another National League cast-off, Roy Kane, who was with the now-defunct Washingtons last season, is leading the Eastern loop in batting with a .429 average (he hit .287 in the capital last season). The latest pitching phenomenon is also taking shape in the Eastern League. Worcester's Dan Matcham, a 22-year-old from New York City, is leading the league in wins (7-1 so far) and earned run average (1.02).

[legendsport]

The National League race is as tight as it has ever been in the history of the League, going back to 1876. Four teams are grouped together near the top, with the most distant being a mere one game behind the first-place club. Boston currently holds first place, with a half-game edge on New York and Brooklyn and with Chicago just one back.

Paddy Murphy, the star of the St. Louis club, currently is pacing the batting race, with a .384 average. The 27-year-old Murphy, whose career average is a robust .342, is no fluke as he looks to top his career best of .385 set back in 1897. He is closely followed by Harvey Cart (.377) of Brooklyn, with the third-place held by young Sean McGonigle of Cincinnati who has a .357 average.

On the pitcher's side of the slab, the earned run average race is as close as the pennant race. Philadelphia's Lee Cardinal is currently on top with a 1.83 mark. But Chicago's Tim O'Dunady is at 1.85, and both St. Louis' Mac Colligan and Pittsburgh's Will Tobin are at 1.86.

[legendsport]

The four-way race that existed on the 1st of July dissipated over the month as two of the teams fell off the pace with subpar performances while one of the other two began to assert its dominance over the League.

The Boston Beaneaters posted a 21-4 record in July to take control over the National League race. As the defending champs know however, their six-game lead could evaporate unless they continue to play sterling ball over the remainder of the season. The Beaneaters are being led by Rocky Hennessey, whose .358 average is third in the league while the pitching has been solid behind Pat Daly (19-7, 2.19 ERA), Bob Harrison and Stanley Sweetwater (14 victories apiece).

Brooklyn is currently sitting in the runners-up position, but are still well within striking distance. The Superbas feature the loop's top batsman in Harvey Cart, whose .373 average is four points ahead of St. Louis' Paddy Murphy, while Cart's 66 runs batted in also is tops in the National League.

The New York Giants and Chicago Orphans have fallen off the pace, with both now 12 games behind Boston. Surprisingly, it has been the Giants' offense that has been their downfall: only two clubs have scored fewer runs than the Gotham nine while their pitchers have the second-best mark in earned runs allowed.


Sean McGonigle - The Cincinnati rookie is hitting .354, currently fourth in the batting race.

[legendsport]

The Boston Beaneaters continued to hold the rest of the National League at arm's length throughout August, and ended the month with a 63-43 record and five-game advantage over the second-place Brooklyn Superbas. St. Louis, which has improved greatly over their 1899 edition, sits third-best, seven games off the pace, while New York rounds out the quartet of teams with records better than .500, at 56-53 on the year.

The Giants received some bad news this past fortnight when it was learned that star pitcher Aidan O'Day's back problems would cause him to leave the team indefinitely. O'Day had posted a 14-8 record with a 2.55 ERA this season before the injury. Likewise, the Chicago Orphans, who had contended early in the season, lost one of their cornerstones when pitcher James Burke went down with an arm injury. Like O'Day, Burke will not be back in 1900 and it's unknown when he will be able to return. Burke had been 15-11 with a 2.34 ERA for the Windy City nine.

St. Louis' Paddy Murphy currently leads the League batting race, hitting .377 while Harvey Cart (BRO) and Rocky Hennessey (BOS) are close behind at .370 and .369 respectively. For the first time in recent memory, it appears no batsman will reach double-digits in circuit clouts. The best mark at the dawning of September is 5, and it's unlikely anyone will double that within the remaining 40 or so contests to be played.

On the pitcher's side of the ledger, Boston's Pat Daly continues to hold the lead in victories, with 22 while Cardinals' pitcher Mac Colligan is the only League hurler with an earned run mark under 2.00 with his 1.80 effort.

In the American League, it's a three-way race for the pennant, with Milwaukee two games better than Buffalo and three ahead of Chicago as the season enters its final stanza. Former National Leaguer Milton Pratt (four years with Washington) is the batting leader with a .419 mark.

In the Eastern League, the Worcester club currently has a five-game edge on the Rochesters with Montreal's nine six back and Syracuse's seven off the pace. Roy Kane, also a veteran of the National League (with Pittsburgh and Washington), is leading the Eastern League with a .386 average as a member of the Toronto club.


Aidan O'Day, New York Pitcher

[legendsport]

The pennant race is heating up! Boston still is on the top of the heap, but Brooklyn has inched ever closer and now trails by a mere one game. Meanwhile, New York has gone on an 8-2 tear to begin the month and has closed to within three games of the lead. And finally, the St. Louis Cardinals are also within shouting distance, sitting 4.5 behind.

In the chase to join Tom Ewart in the 3000-hit club, Cincinnati's Otto Bentz is now just nine safeties shy while Brooklyn's superb Charlie Shanafelt is back from injury and just ten hits from the milestone.


Otto Bentz & Charlie Shanafelt

[legendsport]

As September comes to a close and fall is in the air, the National League pennant is still very much up for grabs. The Boston Beaneaters have held off all comers through the summer and still sit atop the standings. But nipping at their heels is the surprising St. Louis club. The Cardinals posted an 11-1 mark over the last two weeks of September and with just seven games left to play, are now close enough to see the sweat on the necks of their competition in Boston.

Two other teams also have hopes - though dim - for the pennant should the top two falter. Brooklyn is four back and has four games left with Boston, three of those on their home grounds. New York is five back, but has nine games left, and three of those are with the Beaneaters, all in Boston. Of all the contenders, the St. Louis nine has the "easiest" remaining schedule, with five of their seven games against Cincinnati and the other two against Pittsburgh - both of those clubs have lost more than they have won in '00.

Brooklyn's Harvey Cart will be attempting a doubly impressive feat in October: lead his club to the pennant and bat for a .400 average. Cart currently leads the batting chase with a .397 mark and a top-notch performance in the remaining contests could lift his average over the mark which has been established as that of supreme excellence with the bat.

[legendsport]

The 1900 season is in the books. The Boston Beaneaters have repeated as champions, winning 81 while losing 59, three victories better than the runners-up in St. Louis. New York finished third with an injury-depleted Brooklyn nine rounding out the top four, followed by Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and in last place, Philadelphia.

Two men joined Tom Ewart in the 3000-hit club as both Otto Bentz of Cincinnati and Charlie Shanafelt of Brooklyn notched #3000 within two days of each other. Bentz reached the mark first, collecting his milestone off with a first-inning single off St. Louis' Harry Tague on October 3rd. Shanafelt's accomplishment came two days later with a third-inning safety against Philadelphia's Tom Eldridge. For their careers, Shanafelt has edged ahead of Bentz with 3009 hits, while Bentz has 3007. Ewart, who is now the player-manager of the American League Cleveland club, finished his National League career in 1899 with 3037 hits.

Shanafelt's Brooklyn team mate Harvey Cart captured the batting crown with a .390 average with Paddy Murphy of St. Louis a close second at .385 for the year. Cart was also the only batsman to drive home 100 runs, finishing with a flat 100, 14 better than team mate Buck Roberts. Boston's Pat Daly won the most games with 26 victories ahead of St. Louis' Lionel Frace who posted 23. Fellow St. Louisan Mac Colligan was the ERA champ with a 2.06 mark and Cincinnati's firethrowing Jasper Ellis was again the leader in strikeouts (209) as well as bases-on-balls (195).

Milwaukee captured the American League crown. The former Western League moved teams into two "National League" cities, with the Big League's permission, shifting clubs into Chicago and Cleveland. Rumors abound that further forays into former NL cities may occur this offseason, but the word is mum from the American League office, located interetingly enough, in Cincinnati - a city with no AL team, but the home of a National League club. Milwaukee's Milton Pratt led the loop in batting at .410, while Chicago's Frank Walker (The Peoria Peach) won 23 games.

The Eastern League pennant was claimed by Worcester, which was 80-56, three games better than Rochester. Hartford's Paul Samples was the batting champion with a .383 average, edging out Roy Kane of Toronto (.380). Leo "The Little Lion" Rosen won 33 games and pitched 393 innings wit an ERA of 2.22 for Syracuse, which was third in the league ERA race. Eric Frontz won that title with a 2.13 mark for Rochester.

[legendsport]

In December 1900, American League President Byron Standish was hedging on re-signing the National Agreement. The Agreement governed the manner in which the National League dealt with "minor" leagues, of which the NL considered all other leagues since the AA had folded back in '92.

With the NL becoming increasingly arrogant and heavy-handed in its dealings with the other leagues over the past few years, especially in 1900 when the contraction of four clubs had consolidated the cream of the crop of baseball talent among eight clubs, Standish had decided it was time to make his move. The American League, which as recently as 1899 had been a regional loop with a regional moniker (Western League) was going "major."

Standish announced that the American League would be moving clubs into Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington - two of them currently homes of NL clubs with the other being former homes to the big league. The four new clubs (essentially shifted) would join Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee from the minor league incarnation of 1900.

The AL czar also promised to honor any National League contracts which had already been signed for 1901. However, any player merely "reserved" (which was essentially ALL of them) would be considered fair game by the AL clubs. It amounted to a declaration of war and guaranteed that player salaries would skyrocket.

Initially, the NL took a "wait and see" attitude. That wouldn't last long.