Robison Field

"Robison Field is the best-known of several names given to a former Major League Baseball park in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the home of the St. Louis Cardinals of the National League from April 27, 1893 until June 6, 1920. Today's Cardinals of the National League began in 1882, as the St. Louis Browns of the then-major American Association. They won four championships during the Association's ten-year existence of 1882 through 1891. During that decade, the team was playing their home games at Sportsman's Park, at the corner of Grand and Dodier. In 1892, four of the Association clubs were absorbed into the National League, and the Association folded. Sportsman's Park remained the home of the Browns during their first NL season. Although the Browns had been the most successful of the Association clubs, they fell on hard times for some years after the merger. For 1893, owner Chris von der Ahe moved his team a few blocks to the northwest and opened a 'New' Sportsman's Park, at the corner of Natural Bridge and Vandeventer. The move to this particular site was part of a "deal", as the property had been owned by a trolley company, who then ran a trolley line out near the ballpark."
Wikipedia

1901 Fire At Robison Field

"The first baseball park built for the club that became the National League St. Louis Cardinals was originally called New Sportsman's Park. Now most commonly known as Robison Field, it was also called League Park and Cardinal Field during its existence. Though the Mound City never realized a pennant there, the park served National League baseball from 1893 to 1920. Fourteen members of that early National League organization have since been immortalized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. ... Located directly across the street from a popular city park called Fair Grounds Park, the site for the new ball grounds occupied the estate of a wealthy St. Louis real estate broker, Jesse G. Lindell. While the city west of Grand Avenue experienced urban development, Von der Ahe eagerly accepted a fifteen-year lease with terms of $1500 per year for eight years and $2000 per annum for the remaining seven. After his enterprise, the Sportsman's Park Association, obtained approval for a building permit for a frame grandstand and pavilion with an estimated cost of $45,000, the ballpark reached completion by the spring of 1893."
SABR

Crowd on game, 1912

"Located on the former site of the St. Louis Maroons' Union Grounds Park, Robison Field was a wooden park featuring tall iron columns, which were placed behind the stands in order not to interfere with the fans' view of the field. The park was variously called League Park, New Sportsman's Park, and Vandeventer Lot until the Robison brothers bought the Cardinals in 1899 and renamed the park. Robison Field was struck by fire six times in its first ten years and was constantly being rebuilt. A fire during a 1898 game destroyed the grandstand, half of the bleachers, and a nearby saloon. Another blaze occurred during a game on May 4, 1901, but each time, the park was quickly rebuilt. Midway through the 1920 season, Cardinals owner Sam Breadon was forced to sell the stadium for financial reasons, and the Cardinals took up roost with the St. Louis Browns in Sportsman's Park. Beaumont High School today stands where Robison Field once was."
Baseball Reference

1909 St. Louis Cardinal

1

"... In the 1880s, the St. Louis Browns of the American Association played home games at Sportsman’s Park at Grand and Dodier. After the merger with the National League in 1892, the team that would become the Cardinals played there for a year until their new venue was ready, opening in 1893 as New Sportsman’s Park. A fire in 1898 precipitated new ownership, the Robisons, who brought Cy Young with them from Cleveland. They rebuilt the stadium, re-named it League Park and adopted a new nickname, the Perfectos. The nickname didn’t stick, mainly because the new owners changed the team colors to red and white instigating a new nickname. The venue became known as Robison Field. The stadium was damaged by fire again in 1901. The Robisons’ niece, Helene Britton, inherited the team in 1911 and officially changed the name of New Sportsman’s Park to Robison Field. During that decade, competition from the American League Browns and Federal League Terriers led to financial problems, and Robison Field fell into disrepair."
The Cardinal Nation blog

John McGraw

"John Joseph McGraw (April 7, 1873 – February 25, 1934), nicknamed 'Little Napoleon' and 'Muggsy,' was a Major League Baseball player and long-time manager of the New York Giants. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937. Much-lauded as a player, McGraw was one of the standard-bearers of dead-ball era major league baseball. Known for having fists as quick as his temper, McGraw used every advantage he could get as both a player and manager. He took full advantage of baseball's initial structure that only provided for one umpire, becoming notorious for tripping, blocking and impeding a baserunner in any way he could while the umpire was distracted by the flight of the ball. His profligacy in employing such tactics may have led to additional umpires being assigned to monitor the basepaths."
Wikipedia

"John McGraw was perhaps the National League's most influential figure in the Deadball Era. From 1902 to 1932 he led the New York Giants to 10 NL pennants, three World Series championships, and 21 first- or second-place finishes in 29 full seasons at their helm. His 2,784 managerial victories are second only to Connie Mack's 3,731, but in 1927 Mack himself proclaimed, 'There has been only one manager--and his name is McGraw.' The pugnacious McGraw's impact on the game, moreover, was even greater than his record suggests. As a player he helped develop "inside baseball," which put a premium on strategy and guile, and later managed like he'd played, seeking out every advantage for his Giants."
SABR

When The Yankees Beat The Giants In The 1923 Series, A New Era Began
"In 1912 the New York baseball club in the American League was a sorry operation indeed. Known as the Highlanders, they played in rickety, wooden Hilltop Park at Broadway and 165th Street and finished last in the league that year. A few blocks away, John J. McGraw's New York Giants were the most famous team in baseball—the most feared, the most loved, the most envied, the most imitated. They were also the incarnation of McGraw's vision of the game: 'Inside baseball,' he called it, 'scientific baseball,' a shrewd amalgam of bunts, steals, sacrifices, platoons and strategies. Play for a run or two, then make them stand up. This was the august old game—refined and purified, to be sure—played the way it had been since Grandpa's time. But McGraw had elevated it to an art form, and the Giants became the team to contend with."
SI

John McGraw's Trouble at The Lambs: Part I
"... Despite this, he was well liked and held in high esteem, particularly throughout his career in New York. While aggression and grit were considered positive attributes in baseball, particularly in the early days of the game, McGraw often took things too far. One such event happened in 1920, and actually had nothing to with baseball. It was the result of an argument over whether Brits or Americans made better stage actors. Despite such an inconsequential topic, it greatly embarrassed McGraw, and endangered his standing in New York and baseball. Around 7:45 a.m. on Sunday, August 8th, McGraw arrived at his 109th West Street apartment in a cab, having come from The Lambs, a private club known for its patronage of the theatre and high class clientele."
The Baseball Historian - Part I, Part II

YouTube: John McGraw and Christy Mathewson

buffalo

"To bluff or intimidate an opposing team or player. 1ST USE. 1905 (The Sporting Life, Sept. 2; Edward J. Nichols, who noted the term probably derived from a superstition connected with a three-horned buffalo.)"
Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary

1911 World Series

"In the 1911 World Series, the Philadelphia Athletics beat the New York Giants four games to two. Philadelphia third baseman Frank "Home Run" Baker earned his nickname during this Series. His home run in Game 2 off Rube Marquard was the margin of victory for the Athletics, and his blast in Game 3 off Christy Mathewson tied that game in the ninth inning, and the Athletics eventually won in the eleventh. The Giants never recovered. An ironic sidelight was that Mathewson (or his ghostwriter) had criticized Marquard in his newspaper column after Game 2, for giving up the gopher ball, only to fall victim himself the very next day. Baker was swinging a hot bat in general, going 9 for 24 to lead all batters in the Series with a .375 average. According to his obituary, Chief Meyers, the catcher of the Giants, threw out a record number of runners in a World Series."
Wikipedia

Frank "Home Run" Baker

1911 The Legend of Home Run Baker
"He was a man of unassuming character, unassuming size—and by today’s standards, unimpressive power numbers. But Frank Baker of the Philadelphia A’s would awe the fans of his day with a slugging exhibition during the 1911 season—followed by his slugging heroism in the World Series. In the six years previous to 1911, only two American League players, Harry Davis and Jake Stahl, had reached double figures in season home run totals—and they both barely made the grade. Welcome to the deadball era; the pitchers were in control, legally allowed to throw any kind of pitch in the book. They had the extra advantage of using the same ball in play for, sometimes, the entire game. If any hitter were fool enough to make a living smacking the lifeless, beat-up ball over the fence, the hideously long distances to the outfield walls would give them second thoughts."
This Great Game

Can’t Make It To Game 2 of the 1911 World Series? “Watch” It Live Here!
"A recent technological advancement called the Playograph has made it possible to 'watch' World Series games, even if you can’t make it to the ballpark, or even if you are in a completely different city. Thanks to the PSH Herald’s technological advances and the good people at backtobaseball.com, you can now join along with the thousands of fans in New York right now following Game 2 on a playograph outside of the New York Herald Building (above). Just click here and then click on 'View Game', and you can follow Game 2 of the 1911 World Series as it unfolds! You can read more about the Playograph here, in a fascinating (and short) article in the Yale Sheffield Monthly. You can see a closeup of that same board at the Herald Building below. We’ll have a full report on today’s game in tomorrow’s edition of the PSH Herald."
Philly Sports History

The Mascots of 1911
"In 1911, Connie Mack and John McGraw—arguably baseball’s all-time greatest managers—shaped the game as each pitch was thrown and every base was stolen. And they did it with the help of their quirky mascots and superstitious players. Set in the stadiums, trains, hotels and clubhouses of baseball’s formative years, The Mascots of 1911 is peopled with brilliantly colorful characters. This fictional yet historically accurate story is told through the teams’ managers and mascots: Connie Mack and Louis van Zelst of the Philadelphia Athletics, and John McGraw and Charlie Faust of the New York Giants. Louis, a young, misshapen hunchback, believes in the goodness of the soul of baseball; he says teams should 'win for the right reason—they’re the best.' Under the wing of the even-tempered and gentlemanly Mack, Louis inspires the A’s by concealing his personal agony with joy. Feeble-minded Charlie Faust, the Giants’ mascot, arrives bearing a gypsy’s prophecy: if he gets to pitch, he’ll ensure the Giants win the Pennant. Barely tolerated by the pugnacious McGraw, Faust entertains the crowd and convinces the players that spells, good luck charms and black magic will improve their play. Through that curious season and all the way to the World Series in 1911, the story was clearly bigger than the final score."
amazon

Philly Sports History - Welcome to the 1911 World Series!; Pitching Matchups for the 1911 World Series; etc.

The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy

"... Trade wars are common in business history. Most baseball fans don’t realize that the business of professional baseball has experienced several trade wars. The Federal League war of 1914–15 was one of those trade wars. In economic terms, a trade war is a contest for markets (in this case, cities) and supplies (in baseball, it’s players). Professional baseball was formed much the way the whites settled the American West: The guy who got there first took the land and refused to give it up unless forced by a stronger and more determined enemy. In baseball, until about 1903 the National League had come out on top when fighting its challengers. Then the new American League confronted the National League at the turn of the century, and the challenger won, forcing the National to give up a piece of the action (territories) and supplies (performers). In 1914 the Feds hoped to do the same thing."
NY Journal of Books

"Almost a century has passed since Major League Baseball faced its last serious challenge from an upstart league, but the short-lived Federal League left its mark. Consisting of eight teams located in Midwestern and Northeastern cities, the Federal League launched in late 1913 to compete with the American and National Leagues (which were suffering their own growing pains at the time) and lasted two seasons. Backed by wealthy owners and an aggressive business strategy that included selling public shares in some cities, the organization struggled to gain players and profits. ..."
amazon

Walter Johnson

 

"Had the Federal League succeeded in its pursuit of Walter Johnson, Joe Jackson, and Rube Marquard, it might conceivably be preparing for a grand centennial celebration instead of having long ago been relegated to a footnote in baseball history. The renegade third 'major' league threw money at virtually every significant player in 1914-15, even inking a number to contracts only to see them slip back into the clutches of their former clubs. The American and National Leagues were not about to let players the caliber of Johnson and Marquard jump without a battle. Both were among the Federal League's headline-grabbing recruits in December 1914. By the time the 1915 campaign opened, however, Johnson and Marquard were back with the Nationals and Giants, respectively. Jackson, disgruntled with the cash-strapped Cleveland Indians, nearly jumped to Chicago in the Federal League late in the '15 season before caving to pressure from his wife and Cleveland owner Charles Somers, who signed Shoeless Joe to a below-market extension and later swapped him to the White Sox."
Baseball America

Sporting Life newspaper from June 1914

The Federal League's Unsuccessful Challenge To Organized Baseball
"Economics focuses on the operation of markets and the competition that exists between those associated with the production and consumption of various goods and services. Focusing on the production side, economics predicts (tautologically as it were) that those entities which are the more efficient and resourceful will prevail over those that are less efficient and resourceful. Competition here has a hard edge, with the less efficient and able being destroyed and/or driven out of the market. The insights of economics are nowhere better illustrated than in the two volumes being reviewed here, which examine an unsuccessful attempt by a group of baseball entrepreneurs, under the umbrella of the Federal League, to take on Organized Baseball in 1914 and 1915. The incumbents were more resourceful in terms of cash, knowledge and strategic verve, in striking out the upstarts."
The Sports IQ

Was the Federal League really a major league?
"The Federal League is different. By 1914, the inaugural season, modern playing rules were in place. The league’s teams played, for the most part, in cities that today host Major League franchises. They played 154-game schedules, just like the American and National leagues with which the Federal League was expressly designed to compete. Just last year, a fantastic book, The Battle That Forged Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy, was published."
The National Pastime Museum

The Unforgettable Season - G. H. Fleming

"The 1908 National League pennant race was without question the most exciting and dramatic battle of all time. Three teams, the Giants, the Cubs, and the Pirates, battled from start to finish, concluding the season with just one game separating them in the standings. The story of this race is like a Hall of Fame sprung to life, including John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance, Mordecai 'Three Finger' Brown, and Honus Wagner. Yet the one name that truly stands out belongs to a young Giant rookie, Fred Merkle. His base-running blunder in a key game between the Giants and the Cubs cost the New Yorkers the pennant through an entirely unforeseeable set of circumstances that set off a near-riot in New York. More than mere history, The Unforgettable Season uses a judicious selection of newspaper stories to recreate the unforgettable season through the eyes and florid language of sportswriters of the day. With no film, TV, or radio accounts of the game to cloud readers' minds with facts, the newspaper writers had free reign to invent and embellish the larger-than-life figures and events of 1908. It is their efforts that make this book often unintentionally hilarious and unforgettable."
amazon

Honus Wagner - In dugout with bats

"... His fifth is a rather ordinary-looking volume, whose dust jacket is covered with old photographs of baseball players, with the rather ordinary title The Unforgettable Season. It is a day-by-day reconstruction of the 1908 season, as experienced by the New York Giants. Can you imagine anything more tedious - a day-by-day reconstruction of a 154-game baseball season? I couldn't - until I began reading it. At first, I found myself merely amused by the sports writing - the references to catchers as 'windpaddists,' outfielders as 'suburbanites,' star pitchers as 'stellar twirlers' and a burst of base hits as 'a bountiful bevy of beautiful bingles.' Or the description of the great Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, Honus Wagner, who tended to bowleggedness, as 'hiking for third as fast as his parenthetical pins would carry him.'"
NY Times