It could be worse for the Chicago White Sox, the worst baseball team in more than a century. No, really. It could be 1899. Jerry Reinsdorf, the stubborn, nearly nonagenarian owner of the White Sox, could be Frank Robison, the owner of the Cleveland Spiders, which was one of the better teams in baseball until Robison ruined it on purpose. Robison had been unhappy that Cleveland’s strict blue laws forbade the Spiders from playing home games on Sunday, the day of the most lucrative draw, so he bought the St. Louis Browns at a sheriff’s sale. Then he moved all the Browns’ worst players to the Spiders, and all the Spiders’ best players—including Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in history—to the team in St. Louis, which he renamed the Perfectos. (The Perfectos were reborn, shortly after, as the St. Louis Cardinals.) The Spiders hit twelve home runs in 1899—as a team—and had a run differential of minus-seven-hundred-and-twenty-three. They finished the 1899 season with a record of 20–134. Then they were dissolved.
Read Full Article »
