The 1884 Maroons: The Team From St. Louis

The team from St. Louis crushed the Keystones under a score of 15 to 1 to-day.  The visitors took more interest in the game than might have been expected under the circumstances, and appeared to be exerting themselves vigorously.  Taylor in the pitcher's box worked much harder than in his old American Association days.  Up to the eighth inning he only allowed four hits to be made.  Then he grew weary, and the first four batters of the Keystones each caught him for a base hit.  He took warning then, and settled down to work again, allowing only another single to be scored against him.  Though not doing anything remarkable, the honors of the game were his.  Dunlap made two errors and one or two good plays, and Shafer captured one difficult fly in right field.  The whole team seemed able to do better playing if they had it to do.  On the side of the Keystones Siegel was conspicuously the worst player on the ground.  He is credited with six errors and one assist, but if McGinniss had not made a remarkable good pick-up of a low-thrown ball every chance offered him would have produced a mistake and his score would have shown errors from one end to the other.  The small boys finally got so disgusted as to offer suggestions for his retirement at every inning, and one of them presented him with a well-worn bouquet as he went to the bat for the last time.  Hoover nearly equaled him in dropping easy flies in left field.  McCormick, McGinnis and Easterday made good plays.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 25, 1884


A quick note on "the worst player on the ground."  Baseball Reference lists a John Siegel as playing eight games with Philadelphia in 1884 and Morris, at his website, lists John Siegel as a potentially misidentified player.  At BR Bullpen, there's an entry for a Fred Siegel that mentions that Peter recently identified him as the Siegel that played (rather poorly) for the Keystones in 1884.  It appears that Fred Siegel was a local amateur who played with the Baily and Atlantic Clubs of Philadelphia around that time and managed local clubs into the 1890s.