The Top Twenty Games In 19th Century St. Louis Baseball History: # 20

20. April 15, 1899: St. Louis Perfectos vs. Cleveland Spiders

The baseball season opened [in St. Louis] with a game between the Cleveland and St. Louis clubs, which, since last year, have changed cities.  Tebeau's St. Louis boys easily won the game by heavy batting and good work in the field.  Attendance, 16,000.  

-Morning Oregonian, April 16, 1899

On opening day in 1899, the St. Louis National League club defeated Cleveland by a score of 10-1.

 This game is extraordinarily significant and represented a brand new day in the history of St. Louis baseball.  The previous season had seen the drama surrounding Von der Ahe's loss of the club and the off-season would saw the Robisons gain control of St. Louis' NL club.  The Robisons brought in all of the good players from their Cleveland team and created the best club St. Louis had seen since 1891.  In fact, the 1899 Perfectos' 84 wins would be the most the franchise would see between 1892 and 1921.  Also, in their creation of the Perfectos, the Robisons also created the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who would lose 134 games that season.

After seven lean seasons and the Von der Ahe drama, St. Louis was hungry for good baseball and the city went crazy for the Perfectos.  Look at that attendance number for opening day.  Von der Ahe didn't see anything like that in the latter part of the 1890s.  The city's love affair with the Perfectos began with this game and brought St. Louis professional baseball back from the brink.  There was a moment, in the off-season, when the St. Louis club ceased to exist, as the League dealt with the fallout from Von der Ahe's bankruptcy, but the Robisons and the Perfectos saved major league baseball in St. Louis.  And that's why this game makes the top twenty.  

And Now For Something Completely Different

I've been hitting the antebellum/Civil War stuff pretty hard lately.  That's not an apology as I love the subject matter and plan on going back to it tomorrow.  But I thought I'd go in the complete opposite direction today.  Consider this a palate cleanser.

Above is a picture of the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos that I found over at Baseball Fever in BSmile's fantastic Vintage Panoramic Pictures thread.  The players were identified by bmarlowe and include:

1. Cy Young

2. Cupid Childs

3. Jake Stenzel

4. Harry Blake

5. Albert Cowboy Jones

6. Emmet Heidrick

7. Ossee Schreckengost 

8. Patsy Tebeau

9. Jesse Burkett

10. Bobby Wallace

11. Ed McKean

12. Jack "Red" Powell

13. George Cuppy

14. Frank Bates

15. Jack O'Connor

16. Lou Criger

17. Zeke Wilson

18. Chief Zimmer

Here's the same pic without the numbers (if you want to steal a pristine copy for your files):

Jack Powell

Jack Powell is the big right-handed pitcher of the St. Louis Browns in this 1910 season. He is one of the old members of that team. He has been with them since the organization of the New Browns in 1902. Powell's great forte is pitching with fearful speed. He also has perfect control...He was born at Bloomington, Ill., where he was discovered by Patsy Tebeau in 1895. That year Tebeau signed Powell for the Cleveland Spiders. For years Powell, Cuppy and Young were the pitchers of that team and they were then the best trio in the business. Powell was one of the men brought by the Robinsons to St. Louis when they transferred their Cleveland National League team to this city

-The National Game

John Joseph (Jack) Powell, pitcher for the Cleveland Spiders, was brought to trial in June, 1897, on a charge of playing ball on Sunday. He was fined $5 and court costs, which came to a healthy $153. Stanley Robison, owner of the Spiders, announced his intention to appeal the issue, but Sunday ball in Cleveland was discontinued for the rest of the century.

-The Historical Baseball Abstract



Powell's 1899 season for the Perfectos is rated the ninth best pitching season in Cardinals history according to this post over at Fungoes. I've talked about this list before and some of the problems I have with it but in 1899 Powell did put up the ninth most pitching Win Shares in Cardinals history. Take it for what it's worth.

Powell does have rather interesting stats. You should head over to Baseball Reference and check out his page. He had a lot of top ten finishes in numerous categories (both good and bad) and his similarity scores are fascinating. The four most statistically similar pitchers to Powell are all Hall of Famers-Eppa Rixey, Red Faber, Vic Willis, and Ted Lyons. Does this mean that Powell is or should be a Hall of Famer? No. It's just one of those odd things that's interesting to kick around.

The above photo comes from the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Collection at the University of Missouri's Digital Library, and, while undated, was most likely taken in 1911 or 1912.

Rowdy Jack O'Connor

There are few professional players in the ranks to-day who have led as active a life and as long a one in the professional field as Jack O'Connor.

He is the man selected by President Robert Lee Hedges to manage the 1910 St. Louis Browns.

O'Connor is a St. Louis boy. He was born up on North Broadway forty-two years ago and learned to play ball on the prairies which were then numerous out there.

It was from these lots that graduated perhaps the greatest baseball catcher that ever lived, Frank Flint of the Chicago White Stockings, and next to Flint in the olden days there were few better receivers than this same O'Connor.

O'Connor first came into prominence as the catcher of the crack Shamrock team-a nine that hailed from North St. Louis and that could beat anything in that neck of the woods.

It included in its ranks such later famous players as Pat and George Tebeau, Sam Smith, Joe Herr, George Sharinghaus, Jack (Dutch) Reinagle and Ed Struve.

O'Connor's first professional engagement away from home was with the St. Joe Club of 1886. That team, managed by Nin Alexander, now of Pana, Ill., in the Western League, went through that entire season with ten men and came within one game of winning the pennant from Denver after they had spent thousands on their team to strengthen it...

O'Connor caught such grand ball for St. Joseph that he had no trouble in 1887 securing a position with Cincinnati. The following year he went to Columbus, of the American Association. In 1890 he played with Denver.

In 1891 he joined Cleveland, where he played until 1899, when with the rest of the Cleveland team, he was removed to St. Louis.

In 1900 he was sold to Pittsburg, where he played until 1902, when he jumped to the New York Americans. There he remained until 1906, when he joined the Browns. He remained in St. Louis until 1909, when he was signed by Little Rock. He played in that city for four months and did good work until he came to St. Louis in August, 1909. He acted as scout for the Browns during August, September and October, 1909.

As far as baseball knowledge goes, O'Connor bears the highest reputation among the best judges of play in the world. Baseball men say that he is without doubt one of the cleverest judges of play that has ever graced the game.

O'Connor has made a deep study of baseball, and few men in the game have a superior knowledge of the sport. He has a knack of doing the unexpected or outguessing his adversary. It was Jack, for instance, who, while catching the Browns, made big John Anderson, then with Washington, throw the ball against the pavilion. Jack pretended to be the Washington first baseman and "Big" John heaved the ball to him. Then Jack sidestepped and let the horsehide roll, while a pair of Brownies scored. This was only one of the tricks that earned for Jack the title of "Brains."

When playing ball in Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Pittsburg, New York and other towns, O'Connor always spent his winters in North St. Louis. Jack is well fixed financially. He owns considerable real estate in the "Goose Hill" district, the scene of his early triumphs as a ball player...

O'Connor learned his baseball under (Patsy) Tebeau. The pair played together with the old Shamrocks, and were afterwards together with Cleveland and St. Louis...

To sum it all up Jack O'Connor is one of the best baseball men in the country...

-From The National Game

The pictures of Jack O'Connor posted above come from The Chicago Daily News collection of photographs at American Memory and were taken in 1906 when O'Connor was playing with the AL Browns.

Lou Criger

Lou Criger played in seventy-seven games for the Perfectos in 1899. "In his day," Al Spink wrote, "Criger was one of the cleverest of backstops and a fast and very effective thrower to bases." The photo of Criger, above, comes from The Deadball Era.

The Perfectos

I found a team photo of the 1899 St. Louis National League Baseball Club over at The Deadball Era (and if I haven't mentioned it, The Deadball Era is a fantastic site that you should really check out). Pat's Perfectos finished 84-67, good for fifth place and the first winning record for the franchise since 1891. One of these days I'm going to write up a post on all the machinations that went on in 1899-the change in ownership, the Cleveland/St. Louis player shuttle, the great start the team got off to, and all that. But not today.