EPISODE 307: "Baseball's Wildest Season" - With Bill Ryczek

Sports historian Bill Ryczek (Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball's National Association; Crash of the Titans: The Early Years of the New York Jets and the AFL) returns after a five-year absence to help us unpack the intriguing story of 1884 - arguably the wildest season in major league baseball history.

In his latest tome, "Baseball's Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884," Ryczek details a fragile professional game pioneered by a still-fledgling National League that found itself not only challenged by a two-year-old lower-priced, Sunday-playing, beer-allowing American Association - but also an upstart third circuit called the Union Association whose president just happened to also own its most dominant franchise.

1884 saw the first incarnation of an inter-league "World Series" (the NL Providence Grays defeating the AA New York Metropolitans); the majors' first-ever African-American player (the AA Toledo Blue Stockings' Moses Fleetwood Walker); a (still-standing) record start to a season (the UA's 20-0 St. Louis Maroons) - and more drunken brawls, mid-season team relocations, player league-jumping, and underhand pitching than any time in big league history.

Baseball’s Wildest Season: Three Leagues, Thirty-Four Teams and the Chaos of 1884 - Buy Book Here

EPISODE 264: Baseball's Union Association - With Justin Mckinney

Society for American Baseball Research historian/chronicler Justin Mckinney (Baseball's Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League) joins the podcast this week to weigh in on the debate that continues to swirl around baseball's curious one-season Union Association - namely, was it a truly major league?

As first broached in our Episode 73 with Jon Springer, the National League was less than a decade old back in 1884, and the rival American Association, which had been established two years earlier, was nipping at its heels. "Organized Baseball" had just been formed to help codify the still-gestating professional version of the game.

​But when a maverick millionaire and spurned team-owner aspirant named Henry Lucas established a new third major league that year - the Union Association - the pro game erupted into chaos.

​Come for the pennant-winning St. Louis Maroons (who won 94 of their 113 regular season games, and bested the second-place Cincinnati Outlaw Reds by a whopping 21 games), but stay for the litany of replacement teams (e.g., Wilmington Quicksteps, St. Paul Saints, Altoona Mountain Citys, Kansas City Cowboys, etc.) that folded just as soon as they arrived.

Baseball;s Union Association: The Short, Strange Life of a 19th-Century Major League - buy book here

EPISODE #73: The Union Association’s Wilmington Quicksteps – with Jon Springer

Professional baseball was barely into its adolescence in 1884 when a hard-playing, hard-drinking minor league club out of tiny Wilmington, Delaware―the Quicksteps―got the opportunity of a lifetime.

Led by prototypical early era stars like loud-voiced outfielder/team captain Tommy “Oyster” Burns (aka the “Wilmington Growler,” who sold shellfish in the off-season), and Canadian-born curveball pioneer Edward “The Only” Nolan (who was briefly blacklisted from the National League for lying about missing a game to attend a funeral when he was, instead, out drinking) – the Quicksteps attacked opponents with a spike-sharpened, rough-and-tumble style befitting the major league style of the era.

Managed by a cricket-playing New Yorker and bankrolled by a cigar-chewing sporting goods dealer who ran illicit gambling rings by night, the Quicksteps were the talk of the town and the East Coast baseball establishment – accruing an .800 winning percentage in the minors and holding their own (and occasionally winning) in exhibitions with big league clubs. 

The National League was less than a decade old then, and the American Association, which had been established two years earlier, was nipping at its heels. But when a maverick millionaire named Henry Lucas established a third major league that year―the Union Association―the pro game erupted into chaos.

When the ensuing battle for players and fans overwhelmed the upstart circuit’s Philadelphia Keystones midway through its inaugural 1884 season, the Quicksteps were invited and abruptly promoted to the Union Association to take their place in a single mid-season fell swoop.  Their arrival in the majors, however, was anything but a dream come true.

Author Jon Springer (Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball's Wilmington Quicksteps) joins the pod to describe the story of the briefly major league team loaded with colorful characters, highlight plays, comical misfortune, and behind-the-scenes drama that, for a tumultuous and remarkable summer, was driven and ultimately destroyed by its own dream of success – while yielding a virtually unassailable record for baseball futility.

Thanks to our new friends at OldSchoolShirts.com sponsoring this week’s show!

Once Upon a Team: The Epic Rise and Historic Fall of Baseball's Wilmington Quicksteps - buy book here