Skip to main content

Week 25 Summary


Week 25 is in the books and the 1901 regular season is now completed. Congratulations to the Chicago White Stockings and Pittsburgh Pirates for their respective league championships. While Chicago's championship was not really in doubt, the NL came across a peculiar circumstance. With two days remaining in the regular season, Pittsburgh had a 2.5 game lead over Brooklyn and both teams had two remaining games on the schedule, meaning that if Brooklyn won their two and Pittsburgh lost their two that Pittsburgh would still have a .5 game lead. There were rumblings out of Brooklyn about a protest since both teams finished with less than 140 games played it might be necessary to arrange the missing games to be played so a true championship could be crowned. Brooklyn won their two games, but so did Pittsburgh, so the commissioner's office (i.e., me) summarily declared Pittsburgh the NL champion.

1901 Al Champion Chicago White Stockings

Despite the two leagues still being virtually at war with each other with several court cases still being worked, bars and sports pages across the country have spent the past few weeks debating who would win in a final play-off series between Chicago and Pittsburgh. In the end, Pittsburgh kind of stumbled into their championship while Chicago dominated the stronger AL teams for most of the year, so the general consensus was that Chicago would win in a "World Series" (as people had begun to call it).

1901 NL Champion Pittsburgh Pirates
Clark Griffith

There was plenty of back and forth on this topic - would it really happen? How many games? When? Where? Who gets what money (it's always the money)? No one doubted there would be a tremendous amount of interest in this all across the country. Finally, the commissioner's office (i.e., me) announced that following the completion of the NL games on Sunday, September 6, a seven-game World Series would indeed be played. After a day-off on Monday, the first game would be played in Chicago on Tuesday to be followed by Game Two in Chicago on Wednesday. The two teams would then hop a train to Pittsburgh for Games Three, Four, and Five (as needed) to be played on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This would allow the teams to avoid the restrictions on Sunday baseball (09/13) in Pennsylvania and give them a day to run back to Chicago for the final two games (as needed) on the following Monday and Tuesday.

Fred Clarke
Pittsburgh was already in Chicago since they finished the season playing the Orphans, and Chicago player-manager Clark Griffith, having heard the rumors floating around about the possibility of a post-season championship had kept his players in town already, plus he had notified pitcher Roy Patterson to return from his early release to home. Griffith also announced that catcher Billy Sullivan would be available to play following his late-season finger injury. Pittsburgh player-manager Fred Clarke announced they would do a light workout Monday in South Side Park to familiarize themselves with the surroundings, plus it was widely known that infielder Jimmy Burke, now on the Pirates, had played earlier in the season for the White Stockings, so no one doubted that both teams would be ready to play on Tuesday with a desire to uphold their own reputation as well as that of their league.

Roger Bresnahan

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

1901 World Series and Finale

World Series Game One, Tuesday, October 8, 1901 The heat of the long hot Chicago summer had broken just in time for the commencement of the inaugural World Series and it was a beautiful Tuesday afternoon at South Side Park in Chicago. The home team, the Chicago White Stockings, had not played an official game in ten days, but were happy for the time off and were happy to have catcher Billy Sullivan back and able to play after his finger injury in the last week of the season plus pitcher Roy Patterson had rejoined the club after he had been allowed to return home before the end of the season. The visitors, the Pittsburgh Pirates, had just completed their regular season two days previous, but were happy for the day off on Monday and were ready to go as well. South Side Park, Chicago IL There was a concern as to whether this event would ever happen as both the leagues were still at war with each other, but both leagues, both teams, and the players all saw an opportunit...

Week 17 Results

Monday, August 5, 1901 As seen on the telegraph: Chicago (NL) announced that first baseman Jack Doyle had sprained an ankle and would likely miss the next week. St. Louis announced that center fielder Emmet Heidrick had been induced to return to the team from 07/20/1901. Cleveland announced the acquisition of pitcher Harry McNeal . New York announced the acquisition of pitcher Ike Van Zandt . Pittsburgh announced the acquisition of catcher George Yeager , formerly with Cleveland.   Chicago (AL) (H) 8 Cleveland 2 Fielder Jones Cleveland found themselves short of pitchers so they acquired Harry McNeal (0-1, 9.00) in a pinch to make his ML debut against the best team in the AL. The White Stockings scored five runs in the bottom of the first as their way of welcoming the newcomer, but McNeal kept his composure and pitched better from there. Catcher Billy Sullivan hit a two-out two-run triple in the fateful first to put the game out of reach and ...

Week 3 results

Monday, April 29, 1901 As seen on the telegraph: Philadelphia (AL) announced they had acquired infielder Harry Lochhead from Detroit and had acquired outfielder Fred Ketchum from Montreal (EL). Chicago (AL) (H) 1 Detroit 0 In Franks Owen's (0-2) previous start he lost when Detroit suffered a no-hit loss. Today the Tigers lost on five hits to Roy Patterson (2-0) and the White Stockings. Second baseman Dave Brain drove home shortstop Frank Shugart in the fifth with the game's only run. Boston (AL) 15 Philadelphia (AL) (H) 11 Buck Freeman Boston left fielder Tommy Dowd wasted no time and hit the first pitch he saw into the bleachers while many fans were still finding their seats. Boston added five runs in the top of the third to take a 6-0 lead, but then Philadelphia scored six runs in the bottom of the third to tie the game at 6-6. The score went back and forth until Boston finally scored four times in the ninth to lock this one away for starte...