The Pecan Park Eagle

The Cleveland Spiders and their rope-providers, Frank & Stanley Robison. This photo actually was taken of the 1895 Spiders in the year they won the Temple Cup. Those better days melted away completely in 1899.

In the history of major league baseball seasons extending to a minimum of 140 games, a few clubs have distinguished themselves to the nth degree of failure and notoriety, but none more so that the 1898 Cleveland Spiders.  Their “Arachnidish” record of 20 wins and 134 losses for a paltry .130 winning percentage and a twelfth place cellar finish in the National League, some 84 games behind the pennant winners is not likely ever to be broken, even if a new horrible club comes along with only eight legs total to stands upon.

The 1898 Spiders brought a new unbreakable shade of bold to the word “bad” also with their 24-game team record consecutive losing streak, their ML record 27 one-month losses in July, and their 6 double-digit losing streaks are hard to top for notoriety, but the Spiders managed to do so by dropping 40 of their final 41 games of the 1898 season.

So, how did so much out-of-the-norm terrible performance happen in 1899? It isn’t hard to  figure – and it’s also the heart, body, and soul reason why the result of this season-long spider stomp led to a change in the ownership rules that should have been obvious from the start. You see, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders and the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos were both owned jointly by two brothers, Frank and Stanley Robison.

Before the 1899 season, the Robison brothers, who already owned the Spiders, also bought the old St. Louis Browns from St. Louis brewer Chris von der Ahe. Then, because they really wanted to succeed in St. Louis and weren’t all that thrilled with fan support in Cleveland, anyway, the Robisons moved all their best players from Cleveland to St. Louis, leaving the Spiders spinning for talent with a few scraps from the bottom of the barrel.

After 1899, the rules changed and ownership of more than one team by the same individual or group became illegal. The SPiders disappeared in 1900, but a new club resurfaced that same season in the American League as the Cleveland Lake Shores under new singular-team ownership. The example of the 1899 season was all the lesson in the primary peril of joint ownership that baseball apparently needed.

The 1899 Perfectos finished in fifth place with an 84-67 record, but these were not the 20th century famous American League losers also known as the St. Louis Browns. These NL Browns were renamed the “Perfectos” for 1899 before moving on in 1900 to the identity that would seal their forthcoming place in baseball history forever as the St. Louis Cardinals. – When the original American League Milwaukee Brewers also moved to St. Louis in 1902 as part of the fledgling-fresh American League,, they picked up the old “St. Louis Browns” moniker for their own taunting new identity. The new AL Browns soon embarked upon a history of losing, over time, that would almost make any old Spider feel un-squashed by comparison.

The rest of the biggest baddies roster follows below. Notice how often the name “Philadelphia” appears on the list. Maybe it’s no wonder that the City of Brotherly Love has mutated over the years into a “culture of contempt” among fans that is unrivaled by any other major league city.

The Worst Single Season Teams of All Time:

Tags: Cleveland Spiders, St.. Louis Browns, worst baseball teams of all time

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