A Pictorial Chronology of Baseball in the 19th Century, Part 18: 1893–1894

Hitting Explodes, Attendance Stabilizes, and the NL stands alone

Henry Sandham’s painting of a ballgame at the Polo Grounds during the 1894 Temple Cup Series with Baltimore became, in lithographic form, one of the game’s classic images.

Fans — especially stat mavens — debate the date from which baseball’s “modern era” ought to be reckoned. Some define the term to include events that took place after a marker in the wider world — say, 1946; others will look to events within baseball, such as the first 20th-century expansion, in 1961 (there was one in the prior century, as we have seen in this series: in 1892). Purists will declare the search for a modern era is pointless: that baseball and its statistics are properly viewed as continuous since 1876. Others may opt for multiple periods in which records seem directly comparable, such as the deadball era.

If a historical line were to be drawn between baseball’s pre-modern and modern eras, a good case exists for 1901. In that year a new century dawned and so did baseball as an entity with two major leagues that survive to this day. But when it comes to statistics, permit me to cast a vote for 1893, when the pitcher’s distance retreated (by five feet) for the second and final time.

This change was introduced to correct a pitching-batting imbalance, at a time when baseball attendance was stagnant and the threat from other sports, from bicycling to college football, was feared. The immediate effect of the lengthened pitching distance was not to give a mild boost to batting averages, but to send them soaring.

Pitchers Amos Rusie and Cy Young, whose fastballs were said to have been the direct impetus to the new pitching distance of 60’6”, prospered in 1893 and 1894 anyway. It took most pitchers several seasons to adapt to the increased distance, but they did so by developing curves, changeups, and ball-doctoring trick deliveries to go with their fastballs.

Meanwhile two offensive styles vied for acceptance in this era. For a brief time the “manly slugging” style feasted on pitchers, but the “scientific style” mastered by the Baltimore and Boston teams, which stressed bunting, stealing, sacrificing, and the hit-and-run, became the dominant offensive style of the next 25 years.

Boston’s heavy hitting earned them the championship of the twelve-team National League in 1893. William C. Temple’s Pittsburgh Pirates finished a strong second but, once the season ended, had no place to go. He then came up with the idea of a postseason series matching the first-place finisher against the second (seemingly not much of an improvement, if any, over pitting the first-half and second-half winners). Temple commissioned an elaborate silver trophy for the winner, though his Pirates never qualified.

In 1894 the Phillies posted a .350 team batting mark, with the four-man outfield of Ed Delahanty, Sam Thompson, Billy Hamilton, and Tuck Turner combining for a .400-plus batting average. Boston fell to the Baltimore Orioles, who rebounded from an eighth-place finish in 1893 to win the first of three consecutive pennants.

But when teams like the Orioles and the Cleveland Spiders augmented their play with roughhouse tactics like spiking and jostling runners, baiting umpires, and bench jockeying, this “rowdy” brand of ball stirred the ire of reformers like Cincinnati owner John Brush and the new president of the Western League, Ban Johnson, both of whom would come to dominate the game in the next century.

The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, also known as the Columbian Exposition, marked the 400 years since the arrival of Columbus in the New World with an electrically illuminated “White City.” This became a metaphor for the American way as a light to the world, even in that time of labor unrest, an unpopular influx of immigrants, and a severe economic downturn. The 264-foot-high Ferris Wheel made its debut at the fair, thrilling thousands each day.

The best pitchers built their reputations with speed. Denton True “Cyclone” Young in Cleveland and Amos Rusie, New York’s “Hoosier Thun­derbolt,” were the fastest of them. Above is Cy in 1893.

Young’s battery mate in 1893 and for many years thereafter was Chief Zimmer, known for his defense but a solid hitter, too.

Chief Zimmer’s Base Ball Game of 1893 is, by general acclaim, the most beautiful of all board games devoted to the national pastime.

Amos Rusie was an independent minded pitcher who would later cross swords with Giants owner Andrew Freedman but in 1893 and ’94 he led the NL in strikeouts and walks — as he had in 1890 and 1891, precipitating the new pitching distance of 1893.

Artist Thomas Nast on the cover of the July 15, 1893 number of Our Week: “For artistic posing and effect, there is nothing like a study of instantaneous photography, especially during the base ball season.”

Boston’s South End Grounds in 1893, with its charmingly turreted grandstand.

In the midst of a fight between Baltimore’s John McGraw and Boston’s Tommy Tucker in the third inning of a game on May 15, 1894, a fire started in the right-field stands at Boston’s South End Grounds, only six years old. The fire destroyed $70‚000 worth of equipment as well as the park‚ perhaps the most beautiful baseball has ever produced. The fire spread to adjacent blocks and eventually destroyed 170 buildings and left 1900 homeless.

Knickerbocker pioneer James Whyte Davis entered his final years living in want when, on July 27, 1893, the Sun printed his letter to Edward B. Talcott, a principal owner of the Giants, proposing “that Baseball players be invited to subscribe Ten Cents each and no matter how small a sum is collected, it will be sufficient to place an oak board with an inscription on my resting place…. I desire to be buried in my baseball suit, and wrapped in the original flag of the old Knickerbockers of 1845, now festooned over my bureau….” Not a dime was ever collected, so he was buried six years later in an unmarked grave. Davis finally got his headstone, more than a century after his death, with his own inscription.

Ed Delahanty was a beast in 1894, hitting over .400 for the first of three times in the 1890s.

Baltimore finished first in 1894 but lost to John Ward’s Giants in the Temple Cup. So many Hall of Famers: John McGraw, Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Hugh Jennings, Wilbert Robinson, Ned Hanlon. Courtesy Heritage Auctions.

The massive Temple Cup, for which first- and second-place finishers fought from 1894 to 1897, survives at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Out in the West, a new league was forming under the aegis of Ban Johnson, a Cincinnati sportswriter. From the 1894 season five franchises — Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis — would survive in the renamed American League of 1900.

The integrated Findlay, Ohio team of 1894 was a powerhouse in semipro ranks, including Grant “Home Run” Johnson (seated at left) and the venerable Bud Fowler (right), who in 1878 had been the first of his race to play on an integrated professional team.