I have come across a quote from an 1887 New York Times article that is not only delicious, but unfathomable to the modern mind. It is from Chris von der Ahe, who owned the St. Louis Browns of the American Association. The Browns were coming off a 95-40 season in which they won the league by 14 games. Von der Ahe responded by selling or trading five players, most notably once and future 40-game winner Bob Caruthers, for just shy of $16,000. Upon which he said:
I have come to the conclusion that it does not pay to have a club far superior to every other in your association. Our games are nearly all one-sided, and as a result the attendance has diminished to a marked degree. By placing all the teams on a level I think that interest in the game will be increased, we will make more money, and the contests will give better satisfaction to the patrons. Of course, the St. Louis Club will try and win the championship again, but there is nothing in glory; we must do something to swell the attendance. Winning championships is one thing and losing money is another.
Among the era barrier, some truly garbled thinking, and very questionable judgment, we are left with a speech that is so rich, a brilliant satirist would be hard-pressed to match it. Wikipedia does refer to von der Ahe’s “showmanship” and calls him a “predecessor of Bill Veeck, Charlie Finley and George Steinbrenner.”
I almost feel like I deaden the quotation if I stoop to the level of earnestly trying to explain what is remarkable about it. But I have a big ego, and human beings must speak.
First, he is admitting, “I just made a bad trade.” (Money assuredly was the driving force behind the deals, but he obtained three players back in one of them, so that one was technically a trade.) He’s not saying, “My plan is to rebuild the team.” Or, “My goal is to reinvest the money.” He’s not even saying, “I sure as hell hated to sell those fine players, but losing the amount of money I did made retaining them impossible.” He’s saying, primarily, “For the good of the league, for the balance in the league, I made a bad trade.”
So, gosh, why stop there? Why take the three players back at all, when the scales could be more effectively reversed by not receiving any talent? And why not spread the wealth? Why did only Philadelphia and Brooklyn come in for the largesse?1 They had been 5th and 6th, after all, while the Cleveland Blues had gone 39-92.
Even today, there are certainly undercurrents throughout sports of the worry von der Ahe professed to have. But the only time in recent years in which I can remember critics actually having the temerity to suggest a team should break itself up came after one too many season of UCONN Huskies women’s basketball dominance. I don’t remember which person or persons it was who went off, and whether it was insiders or outsiders, but I do know it made for an ESPN contretemps for a few days. Geno Auriemma took the bait, firing back. Note that other teams’ or the public’s suggesting that a team should give others a chance is a far cry from a team’s actually doing it, which is how von der Ahe explained his actions.
Another unconventional part of von der Ahe’s argument is that a team can be too good for its own fans’ liking. He implied that Browns’ fans were bored by the team’s success, and so they didn’t come out to the games. No one but no one would buy this idea now. Just as fans would rather win a game 10-0 and be able to cite a star pitcher’s shutout and a slugger’s multiple home run game, the more winning the team can do in general, the happier the fans seems to be. It is even a greater badge of honor that your team is ranked among the all-time greatest in the sport, or has the makings of a dynasty, than that it has fought its way to a single championship.
We now have years and years of anecdotal evidence that this is the fans’ perspective, but because college teams can be so dominant, those teams seem to constitute a test case. And what I see is that nowhere else are fans so rabidly wrapped up in their teams as when a school has a tradition of dominance. The fans’ interest is the team, not in seeing good games. Liking that team gives you an opportunity to like yourself better, and the better the team is, the more you like it.
If one wanted to make a circumscribed argument on the other side, one could point out that there is a complacency that can set in. The Braves and Indians in the ‘90s were most exciting to their fans at the start of their ascents. Additionally, the league standings and the league attendance standings are not replicas, and my sense is that the differences don’t just reflect markets and fan loyalty. Some teams are just more popular than others, even if they’re no better.
Von de Ahe’s idea seems risible, but he wasn’t blessed with the history we are. The first baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, only dated to 1869. Even to a native American, which he was not, the meaning of rooting for a team and of leagues themselves must have been amorphous.
If von der Ahe was in earnest and truly weakening his team in the interests of his fans, doesn’t it seem that he should at least have stopped and polled them first? That he presumably didn’t exposes how ludicrous his contention probably was, even for 1887. (Of course, the public must have been at least something of a bit different public then; not only would an owner who said the same absolutely outrage now, he might well be forced out of the league for committing himself to losing.) Von der Ahe’s pretense is that the fans might be pleased by the sell-off, or at least persuadable on the matter.
While von der Ahe’s alternative explanations were anachronistic if not unique, we are all too familiar with someone’s ignoring the elephant in the room, which in this case was that the $15,750 the sales of the players generated, not to mention the additional savings in salary they effected, would be the most tangible impacts on the bottom line. If we ignored this fact, Von der Ahe would come across as almost overly honest in acknowledging the financial motivation behind his dumping of the players (even if he does blame the decision on the fans). But somehow, he is not comfortable admitting how bare and simple the real solution was. Instead, he creates the pretense that his analysis of psychology and examination of data have led him to place his financial future in the fans’ hands, and he hopes they will come through for him and support his decimated and mediocre team. Perhaps it’s no wonder he could display such chutzpah; he was starting off the season so much richer, after all, no matter how many fans he alienated.
After what I have told you, you are probably leaving the Browns for dead in 1888. If you fear von der Ahe’s vindication it all, it is probably on the score that he may have achieved the parity he espoused to covet, or maybe that he incurred no penalties at the box office. But wouldn’t you know it that the Browns (who, I now see, also sold off two-way star Dave Foutz a few days after this article ran) hardly skipped a beat, going 92-43? And not only was their record nearly as good as it was in 1887, but the two teams they sold off to did make things much more contentious, with Brooklyn’s2 going 88-52, and Philadelphia’s finishing 3rd with 81 wins. Attendance data for 1887 and 1888 aren’t available, but as far as we can see, von der Ahe got everything he wanted. Whether he was crazy like a fox or just plain lucky, I’ll let you decide.
Von der Ahe’s first stated goal of evening the playing field through making these trades reminds me of the drama that sometimes occurred in the second half of the season in my school soccer league when I was in elementary school. We had fixed teams and would sit together before hearing our opponent and heading off to play. But on some days the head coach would demur and then tell one boy to stand up. When his order had been obeyed, he would then tell a boy from another team to stand up. He would then boom, “Switch!” The two teams involved were always first division and second division, if such can exist at the elementary school level, and the second-division player being shifted out was always hapless. No one thought there was anything peculiar about this, or that there was any issue with singling out the weak player. League parity took precedence over feelings.
Brooklyn seems to have had no nickname; the “Washington Football Team” has precedent. Some teams from this time did have nicknames, but Baseball Reference’s transaction page includes “The Brooklyn,” “The Boston,” “The Chicago.”
This is a chapter in your future book, which, by the way, I'd advance order any time that's available. Your mathematical genius can prompt some to overlook your fine writing, but not this hombre!