Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Browns Were Still On Tour?

Although there was a counter attraction of a game between the New Yorks and the local club, the Greenhoods and the Morans, an enormous crowd gathered to see a game of base ball at Central Park [in San Francisco] this afternoon between the champions of the American Association, the St. Louis Browns, and the Philadelphias.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 25, 1887


I'm not going to give you all the game details because my point here is that, as the big deal was going down, the Browns were still traveling around the country playing baseball. Since the end of the 1887 world's series, they had travelled to Memphis, New Orleans, Charleston and El Paso. And they played a Thanksgiving Day game in San Francisco. That's crazy.

But the game got a nice crowd, reported to be over 20,000. There wasn't a box score but it was mentioned that Foutz (who hadn't been sold yet) pitched and Bushong (who the club had agreed to sell) caught. Latham and O'Neill also played in the game. And the Browns won 12-3.

4 comments:

Cliff Blau said...

They did the same thing in 1889 after the players had started jumping to the Players League.

Jeffrey Kittel said...

I don't know how odd it really is. They always seemed to either have a post-season tour or there was at least talk of a tour. Usually there was always talk of them going to California. But this tour is just running really late in the year.

One has to assume that everybody's contract was up and that no one was being forced to play. The strangeness of this tour, to me, has to do with all the player sales and rumors of sales going on as the team is on tour (and the same would go with the 1889 post-season tour that you mention). It must have been kind of awkward for the players and management. And it must have been lucrative for everybody involved for them to put up with it.

David Ball said...

This is what you get in a world without football: a really active baseball postseason.

Jeffrey Kittel said...

That's why I like hockey. It keeps me occupied when there's no baseball.