The Cleveland Spiders were an American professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

team based in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

. The team competed at the major league level from 1887 to 1899, first for two seasons as a member of the now-defunct American Association (AA), followed by eleven seasons in the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

(NL). Early names for the team included the Forest Citys and Blues. The name Spiders itself emerged early in the team's inaugural NL season of 1889, owing to new black-and-gray uniforms and the skinny, long-limbed look of many players (thereby evoking the

spider Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species d ...

arachnid). National League Park served as the team's home for its first four seasons until the opening of League Park in 1891. Amid seven straight winning seasons under manager Patsy Tebeau, the team finished second in the National League three times – in 1892, 1895, and 1896. While the Spiders never won the National League pennant, the club did win the 1895 Temple Cup, a two-team league championship playoff predating the World Series. The Spiders beat that year's pennant winner, the

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

(unrelated to the modern franchise), four games to one in a best-of-seven game series. Six Spiders players were later inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including left fielder Jesse Burkett and pitcher Cy Young. In 1899, owners Frank and Stanley Robison purchased a second team – the bankrupt St. Louis NL franchise – and sent all of the Spiders' top talent to that club, including future Hall-of-Famers Young, Burkett, and Bobby Wallace. The resulting Spiders roster finished the 1899 season 20–134, a record which remains the worst for a single season in major league history. The Spiders were subsequently one of four teams contracted by the National League that year. Partly in response to the Robison brothers' actions – which effectively ended the Spiders franchise – the practice of " syndicate ownership" was later banned. Spiders outfielder Louis Sockalexis played for the team during its final three seasons and is often credited as the first Native American to play major league baseball. The Cleveland Guardians, major league successor to the Spiders in Cleveland, have long cited Sockalexis as the inspiration for their controversial former team name – "Indians" – though that claim is disputed.

History

The Spiders were the third professional baseball franchise based in Cleveland. The first team, Forest City, which played from 1870 through 1872, was initially an independent team before joining the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players for two seasons before disbanding. They were followed in 1879 by the city's first

team, the Cleveland Blues, which folded after the 1884 season. Fleitz, p. 22. "Brunell suggested, jokingly, that such a gangly, long-limbed collection of ballplayers in their black and gray uniforms should be called Spiders. And so they were. Brunell first used the name Spiders in his ''Plain Dealer'' column on May 12."

1887–1888

After the 1886 season, the Pittsburgh Alleghenys left the American Association (AA) to join the National League. The AA, then considered a major league, chose the Cleveland group headed by Frank Robison as an expansion team to begin play in 1887 over proposals from Kansas City and Detroit. Later, Robison's brother Stanley was added to the ownership group. Initially, the team was known as the Forest Citys, drawing on the city's nickname and the nickname that had been used on the city's two previous professional baseball teams. The nickname Blues was also used again in reference to the team uniforms. The Forest Citys were a weak team in their early years.

1889–1898

In , they moved to the

and became known as the Spiders, reportedly after comments from a team executive assessing the players.

Light Light or visible light is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 te ...

, p. 205. "... a club executive assessing their shapes supposedly said: 'They look skinny and spindly, just like spiders. Might as well call them Spiders and be done with it.' " Frank H. Brunell, this team executive who also doubled as sportswriter for '' The Plain Dealer'', noted the combination of the team's new black-and-gray uniforms together with the sight of several skinny, long-limbed players. He joked the team should be called "Spiders", and the name stuck. The team started to improve in , largely due to the signing of future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young. The Spiders had their first taste of success in 1892 when they finished 93–56 overall; winning the second half by three games over Boston with a 53–23 record. Other than standout second baseman Cupid Childs, the Spiders had an unremarkable offense. Their success in 1892 was built on pitching strength; Cy Young was the NL's most dominant hurler, and 22-year-old George Cuppy had an outstanding rookie year. Following the season, a "World's Championship Series" exhibition was played between Cleveland and the first-half winner Boston Beaneaters, but the Spiders could only muster one tie in six games. Cleveland Spiders team photo (1895)

In 1895, the Spiders again finished second, this time to the equally rough-and-tumble

. Young again led the league in

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, and speedy left fielder Jesse Burkett won the batting title with a .409 average. The Spiders won the Temple Cup, an 1890s postseason series between the first- and second-place teams in the NL. Amid fan rowdyism and garbage-throwing, the Spiders won four of five games against Baltimore, including two wins for Cy Young. The 1895 championship was the high-water mark for the franchise. The following season, Baltimore and Cleveland again finished first and second in the NL, but in the battle for the 1896 Temple Cup, the second-place Spiders were swept in four games. In 1897, despite a winning record, the franchise finished fifth, a season highlighted by Young throwing the first of three career

no-hitter In baseball, a no-hitter is a game in which a team was not able to record a hit. Major League Baseball (MLB) officially defines a no-hitter as a completed game in which a team that batted in at least nine innings recorded no hits. A pitcher w ...

s on September 18. The Spiders again finished fifth in 1898.

1899 season

In 1899, the Spiders' owners, the Robison brothers, bought the St. Louis Browns out of bankruptcy and changed their name to the Perfectos. However, they kept the Spiders as well—a blatant conflict of interest. Believing the Perfectos would draw greater attendance in more densely populated St. Louis, the Robisons transferred most of the Cleveland stars, including future Baseball Hall of Famers Cy Young, Jesse Burkett, and Bobby Wallace, to St. Louis. They also shifted a large number of Cleveland home games to the road (for instance, the original Opening Day game was shifted to St. Louis). With a decimated roster, the Spiders made a wretched showing. They finished with a dismal won-lost record of 20–134 (.130), the worst in MLB history, 84 games behind the pennant-winning Brooklyn Superbas and 35 games behind the next-to-last (11th) place Washington Senators. Their batting records were the worst in the league in runs, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, walks, stolen bases, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. The Robisons announced after buying the Perfectos that they intended to run the Spiders as a "sideshow", and Cleveland fans apparently took them at their word. The Spiders' first 16 home games drew a total of 3,179 fans, or an average of 199 fans per game. Due to these meager attendance figures, the other 11 NL teams refused to come to League Park, as their cut of the revenue from ticket sales did not even begin to cover their hotel and travel expenses. The Spiders were thus forced to play 85 of their remaining 93 games on the road. Counting the large number of home games that had been shifted to the road earlier in the season, they only played 42 home games during the season, including only eight after July 1, and finished 9–33 (.214) at home and 11–101 (.098) on the road. Only 6,088 fans paid to attend Spiders home games in 1899, for a pitiful average of a mere 145 spectators per game in 9,000-seat League Park. The 101 road losses is a major-league record that will never be threatened, as current scheduling practices have teams play a maximum of 81 away games (excluding one- or three-game playoffs). The team's longest winning streak of the season was two games, which they accomplished once: on May 20–21. Spiders opponents scored ten or more runs 49 times in 154 games. Pitchers Jim Hughey (4–30) and Charlie Knepper (4–22) tied for the team lead in wins. The 1962 New York Mets, 40–120 (.250), and 2003 Detroit Tigers, 43–119 (.265), own the modern records in their respective leagues for the most losses, and thus draw frequent comparisons to the 1899 Spiders for futility.

Legacy

The Robisons' decision to effectively reduce the Spiders to minor league status, along with other intra-league raiding such as that conducted by the Dodgers and to a lesser extent the Pittsburgh Pirates, unwittingly helped pave the way to the National League's loss of its major league monopoly. The 12th-place Spiders were one of four teams contracted out of the National League at the end of the 1899 season (the others were the 11th-place Senators, the ninth-place Louisville Colonels and the bankrupt fourth-place

). The 1899 fiasco played a role in the major leagues passing a rule which barred one person from owning controlling interest in two clubs. The Robisons sold the assets of the Spiders team to Charles Somers and John Kilfoyle in 1900. In 1900, the then-minor American League (previously the Western League) fielded a team called the Cleveland Lake Shores. In 1901, after the

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league ...

declared major league status, the team was called the Cleveland Blues, eventually the Cleveland Indians, and now the Cleveland Guardians. The Cleveland Guardians have long claimed Spiders outfielder Louis Sockalexis as the inspiration for their controversial former team name – "Indians" – in use from 1915 to 2021. Sockalexis played three seasons for the Cleveland Spiders, from 1897 to 1899, and is often credited as the first Native American to play professional baseball at the major league level. During his time with the Spiders, the press often referred to the team as the Indians or "Tebeau's Indians". The Cleveland Guardians claim has been disputed, however, including in a 2012 '' Cleveland Scene'' essay titled "The Curse of

Chief Wahoo Chief Wahoo is a logo that was used by the Cleveland Indians, a Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise based in Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, from 1951 to 2018. As part of the larger Native American mascot controversy, the logo drew criticism fr ...

", which argues the organization cited Sockalexis in part to justify use of the "Indians" name.

Baseball Hall of Famers

References

;Books * * *

External links

Baseball-reference.com: Cleveland Spiders statisticsEncyclopedia of Cleveland History: Cleveland Spiders
{{Authority control 1887 establishments in Ohio 1899 disestablishments in Ohio Baseball teams disestablished in 1899 Baseball teams established in 1887 American Association (1882–1891) baseball teams Defunct Major League Baseball teams