October 18, 1900: The Chronicle-Telegraph Cup Is Awarded

October 18, 1900: The Chronicle-Telegraph Cup is awarded for the first time. As it turned out, it was for the only time.

In 1900, the National League, the only major league in baseball at the time, contracted 4 of its teams out of existence: The Baltimore Orioles, the Cleveland Spiders, the Louisville Colonels and the Washington Senators. Except for Louisville, these cities would soon return to the major leagues.

When the 1900 NL season came to an end, the Brooklyn Superbas had repeated as Champions, winning the Pennant by 4 1/2 games over the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8 over the Philadelphia Phillies, 17 over the Boston Beaneaters, 19 over the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Orphans, 21 1/2 over the Cincinnati Reds, and 23 over the New York Giants.

The Chicago team, formerly known as the White Stockings and, for their youth, as the Colts, had long been led by 1st baseman and manager Adrian Constantine Anson. He was known as "Cap," for "Captain," until he got older, and became known as "Pop." He retired after the 1897 season, and the team became known as the "Orphans," because "they missed their Pop." They were renamed the Chicago Cubs in 1903. The Beaneaters went through a few name changed before becoming the Boston Braves in 1912.

The Superbas were managed by Ned Hanlon, and were named after a popular circus troupe of the era, Hanlon's Superbas. He had managed the Orioles to the NL Pennant in 1894, '95 and '96, and his 1899 and 1900 Superbas had some of the Baltimore players, including Hall-of-Fame outfielders Willie Keeler and Joe Kelley, Hall of Fame shortstop Hughie Jennings, and pitchers William "Brickyard" Kennedy and Jack Dunn.

(Dunn would later return to Baltimore, and manage the minor-league version of the Orioles. He signed a teenage lefthanded pitcher named George Herman Ruth. When he sold Ruth to the Boston Red Sox in 1914, Ruth was explained to his new teammates as "Jack Dunn's baby." This was shortened to "Baby," and then to "Babe.")

But Pittsburgh fans were sure that their team was better than Brooklyn's. A newspaper, the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, offered to award a trophy to the winner of a best-of-five series between the two teams. And since the series was going to be held entirely at Exposition Park in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh, the Pirates were favored by gamblers.

(The city was officially "Pittsburg," with no H on the end, until 1911. Even the Pirates' uniforms said, "PITTSBURG," which can be seen on the famous 1909 "T-206" baseball card of their star, Honus Wagner. I'm spelling the name with the H for simplicity's sake. And the bigger city absorbed the smaller city of Allegheny in 1907.) 

The series opened on October 15. The Superbas won Game 1, 5-2, with Joe McGinnity outpitching George "Rube" Waddell. Both men would eventually be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, although mainly for what they did later, for different teams. Waddell, perhaps pitching's original "quirky lefthander," was undone by 4 errors by his fielders.

The Pirates' fielding got worse: They made 6 errors, all in the 6th inning, in Game 2, and the Superbas won, 4-2. The Pirates gave hints as to their later heavy-hitting history by winning Game 3, 10-0, and Charles "Deacon" Phillippe pitched a 6-hit shutout, avoiding a sweep.

But that just delayed the inevitable. In Game 4, Sam Leever gave the Pirates both insufficient pitching and insufficient fielding, making an error that led to 3 Brooklyn runs, giving a less-strong McGinnity what he needed to win, 6-1. While Game 1 brought in 18,000 fans, the Pirates' less-than-stellar play in all but Game 3 led to a Game 4 crowd of just 2,335, as the locals decided that it was just an exhibition series, and didn't mean anything.

The Brooklyn team was the champion of the baseball world. It would be 55 years before that would happen again, and 16 years before they even won another National League Pennant. In contrast, the Pirates of Honus Wagner, Fred Clarke and Deacon Phillippe went on to win the next 3 Pennants.

The Chronicle Telegraph awarded the Superbas the Cup. They did not award the Pirates a cup for their Pennant wins the next 3 years, and the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup was never awarded again. At some point, the Baseball Hall of Fame came into possession of the trophy, and they have it on display in their museum.

I've often wondered if baseball history would be different if there was a trophy symbolizing the championship before the current Commissioner's Trophy began to be awarded in 1967, the way hockey had for the Stanley Cup from 1893 onward. But neither the Chronicle-Telegraph Cup, nor the Dauvray Cup that was awarded from 1887 to 1893, nor the Temple Cup that was awarded from 1894 to 1897 managed to stick.

As for the paper: The Morning Chronicle was founded in 1841, and became the Evening Chronicle in 1851. The Pittsburgh Evening Telegraph was founded in 1873. The papers merged in 1884, becoming the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph. While it did not officially have a hyphen in its name, the trophy's name was usually spelled with the hyphen: "Chronicle-Telegraph Cup."

The Pittsburgh Sun and the Pittsburgh Gazette Times were both founded in 1906. In 1927, William Randolph Hearst bought the Sun and the Chronicle Telegraph, merging them into the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, while the Gazette Times merged with the Pittsburgh Post to become the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, or the PG. In 1960, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette bought out and phased out the Sun-Telegraph.

In 1992, Pittsburgh newspaper workers went on strike. Scripps-Howard News Service sold the Pittsburgh Press to the Block family, owners the P-G, who folded it and incorporated its assets into the remaining paper. This gave right-wing businessman Richard Mellon Scaife an opening, and expanded his daily paper, based in suburban Greensburg, to become the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, providing a conservative counterweight to the liberal P-G. In 2018, the P-G shifted its editorial stance from liberal to conservative. In other words, Pittsburgh no longer had a "liberal media."

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October 18, 1900 was a Thursday. There were no other scores on this day.