October 24, 1884: Providence, World Champions

The 1884 Providence Grays. Old Hoss is at the far left,

holding a bat despite his fame coming as a pitcher.

October 24, 1884: The New York Mets lose the World Series. Well, not exactly.

The Providence Grays, Champions of the National League, defeat the New York Metropolitans -- and, yes, this early franchise was called the Mets for short -- 3-1, behind the pitching of future Hall-of-Famer Charlie "Old Hoss" Radbourn, at the Polo Grounds in New York. This gives the Grays the first-ever postseason series between champions of 2 major professional baseball leagues, a series that was officially called the "World's Series."

In those days, pitching was mostly done underhanded, and most teams had as few as 2 pitchers. The Grays had 2: Radbourn and Charlie Sweeney. But they hated each other, and even fought in the clubhouse. Following a drunken incident on July 22, Sweeney left the team.

Radbourn had pitched 76 of the team's last 98 games in 1883, and offered to pitch every game for the rest of the season. Of the remaining 43, he ended up starting 40 and winning 36. His final won-lost record was 60-12 -- or 59-12, depending on whose rules and accounting you go by. (The criteria for which pitcher to credit with a win had yet to be standardized.) Either way, it's an all-time record that was never seriously challenged even before 1893, when the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate was increased from 50 feet to 60 feet, 6 inches.

A Game 3 was played, for charity, and the Grays won that, too. The Grays had won the NL Pennant in 1879, too, but would go out of business after the 1885 season. Radbourn went on to the Grays' arch-rivals, the Boston Beaneaters (forerunners of the Atlanta Braves), probably because they could pay the most. In an 1886 team photo, he raised his middle finger, and this is believed to be the earliest photographic evidence of anyone "flipping the bird," although the gesture goes back at least as far as ancient Rome.

He stayed in the majors through the 1891 season, retired with a record of 310-194, ran a billiard parlor, and died in 1897, possibly of the effects of syphilis. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, but his plaque reads "CHARLIE RADBOURNE," with an extra E on the end. His tombstone in Bloomington, Illinois also puts the extra E on the end.

The last survivor of the 1884 Providence Grays was outfielder Paul Radford, who lived until 1945 -- 61 years, 10 States and 11 Presidents later.

Aside from teams known as the the Providence Steam Rollers in the NFL (1920-1931, 1928 Champions) and the NBA (only the inaugural 1946-47 season), the State of Rhode Island has never had another major league sports team -- the New England Patriots, who play 25 miles from downtown Providence in Foxboro, Massachusetts, don't count.

The Grays had previously won the NL Pennant, and thus became de facto World Champions, in 1879. With a population of about 105,000 in 1884, Providence remains the smallest city ever to be home to the World Champions of baseball. Today, the population is nearly double that, about 191,000, but still much too small to be home to a major league sports team. The Grays' home, the Messer Street Grounds, had a suburban-style housing development built on it.

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October 24, 1884 was a Friday. No other baseball games were played. No college football games were played, although a few were played the next day. Hockey was still all-amateur and all in Canada. And basketball wouldn't be invented for another 7 years. So, no other scores on this historic day.