October 7, 1885: The End of Major League Baseball In Providence and Buffalo

The Providence Grays at the Messer Street Grounds

October 7, 1885: The Providence Grays sweep a doubleheader from the Buffalo Bisons, 4-0 and 6-1 at Olympic Park in Buffalo. Fred Shaw wins both games for the Grays, pitching a no-hitter in the opener.

These are the last 2 games ever played by these franchises, who are both struggling for cash, despite the Grays having won the National League Pennant the season before. Only 12 fans pay admission, as Buffalo, as it so often is, turns out to be cold in October. Not twelve thousand, not twelve hundred, but twelve.

Never again has a major league baseball team -- capitalized or otherwise -- played in the State of Rhode Island. And, unless you count the Federal League of 1914-15, it took until the COVID-19 epidemic, forcing the Toronto Blue Jays to play their 2020 "home games" at Sahlen Field, for another major league baseball team to represent Buffalo, or any other city in the State of New York, other than the City of New York.

Although Buffalo has an NFL team and an NHL team, and it has an in-city population of 258,000 that isn't that much less than those of St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati, its metropolitan area population of 1,134,000 ranks it 49th among American metro areas. The current smallest area with an MLB team, Milwaukee, has nearly twice as many: A little over 2 million. If you count Canadian cities, Buffalo drops to 56th.

Providence? It has 178,000 people, and while its metro count of 1,604,000 isn't that far behind Milwaukee, it's usually included within Boston's area. Providence is, for this reason, the home of Boston's Triple-A baseball (well, Pawtucket is) and hockey teams, and the NFL team is actually slightly closer to Kennedy Plaza in Providence than to Downtown Crossing in Boston.

But Providence ain't getting another MLB team. And, since the Jays were allowed to go back to Toronto in mid-2021, that was probably it for Buffalo, which will never again get any closer than it did in 1991, when it was one of 5 finalists for the 2 that began play in 1993.

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October 7, 1885 was a Wednesday. Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922, for his contributions to the understanding of the atom, including developing what came to be known as the Bohr model.

During the 1930s and '40s, he aided refugees from the Nazis, and became part of the British mission to the Manhattan Project, to develop the atomic bomb. The element Bohrium, with an atomic number of 107, was named for him.

He was a friend of fellow physicist Albert Einstein. Once, Einstein repeated his famous line, "God does not play dice with the universe," and said, "Einstein, stop telling God what to do." Bohr died in 1962.

There were 2 other baseball games on this day, both also in the National League. The New York Gothams, the team that would become the Giants beat the St. Louis Maroons, 5-1 at one of the earlier versions of Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. And the Detroit Wolverines beat the Boston Beaneaters, the team that would become the Braves, 7-1 at Recreation Park in Detroit.

There was a college football game played on this day -- sort of. The current players at the University of Pennsylvania defeated their alumni, 42-0 at the University Athletic Grounds in Philadelphia.