1901 Cleveland Blues season
Cleveland's inaugural AL season, finishing seventh.
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The 1901 Cleveland Blues season was the franchise's first in Major League Baseball, as one of the original American League teams. Also known as the Bluebirds, the club finished seventh among eight teams.
Before the 1901 season
The Cleveland Spiders were dissolved after winning only 20 games and losing 134 in the 1899 season, along with the Louisville Colonels, Baltimore Orioles, and Washington Senators, leaving the National League with eight teams for 1900. That year marked the first since 1886 without a Cleveland major league team. Ban Johnson, president of the Western League, renamed it the American League in 1900 and added a new Cleveland team, then called the Lake Shores, plus new Baltimore and Washington franchises, with or without National League approval.
Cleveland's minor league team, known as the Bluebirds or Blues for their all-blue uniforms, finished 63–73 and sixth. The American League became a major league before 1901, and many players jumped ship, including Cy Young and Nap Lajoie, leading the National League to call it an "outlaw league" in November 1900. As the 1901 season began in April, the Cleveland franchise, now the Blues, started its first official major league season amid the war between the two leagues.
Regular season
The Blues played their first game on April 24, 1901, against the Chicago White Stockings, one of four scheduled American League games that day; the other three were rained out. The starting lineup included Ollie Pickering, Jack McCarthy, Frank Genins, Candy LaChance, Bill Bradley, Erve Beck, Bill Hallman, Bob Wood, and Bill Hoffer. Hoffer allowed seven runs in the first two innings, and the Blues lost 8–2, earning the first loss in AL history.
In the second game, Beck hit the first home run in AL history off John Skopec, but the Blues lost again, 7–3. On May 9, Earl Moore threw the first no-hitter in franchise and AL history, though the Blues lost to Chicago 4–2. On May 23, Cleveland scored nine runs with the bases empty and two outs in the bottom of the ninth to beat Washington 14–13.
More in Major League Baseball Inaugural Teams Seasons
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: 1901 Cleveland Blues season (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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