Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is unique in Major League Baseball in that both of its charter member clubs have remained in their original cities. Various other clubs had brief lifespans in the Windy City also.
The entry in the one-year wonder called the Union Association was called the Chicago Browns by some writers. The club lasted half a season and then transferred to Pittsburgh where, continuing their color scheme, they were called the Stogies.
The Players' League was a one-year rebellion by players. The entry in the Windy City, called the Chicago Pirates, were led by Charles Comiskey, who would return to the South Side nine years later, as an owner, and with a decidedly more conservative attitude toward player salaries.
When the Federal League began its two-year experiment, it placed a team in Chicago. Although the Fed was known for colorful nicknames, the best anyone could come up with for the Chicago Federals' first year, 1914, was the Chi-Feds. For the second and final Fed season, which proved to be a pennant winner for the Chi-Feds, the name Chicago Whales was used, despite the lack of any known whales in Lake Michigan. The uniforms featured a whale icon inside a large round "C", suggestive of the Cubs' logo of that time, a large round "C" encircling a bear cub. (Okkonen)
Read more about this topic: History Of Baseball Team Nicknames
Famous quotes containing the word illinois:
“An Illinois woman has invented a portable house which can be carried about in a cart or expressed to the seashore. It has also folding furniture and a complete camping outfit.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)