History of The Baltimore Orioles - St. Louis Browns

St. Louis Browns

In 1902, however, the team did move to St. Louis, where it became the "Browns", in reference to the original name of the legendary 1880s club that by 1902 was known as the Cardinals. In their first St. Louis season, the Browns finished second. Although they usually fielded terrible or mediocre teams (they had only four winning seasons from 1901 to 1922), they were very popular at the gate.

During this time, the Browns were best known for their role in the race for the 1910 American League batting title. Detroit's Ty Cobb took the last game of the season off, believing that his slight lead over Cleveland's Nap Lajoie would hold up unless Lajoie had a near-perfect day at the plate. However, Cobb was one of the most despised players in baseball, and Browns catcher-manager Jack O'Connor ordered rookie third baseman Red Corriden to station himself in shallow left field. In each of his next five at bats, Lajoie bunted down the third-base line and made it to first easily. In his last at-bat, he reached base on an error – officially giving him a hitless at-bat. O'Connor and coach Harry Howell tried to bribe the official scorer, a woman, to change the call to a hit, even offering to buy her a new wardrobe. Cobb won the batting title by just a few thousandths of a point over Lajoie (though in 1978 sabermetrician Pete Palmer discovered that one game may have been counted twice in the statistics). The resulting outcry triggered an investigation by American League president Ban Johnson. At his insistence, Browns owner Robert Hedges fired O'Connor and Howell; both men were informally banned from baseball for life.

In 1916, after years of prosperity at the gate, Hedges sold the team to cold-storage magnate Phil Ball, who had owned the St. Louis Terriers of the defunct Federal League. Ball's tenure as owner saw the Browns' first period of prosperity; they were a contender for most of the early 1920s, even finishing second in 1922. He made a considerable effort to make the Browns competitive, reinvesting all profits back into the team.

Ball, however, committed several errors that dogged the franchise for years to come. His first major blunder was to fire Branch Rickey, the resident genius in the Browns' front office, in 1919 because of a conflict of egos, causing Rickey to jump to the crosstown Cardinals. In 1920 Sam Breadon, who had just purchased the Cardinals, convinced Ball to allow his team to share the Browns' home, Sportsman's Park. With the money from the sale of the Cardinals' Robison Field, Rickey began building an extensive farm system. This eventually produced a host of star players that brought the Cardinals far more drawing power than the Browns.

The 1922 Browns excited their owner by almost beating the Yankees to a pennant. The club was boasting the best players in franchise history, including George Sisler, and an outfield trio – Ken Williams, Baby Doll Jacobson, and Jack Tobin – that batted .300 or better in 1919-23 and in 1925. In 1922, Williams became the first player in Major League history to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in a season, something that would not be done again in the Majors until 1956.

Ball confidently predicted that there would be a World Series in Sportsman's Park by 1926. In anticipation, he increased the capacity of his ballpark from 18,000 to 30,000. There was indeed a World Series in Sportsman's Park in 1926, but it was the Cardinals, not the Browns, who took part, upsetting the Yankees. St. Louis had been considered a "Browns' town" until then; after 1926, the Cardinals dominated St. Louis baseball, while still technically tenants of the Browns. Meanwhile, the Browns rapidly fell into the cellar. They only had two winning records from 1927 to 1943, including a 43-111 mark in 1939 that is still the worst in franchise history.

Ball died in 1933. His estate ran the team for three years until Rickey helped broker a sale to investment banker Donald Lee Barnes, whose son-in-law, Bill DeWitt, was the team's general manager. To help finance the purchase, Barnes sold 20,000 shares of stock to the public at $5 a share, an unusual practice for a sports franchise.