Chris Von der Ahe and the Creation of Modern Baseball: A Hall of Fame Argument
Note: I wrote this piece for a dossier that was sent to the Hall of Fame's Pre-Integration Committee in support of Chris Von der Ahe's Hall of Fame candidacy. While Von der Ahe did not get elected (yet), I believe I put forth a rather solid argument for his selection.
The prevalent historical image of Chris Von der Ahe is that of a buffoon, a clown, and a fool. He is the German immigrant who tortured the English language and knew nothing of the game that, for a time, made him a rich man. He haplessly fell backwards into a perfect situation and was lucky to have Charles Comiskey doing all of the work for him. He squandered his fortune, had his club taken away from him, and the game was better off without him.
The problem with this is that, from a historical perspective, almost none of it is true. The way Von der Ahe is perceived has little to do with the reality of the man's accomplishments. The historical record presents a man who is arguably the most significant figure in the history of St. Louis baseball. If we look at the facts of the historical record, rather what was said about him by his friends and foes, we see, in Chris Von der Ahe, a man who helped shape the history of baseball in ways that few others have ever done. Looking only at his accomplishments, it is possible to argue that Chris Von der Ahe helped create the modern game of baseball.
To appreciate what Von der Ahe did, it's necessary to take a look at the early history of the game in St. Louis. The New York game of baseball was first played in St. Louis in 1859 and was almost immediately popular.i In 1860, which was the first real baseball season in the city, there were eight clubs playing match games and baseball established a solid foundation in St. Louis that helped it not only survive the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 but allowed it to thrive in the city, in a way that it did not in most of the other major cities of the United States. Civil War St. Louis was one of the great hotbeds of baseball in the country and there were more clubs and games played in the city by the end of the war than there had been at the beginning.ii
Like most of the rest of the country, St. Louis baseball enjoyed a boom period after the end of the war and the second half of the 1860s was a golden age of amateur competition, as the great Empire and Union Clubs fought for baseball supremacy in the city. While these clubs dominated regionally, they struggled when faced with the superior talents of the best Eastern clubs from New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati.iii Gallingly, they also struggled against the best clubs from Chicago. In 1874, the Chicago White Stockings played eleven games against the best clubs from St. Louis and won all eleven of them, with a run differential of plus 152. To add insult to injury, they also stole second baseman John Paul Peters from the Red Stockings and pitcher Dan Collins from the Empires. Not only were the best clubs in the country beating up on the St. Louis clubs, they were stealing their best players.iv
To defend the honor of the city and the local baseball fraternity and to put a team on the field that could beat the White Stockings, in 1875, a group of former Union Club members, led by J.B.C. Lucas, created the first openly professional baseball club in St. Louis, the Brown Stockings, and entered them into competition for the national championship by joining the National Association.v The directors of the club hired the very best baseball players that they could from around the country and achieved their goals when the club not only beat the Chicagos on the field but also finished ahead of them in the NA standings. After this successful season, Brown Stockings management was actively involved in the formation of the new National League and, during the 1876 season, probably put up the best club St. Louis had ever seen, led by the phenomenal pitching of George Washington Bradley. The 1876 Brown Stockings, with the best pitching and defense in the league, finished in a tie for second and great things were expected for 1877. Those expectations were not met. The club failed to resign mainstays like Bradley, Lip Pike, and Ned Cuthbert, lost more games than they won, and finished a distant fourth place in a six team league. After the 1877 season, the club disbanded. The first attempt in the history of St. Louis baseball to establish a major league club had failed.vi
There are two reasons for this failure. First, the club lost money in both 1876 and 1877.vii Major league baseball, as run by the directors of the Brown Stocking club, was not profitable and the directors and shareholders of the club decided to pull the plug on the enterprise. The second reason is probably more significant and likely led to the first. From the very beginning, there was a culture of corruption that existed around the club and, every year that the club existed, there were rumors and accusations that members of the club were throwing games.viii The players were accused of throwing games. The manager was accused of bribing umpires. The umpires employed by the club to work home games were accused of taking money to throw games to the Brown Stockings. Gambling was prevalent in the stands and in what were called “pool halls,” where people could bet on the outcome of a game or an individual inning. Reports of gambling activities filled the local papers.ix
On October 31, 1877, William Spink published an article in the Globe-Democrat about a gambling scandal that had broken out involving members of the Louisville Grays.x The Brown Stockings were placed in a rather awkward situation, as they had signed several of the players involved in the scandal for the 1878 season. The following day, the situation became untenable as Spink published one of the greatest pieces of writing in the history of St. Louis sporting journalism. This article, published in the Globe on November 1, described in detail, with supporting evidence, the attempts by Brown Stockings players to throw games in August of that year. It was evident that the club was aware of these activities as well as previous attempts to throw games during the 1876 season. Not only had the club not rid themselves of the crooked ballplayers but they had gotten rid of players like Bradley, Pike, and Cuthbert who had brought questionable activities to the attention of management and then signed more players of questionable character to replace the honest players.
The timing of the Spink articles could not have been worse for Brown Stockings' management. On the evening of November 1, 1877, a meeting of the club shareholders had been scheduled, in order to raise funds for the 1878 season.xi As noted, the club had lost money the previous two years and did not have enough cash on hand to finance another season. With the depths of the corruption in the club coming to light and the scandal that this created, the Brown Stockings were unable to raise funds for the 1878 season and folded.
It is significant to note that this first effort to establish major league baseball in St. Louis was not only unprofitable but it had ended in scandal. The culture of corruption that surrounded the Brown Stockings damaged the reputation of baseball in St. Louis and brought down the city's first major league team. It's also important to note, specifically, who had failed to successfully establish major league baseball in St. Louis and who had brought this scandal down upon the local baseball fraternity. The people who had been involved with the Brown Stockings – who formed the club, who manged the club, who financed the club, who supported the club – were some of the most influential people in St. Louis. J.B.C. Lucas, the club president, was, for instance, the son of Henry Lucas and grandson of the original J.B.C. Lucas. The Lucas family was one of the two largest landowners in the city and the probably the wealthiest family in St. Louis. Directors of the club included Joseph Carr and Charles Hunt Turner, both members of the Lucas family. Lucas, Carr, and Turner had all been members of the Union Club, a club that is known historically for the fact that its members were the scions of some of the most wealthiest and influential families in St. Louis. The secretary of the Brown Stockings, Orrick Bishop, had also been a member of the Unions.xii
Brown Stockings' management was made up of people who James Brunson has referred to as the guardians of baseball high-culture.xiii The were the baseball establishment in St. Louis. The Union Club had been founded in 1860 and was one of only two clubs to win the St. Louis and Missouri championship during the amateur era. They had built the first enclosed baseball grounds in the city and most likely where the first club to pay their players. They had founded the Missouri state baseball association and been active in the National Association of Base Ball Players. They had been involved with the game in St. Louis from the very beginning and had, more than any other club, shaped the evolution of the game in the city. They were powerful men, on and off the field, and they were not used to failure. But, in this instance, they not only failed but had embarrassed the St. Louis baseball fraternity.
The years after the collapse of the original Brown Stockings were dark times for professional baseball in St. Louis.xiv From 1859 to the present, the game has probably never been less popular than it was during the years after the scandalous failure of the city's first major league club. In 1878, a new Brown Stockings club was organized by William and Al Spink and August Solari, the operator of the Grand Avenue Grounds. This club operated as a minor, independent, professional club and struggled to attract customers to their games. While the original goal was to get the club accepted into the National League, those dreams were quickly dashed and the club was unable to schedule a high level of competition. Al Spink, in The National Game, wrote about this dark period and the difficulties that he faced trying to keep the team afloat. He talked about how disgusted the fans were with the game and how sometimes the club didn't take in enough money at the gate to pay the street car fare for the players to get home.xv By the end of the 1880 season, after three years of scuffling along, Solari gave up his lease on the Grand Avenue Grounds, a ballpark that he had built and operated for fourteen seasons.
Like the gentlemen of the Union Club, who had operated the original Brown Stockings, the Spink brothers and Solari were members of the St. Louis baseball establishment. William Spink was the sporting editor of the Globe-Democrat and Al Spink held the same position with the Missouri Republican. Those two newspapers had, by far, the best and most extensive baseball coverage in St. Louis. Solari had been a member of the Empire Club, was the proprietor of the best ballpark in the city, and was involved in the management of several prominent St. Louis clubs. They were highly influential men within the St. Louis baseball fraternity and, like the directors of the original Brown Stockings, they failed to create a profitable professional baseball club in city.
By the end of the 1880 season, two attempts had been made to establish high-level, professional baseball clubs in St. Louis. Both had failed. The guardians of St. Louis baseball high-culture had tried to create a major league baseball club in the city, only to lose money, damage the reputation of the game, and alienate the St. Louis baseball fans, bringing scandal upon themselves in the process. A second attempt was even less successful, attracted little national attention, and is not much more than a footnote to the history of the game in St. Louis. At the end of the 1880 season, this semi-professional Brown Stocking crew was scuffling along and struggling to stay afloat. One of the most prominent members of their management team had, after years in the game, finally had enough and gave up his lease to their ballpark. The future of the club and of baseball in St. Louis was very much in doubt.
Baseball in St. Louis has faced numerous difficult moments over the last one hundred and fifty years but there has probably never been a darker moment, when the very future of the game in the city was at stake. It was not preordained that professional, major league baseball was going to be successful in St. Louis. There is a long list of cities that had major league clubs in the 19th century and lost them. Cities such as Buffalo, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Providence, and Syracuse all had major league clubs in the early years of the game. No one today thinks of those cities as major league baseball cities. St. Louis could have easily joined that list. Professional baseball in St. Louis, going into the 1881 season, had been a miserable failure and there was no reason to believe that things were going to change. The best professional club in the city was losing money. The National League had no interest in placing a club in St. Louis. The baseball establishment of the city was demoralized. The popularity of the game in St. Louis was at an historical low. Things were bleak and the future was uncertain.
And into this bleak uncertainty came Chris Von der Ahe.
The son of a local grain merchant, Von der Ahe was born in Hille, Westphalia on October 7, 1851. Seeking to escape compulsory military service, he, like many Germans of his generation, immigrated to the United States, arriving in New York in 1867. He quickly found his way to St. Louis and began working as a clerk in a local grocery. A bright, personable, and driven young man, Von der Ahe was soon a partner in the grocery store and, in 1870, he married Emma Hoffmann, the American-born daughter of German immigrants. By 1872,Von der Ahe had started a family and bought out his partner in the store, becoming its sole owner and operator. Only twenty-one years old, Chris Von der Ahe was already the prototypical American success story.xvi
As a local business owner and a man of considerable charm, Von der Ahe was active and influential in the local German immigrant community of North St. Louis. He was a member of the Democratic Party, counting among his friends the local aldermen and Congressman, and was also active in the local German Immigration Society. At the same time his business venture was successful and expanding. He added a tavern to the grocery store and, by 1875, moved the operation to Grand Avenue, across the street from the Grand Avenue Grounds. He would soon add a butcher shop and a feed store to his ever-expanding operation.xvii
It is in his tavern and grocery store on Grand that Chris Von der Ahe first began to consider the idea of getting involved in baseball. While there is some evidence to suggest that Von der Ahe may have been a playing member of a local baseball club in the early 1870s, the strongest sources point to his involvement in the game beginning in 1875. The 1874 season, involving an extraordinarily competitive championship series between the Empires and Reds and visits from the great Chicago White Stockings, generated an excitement among local baseball fans that had not been seen in the city in several years. Von der Ahe, ingrained in the community as he was by this point, was most likely caught up in this outbreak of baseball fever and decided to get involved with one of the local, neighborhood baseball clubs. In 1875, he became a member of board of directors of the Grand Avenue Club, who played their games across the street from Von der Ahe's tavern and was operated by August Solari.xviii The Grand Avenues were an outstanding baseball club and, in 1876, were probably the best amateur club in the city. Over the course of two seasons, the only games that the Grand Avenues lost were to the major league Brown Stockings. By 1877, Von der Ahe was the vice-president of the club.xix
This information from the contemporary source material exposes the traditional story of Von der Ahe's earliest involvement in baseball as a myth. The traditional story portrays Von der Ahe as being ignorant of the game and unaware of what was happening across the street from his business establishment. This story, which has been repeated in baseball histories and in newspapers for more than a century, suggests that Ned Cuthbert, the great Brown Stockings player and an employee at Von der Ahe's tavern, had to explain to his boss why his tavern filled up on certain days and why all of those customers left around 2:30, only to return three hours later. Von der Ahe had already shown, by 1875, that he was an intelligent and shrewd businessman. He had likely played baseball in the early 1870s and was already involved in the running of a club by late February of 1875.xx He didn't need Ned Cuthbert to point out the existence of the game of baseball to him and he didn't need Cuthbert to explain to him what drove customers to his tavern. By moving his business across the street from the best ballpark in St. Louis and becoming involved in the management of the best amateur club in the city, Von der Ahe showed by his actions that he was already well aware of the game and of the connection between baseball and the tavern business before Ned Cuthbert ever arrived in St. Louis.
In October of 1880, after Solari gave up on baseball and let the lease to the Grand Avenue Grounds lapse, Chris Von der Ahe stepped into the void created by the failures of the St. Louis baseball establishment and formed the Sportsman's Park and Club Association. With Von der Ahe as president and largest shareholder, the SPCA signed a new lease on the grounds and refurbished the ballpark. The main tenants of the ballpark were, once again, the scuffling Brown Stockings. Going into the 1881 season, Chris Von der Ahe had taken a great financial risk but he controlled the best ballpark in St. Louis.xxi
The 1881 baseball season in St. Louis was rather unique. The nation had been suffering from a severe economic downturn, due to the Panic of 1873, and this recession had certainly affected the baseball business, with numerous clubs folding and the National League retreating from well-established baseball markets such as St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville. While there are numerous reasons why the League had abandoned these markets, such as the gambling scandals in St. Louis and Louisville, it was difficult during the recession of the 1870s for clubs to travel great distances without a guarantee of a profit. With the nation beginning to see the fruits of an economic recovery in 1881, more clubs began to operate profitably and began, once again, to travel across the country in search of better competition. Specifically, those markets that had been abandoned by the League and lacked major league baseball began to schedule games between their best clubs. The 1881 season saw the best clubs from New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville all come to St. Louis and play the Brown Stockings at Von der Ahe's ballpark. For the first time in several years, Chicago clubs made a trip south to play the best St. Louis clubs. With better competition coming to town and a surprisingly competitive Brown Stockings club holding their own against some of the best clubs in the country, the St. Louis fans began, once again, to flock to ballpark. In 1881, Von der Ahe's newly christened Sportsman's Park was filled with fans and the young tavern owner was financially rewarded by the money the fans spent on tickets and the readily available beer that Von der Ahe was more than happy to sell them.xxii
The significance of the 1881 baseball season is that baseball men in these abandoned markets – which were and are some of the best baseball cities in the United States – recognized that there was tremendous potential for growth at the highest levels of baseball. They saw the crowds that were flocking to the park to watch the Brown Stockings and their counterparts in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville and realized that a business opportunity existed. If the National League failed to recognize the potential of these markets or refused, out of spite, to expand into those markets, there was no reason why a new major league couldn't be created. There were baseball men around the country who recognized the increase in demand for high-level baseball and were more than willing to supply a product that baseball fans could enjoy.
The first report of a new baseball association appears in the New York Clipper on September 17, 1881, and mentions the fact that St. Louis was one of the cities involved in its possible creation. On October 10, Chris Von der Ahe attended a meeting in Pittsburgh that laid the groundwork for the establishment of the new American Association.xxiii However, there was one small problem. Von der Ahe had control of the ballpark in St. Louis but didn't have a club to place in the new league. He would quickly rectify that situation.
A rather interesting squib appeared in the Globe-Democrat on August 24, 1881, that mentioned a meeting of Brown Stockings' players and the most significant part of this meeting is that it was held at Chris Von der Ahe's tavern. Given how events would transpire over the next two months, it is likely that it was at this meeting that Von der Ahe first mentioned to the players the possibility of forming a new club to play in a new league. On October 2, another article appeared in the Globe that mentions a disagreement between Von der Ahe's SPCA and Brown Stockings' management, a group that still included the Spink brothers. Brown Stockings' management stated in the article that they were tired of interference by the SPCA in the management of the club and Von der Ahe complained that neither he, nor the players, were getting a fair cut of the gate receipts. Regardless of the specifics of the argument between Brown Stockings' management and Von der Ahe, it's apparent that Von der Ahe was already involved in the creation of the American Association and was attempting to get more control over the ball club, in anticipation of placing the Brown Stockings in the new major league. Once the season had ended, Von der Ahe, with the profits he had earned during the season, bought out his partners in the SPCA and had complete control over the best ballpark in St. Louis.xxiv With the advent of a new major league, he also wanted control over the best baseball club. Between the meeting with players and the argument with club managers, it seems obvious that Von der Ahe was attempting to seize control of the Brown Stockings.
The baseball establishment in St. Louis was not about to cede control of the Brown Stockings to Chris Von der Ahe and given him complete control over the suddenly valuable St. Louis baseball market. Regardless of his involvement in the game and his activities in the community, Von der Ahe was still an outsider in St. Louis. He was a German immigrant who struggled with the English language and the subtleties of American culture. He was not one of the landed, wealthy elite in St. Louis. He had not been involved with the baseball fraternity going back to the antebellum era. He had not been marketing and selling the game in the newspapers for fifteen years. He had not been among the men who had done the job of up-building the game for decades, through good times and bad. He was seen as a relative newcomer to the St. Louis baseball fraternity and the fraternity was not about to step aside for Chris Von der Ahe, who was nothing more to them than a small-time tavern owner. But Von der Ahe had plans. He had a vision of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to achieve it. Something as trivial as standing, place, and class was not about to get in the way of a self-made man.
On October 4, 1881, the Globe-Democrat reported on the irreparable schism between Brown Stockings management and Chris Von der Ahe. The club publicly stated that they would no longer play games at Von der Ahe's ballpark and that there had been an attempt, by Von der Ahe, to entice the Brown Stockings' players to desert their colors and join a new, Von der Ahe-led club. The Globe stated that all of the players had refused Von der Ahe's overture and had remained loyal to the club. This proved not to be true. The best players on the Brown Stockings, including Cuthbert and the Gleason brothers, joined Von der Ahe's new club, which was, of course, called the Brown Stockings. For a short period in October, there were actually two clubs named the Brown Stockings playing in St. Louis – one run by Von der Ahe and playing games on Grand Avenue and another, a remnant of the old club, playing at the Compton Avenue Grounds. The rump Brown Stockings quickly faded away and Von der Ahe's club was left as the one, true Brown Stockings club in St. Louis.
The St. Louis baseball establishment had stood in the way of Chris Von der Ahe's vision of what St. Louis baseball could be and he swept them aside. By the beginning of November 1881, he had control of the finest ballpark in St. Louis. He had control of the best baseball team in the city. He had completed the establishment of new major league. Going into the 1882 season, Von der Ahe had accomplished something that the St. Louis baseball establishment had been attempting – and failing – to do since the end of the 1877 season. Chris Von der Ahe , a self-made German immigrant, had, single-handedly, returned major league baseball to St. Louis. In the process, he earned the enmity of the baseball establishment in the city and they would never forgive him for his success.
With the success of the American Association and the Browns, Chris Von der Ahe would become one of the most famous men in America in the 1880s.xxv He would become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. His club would bring championships to his adopted city. He would succeed – and fail – in ways that would make news across the country. He would become arguably the most dominant figure in American baseball during the last two decades of the 19th century. Most importantly, Chris Von der Ahe's legacy – the baseball club that he created in October of 1881 – would endure for one hundred and thirty years and counting.
This baseball club, which was first known as the Brown Stockings, then the Browns, then, unofficially, the Perfectos, and then, finally, the Cardinals, is Von der Ahe's greatest achievement. It is one of the most significant professional sporting clubs in the United States and it's impossible to tell the history of baseball in American without including the story of this club. Setting aside the New York Yankees, it is probably the most successful sports club in the country and is at the core of identity of a city and region. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that when most people think of St. Louis, they think of two things – the Gateway Arch and the St. Louis Cardinals. Chris Von der Ahe created something that defines the people of St. Louis and has brought pleasure and enjoyment to untold millions. That, in and of itself, is an extraordinary achievement and a legacy that few can match.
But, as extraordinary as this achievement is, Von der Ahe did not simply create a great and enduring baseball club. He essentially created the modern St. Louis baseball market and, in doing so, helped to create the modern game of baseball. Over the course of almost two decades, Chris Von der Ahe would change the game of baseball. He would be attacked and mocked, without mercy, for the things he would do but, in the end, we have to look back at Von der Ahe's achievements and note the visionary nature of the innovations and changes he helped introduce into the game. Very few men in the history of baseball changed the game in such lasting ways as did Chris Von der Ahe. Baseball, after Von der Ahe, would never be the same and it looked substantially more like the modern game than it did like the game he first became involved in.
Von der Ahe found a way to make major league, professional baseball profitable in St. Louis, where everyone else had failed in their attempts to do so. The National Association/National League Brown Stockings were not a profitable enterprise and neither was the independent Brown Stockings that followed them. Having been involved in St. Louis baseball since 1875 and having seen how these clubs were run, Von der Ahe was aware of this and attempted something new and different. He marketed the club to a new set of customers – the working class of St. Louis. Von der Ahe created a business model that offered common, blue-collar, working men and women of St. Louis an ease of access to major league baseball that had not been offered to them in the past and offered them amenities that enticed them to come to the ballpark.
Generally, the baseball fraternity, going back to the 1850s, always seemed somewhat embarrassed by their involvement in the game. There was an awareness that the game had evolved from children's games and that the game often attracted, among the players and fans, a rough and tumble type of character. Those who were at the forefront of advancing the game and turning it into a profitable business almost always took severe measures to distance themselves from the game's humble origins and what they saw as the vulgar characteristics of those who played and were fans of the game. It was common in the early sporting press to see references to the manly nature of the game, to the gentlemanly character of the players, and to a ballpark atmosphere that was appropriate for ladies and the higher class to visit. Gambling, drunkenness, rowdiness, yelling, booing – all of these were frowned upon and chastised in the sporting press and baseball organizations were encouraged to eliminate this kind of behavior from both club and crowd. Three ways that baseball clubs attempted to do this was by setting ticket prices at a level that was difficult for the working class to afford, by not selling beer and liquor at games, and by not scheduling games on Sunday, which was the one day that most people were off work.xxvi
Chris Von der Ahe, in creating a new St. Louis baseball market, did the opposite of this. While the National League charged fifty cents for a ticket, Von der Ahe charged twenty five cents and encouraged the other clubs in the American Association to do the same. With the per capita income in Missouri in 1880 being only $157, a fifty percent reduction in ticket prices made it substantially easier for the average working class person in St. Louis to afford a ticket to Sportsman's Park.xxvii By setting ticket prices at the level he did, Von der Ahe expanded the customer base that could afford to attend a major league baseball game.
A lower ticket price not only created a large potential fan base but it also gave those fans a bit more disposable income to spend at the ballpark and Chris Von der Ahe was more than willing to sell them all of the beer, liquor, and food that they wanted. William Hubert, the first president of the National League, had been opposed to the sale of alcohol at baseball games and one of the reasons that the Cincinnati club was thrown out of the League in 1880 was because of their insistence upon offering their customers beer and liquor.xxviii Von der Ahe, as a man of German heritage who had made a good deal of money in the tavern business, saw nothing wrong with giving baseball fans what they wanted. If the fans wanted to drink lager beer at the ball game, Von der Ahe would offer it to them at a fair price. One of the reasons that Von der Ahe's club was so profitable was this expansion of potential concession sales. At the same time, the sale of beer and liquor at the ballpark sent a signal to the working people of St. Louis that they were welcome at the ballpark and that the club's owner cared about them and what they wanted.
It also should be noted, as far as innovative concession sales is concerned, that there is some evidence to suggest that the hot dog, that staple of the ballpark diet, was first offered for sale by Chris Von der Ahe at Sportsman's Park in 1886.xxix While it's certainly open to debate, it's possible to argue that the “Weiner wurst” stand at Sportsman's Park was the first time hot dogs were offered at a major league game. While Von der Ahe was a man of great achievement, it would be difficult to top being the man who popularized the sale of beer and hot dogs at baseball games.
Von der Ahe not only offered his customers tickets, beer, and food at fair prices, he also expanded the opportunity that they had to watch his club by playing games on Sunday. The issue of playing baseball on Sundays was a contentious one in the 19th century and the National League had a prohibition against their clubs playing League games on the Sabbath.v For a variety of reasons, including the Creole heritage of the city and the large influx of German and Irish Catholic immigrants into the city during the second half of the 19th century, Sabbatarianism was never particularly popular in St. Louis and baseball was often played on Sunday in the city. But Chris Von der Ahe was the first person to offer major league baseball on Sunday to the people of St. Louis and this was an important innovation. People worked six days a week and long hours during those days. The five-day workweek and the eight hour day was something that the working class was still fighting for in the 1880s and they had little leisure time to get to the ballpark and watch games that were being played during the day, as all games were in the 19th century. Chris Von der Ahe offered the working people of St. Louis the opportunity to come to watch a baseball game on Sunday, the one day off that most people enjoyed, and the people of St. Louis seized upon the chance, packing Sportsman's Park, Sunday after Sunday.
Von der Ahe's vision of a new kind of baseball market – one that included and was primarily marketed to the working class – was an extraordinary success. By lowering ticket prices, offering fans the type of concessions that they wanted, and scheduling games when the majority of fans were most likely to be able to attend, he created a brand new fan base and the results must have exceeded his wildest expectations. According to the attendance data at Baseball-Reference, the Browns led all major league baseball clubs in attendance during the 1880s, finishing first among all major league clubs in attendance in 1882, 1884, 1886, and 1891. From 1875 to 1877, the NA/NL Brown Stockings totaled about 143,500 fans in attendance. In 1882, Von der Ahe's Brown Stockings, marketing to this new fan base, drew 135,000 fans to Sportsman's Park. The following year, they drew 243,000. Even when the club was bad and losing one hundred games a season in the late 1890s, the Browns were still bringing in 150,000 fans a year.*
Von der Ahe's vision of what baseball could be and who baseball fans were created a new type of baseball market that brought tens of thousands of new customers to the ballpark every year. By creating a new type of fan experience and new opportunities to experience major league baseball, he created something that is recognizable to modern baseball fans. Place a modern baseball fan among the rowdy Sportsman's Park crowd on any given Sunday in the mid-1880s, put a beer and a hot dog in their hand, and they'd be comfortable in a way that they wouldn't be if they were attending a National League game during the same period. Baseball in the last century looks much more like Von der Ahe's vision than William Hulbert's. Von der Ahe created a new way of operating the business of baseball that was extremely successful and that style of economic management remains an important part of baseball to this day.
Chris Von der Ahe was also instrumental in bringing about the modern two-league system and the post-season championship series that resulted from it. As noted earlier, Von der Ahe was involved, from the beginning, in the formation of the American Association and the economic success of the Browns helped to solidify and stabilize the new league in its early years. It's difficult to imagine the American Association succeeding to the extent that it did without the financial success of its St. Louis franchise. Von der Ahe and the Browns were, in many ways, the face of the league in the 1880s and Von der Ahe was certainly one of the leaders of the AA, as well as its most prominent voice. While in recent decades, we've seen a dilution in the distinction between the leagues due to interleague play and the elimination of league presidents and distinct league umpires, for more than a century, major league baseball has been defined by a two-league system that began with the advent of the American Association. Chris Von der Ahe was instrumental in helping to create that system and in making that system function.
One of the fruits of the modern two-league system that Von der Ahe helped to create was, of course, post-season baseball and the World Series. After the 1881 season was completed, the Chicago National League champions played a post-season exhibition series against the Cincinnati American Association champions, setting a precedent that continued until the merger of the two leagues, after the 1891 season.vi This annual series quickly became known as the “World's Championship Series” and as the “World's Series.” While the idea of a “World's Series” did not originate with Chris Von der Ahe, his clubs played in four them, including what was probably the two most famous Worlds Series of the 19th century – the 1885 and 1886 series against the Chicagos. The 1886 World Series included what is arguably the most famous baseball play of the 19th century, Curt Welch's $15,000 Slide.** The Browns victory over the White Stockings in 1886 was the first time the AA champion had defeated the NL champion in a post-season series, although there is little doubt that the Browns would have argued that they had achieved that distinction in 1885.*** The success of Von der Ahe's club against the NL champions helped to legitimize the American Association and a two-league system while, at the same time, helping to popularize the idea of a post-season series to determine a “World's Championship.”xxx
Not content with helping to invent the modern two-league system and to popularize the post-season championship, in 1893, Chris Von der Ahe created the modern baseball park. A century ahead of its time, New Sportsman's Park, located at the intersection of Vandenventer and Natural Bridge Avenue in St. Louis, was referred to, in the contemporary press, as the “Coney Island of the West” and was the forerunner of the modern sports complex, with not only a baseball field but also a horse track and a cycling track. The ballpark, which was hailed as the most beautiful in the country, included such modern amenities as private boxes in the upper deck, large ladies' restrooms, and a beer garden underneath the grandstands. Outside of the park was a chute-the-chute ride and a large, artificial lake, which was used for ice skating in the winter. Von der Ahe was mocked for the extravagance of the new ballpark and the Coney Island moniker was not necessarily a compliment but in light of trends in modern ballpark development, New Sportsman's Park appears as a visionary accomplishment. Von der Ahe's ballpark certainly prefigured the modern ballparks and their restaurants, hotels, waterfalls, hot tubs, trains, kid zones, and exploding scoreboards. Von der Ahe's vision of what a baseball park was and could be certainly is in line with the idea of the modern fan experience. If someone built a large water ride just outside the right field fence of a modern ballpark today, nobody would say anything about it. When Chris Von der Ahe did it in the 19th century, they called him a fool.xxxi
But Von der Ahe was not just a visionary businessman, he was also an innovative baseball man. The attacks on Von der Ahe and the jokes that have been told at his expense have, more than anything, erased the idea of Von der Ahe as a baseball man. The historical image of the man is inconsistent with that of an intelligent and innovative baseball manager but that's what he was. Chris Von der Ahe, in his capacity as President of the Browns, served as what, today, we would call the general manager of the club. The popular interpretation of the success of the Browns in the 1880s has always been to credit Charles Comiskey for putting together and running a club that won four consecutive championships. But there is no evidence to suggest that Comiskey, who was, without a doubt, a great baseball man, an extraordinary leader, and an admirable person, had any involvement in the signing of players. On the other hand, there is multiple references in the contemporary press to Chris Von der Ahe going on the road, identifying players that he believed would help the Browns, and signing them.xxxii There is also the inconvenient fact that the core of the championship club had already been put together before Comiskey ever became field manager.
It is simply an historical fact that Chris Von der Ahe put together a baseball club that won four consecutive championships. There is no doubt that he had help and that he surrounded himself, in the 1880s, with talented people. Like all great managers, he relied upon the expertise of others and men like Ned Cuthbert, Ted Sullivan, and Comiskey were important to the success of the club. The club also had excellent secretaries in David Reid and George Munson. But it's important to note that all of these men were hired by Chris Von der Ahe. He created the a championship organization. He hired the managers and secretaries. He scouted players and signed the ones he thought would help the club. There was no one else doing this work other than Von der Ahe.
He is often criticized for holding what is perceived as the first fire sale in baseball history, when, after the 1887 season, he sold off the core of a club that had just won three consecutive pennants. There are numerous reasons why Von der Ahe, in November of 1887, sold Bob Caruthers, Dave Foutz, Curt Welch, Doc Bushong, and Bill Gleason.xxxiii He was severely disappointed in the way the players played in the World Series against Detroit and generally unhappy with the behavior of his stars during the season itself, when they were constantly demanding higher salaries and refusing to play in exhibition games. There was a general belief about the club, that season, that the egos of the players had gotten out of check and were becoming unmanageable. Also, Foutz and Bushong were both thirty years old and there were questions about their future durability. Gleason had just had his worst season as a professional. Most importantly, the club had a wealth of young talent in players like Silver King, Nat Hudson, and Jack Boyle that were ready to play everyday. Most of the criticism that Von der Ahe has received over the years regarding the 1887 sale of the players fail to recognize these facts and largely focus on the money that Von der Ahe received in return, painting him as greedy and shortsighted. The historical criticism also fails to recognize the fact that, in 1887, there was no other way to move players. If one wanted to get rid of a player, you released him or sold him. If you wanted to acquire a player, you bought him. The idea of a player-for-player trade had not been developed at this point. The fact that Von der Ahe received a great deal of money for these players merely speaks to the quality of the players he was selling and says little about Von der Ahe's possible avarice.
The other fact that critics of the sale leave out is that it worked. After selling five players, Von der Ahe reinvested a great amount of his return back into the club, purchasing enough players to stock two baseball teams.xxxiv The 1888 club that Von der Ahe put together won the American Association championship – the fourth in a row – while lowering salaries, bringing in a younger core, and removing several perceived troublemakers. The Browns finished second in 1889 and missed winning their fifth straight championship by two games. The 1890 club was gutted by defections to the Player's League and finished third. The 1891 club, with the return of several of the defectors, again finished second. So in the four seasons after he supposedly and greedily gutted his championship club, Von der Ahe's Browns won a championship, finished second twice, and third once, during the contentious year of a major league-wide player's revolt that hurt his club more than any other. That's an admirable record for someone who destroyed his club through greed and stupidity. In the end, one must view the “fire sale” as an innovative tactic that stocked the club with young talent and allowed the Browns to contend into the next decade.
Von der Ahe was also involved in the development of the baseball farm system. As mentioned, after the 1887 player sale, Von der Ahe reinvested a great of the money that he had gotten from the sale back into the club. While in the East, selling off his stars, he signed numerous players and, in the end, had enough players to stock two clubs, the Browns and the St. Louis Whites, who, in 1888, would compete in the Western Association. The Whites operated as a kind of proto-minor league club for the Browns, with players who were not good enough to make the Browns assigned to the farm club. The relationship between the two clubs also worked the other way and, in 1888, three of the Whites were, essentially, “called up” to the parent club. Von der Ahe had scouted and signed wisely, as twelve members of the Whites played in major leagues at some point, including Jake Beckley, who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.xxxv
Peter Morris places the Whites squarely withing the evolutionary development of the minor league farm system and both he and David Nemec credit Von der Ahe with operating a farm club.xxxvi Von der Ahe was certainly not unique in recognizing the advantages of a minor league farm system and there are several clubs who tried the same thing in the later part of the 1880s. Almost all of these proto-farm clubs failed to make money and no one had the vision in the 19th century to accept the financial loss as the price of developing young talent. Von der Ahe, himself, pulled the plug on the Whites midway through the 1888 season, as the cost of running the team became prohibitive. But it cannot be denied that Von der Ahe made a rather innovative attempt at developing young players for the Browns and had actually gathered together a great deal of young talent, including one player who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.
If we look at the historical facts of Chris Von der Ahe's baseball career and disregard the myths and legends and “funny” stories, we see an innovative and visionary figure. We see a man who shaped baseball in a positive way and someone who probably had more influence upon the game in the 1880s than anyone else. He created a successful, major league, professional baseball market in St. Louis where others had failed and that market remains, to this day, one of the very best – if not the best – in the country. He helped to create the two-league system and post-season baseball. He built the first multi-use baseball stadium. He was an innovative baseball man who used unique tactics to acquire and develop talent. The talent that he signed and the organization that he built won four consecutive championships and was in contention throughout the 1880s. He put together one of the most famous baseball teams of all-time and he, himself, was one of the most famous figures of his day. He was probably the most influential and powerful baseball men of his time.
Chris Von der Ahe, of course, was not without flaws. He was not a saint nor a perfect human being. He was a serial philanderer, who publicly and scandalously cheated on his first two wives. He was quick-tempered and, at times, difficult to deal with. He had a rather large ego and there is no doubt that he thought highly of himself and his talents. But Von der Ahe's greatest failure, as far as baseball is concerned, had little to do with his character and everything to do with the way in which the Browns were taken away from him in 1899.
By the end of the 1897 season, Von der Ahe was, essentially, bankrupt. The Panic of 1893 stuck just as he had leveraged himself to build his new ballpark and the nation entered a severe economic depression that lasted through most of the decade. The mid-1890s also saw a downturn in the on-field fortune of the Browns and this decreased attendance and the club's cash flow. Von der Ahe had probably made more money off of the game in the 1880s than any other person in baseball and, by the later part of the decade, it had become his primary business. He had invested heavily in real estate and the economic depression of the 1890s had destroyed the value of those investments. So with a decrease in money coming in from the club and without a market to sell off his real estate investments, his bills piled up and he fell behind on the interest payments on the money he had borrowed to build New Sportsman’s Park. At that point, his creditors came after the club.xxxix
The St. Louis Muddle, as the situation was known in the press, was an extremely complicated affair and it would take a lawyer and an accountant to sort out all of the details. With Von der Ahe insolvent, the Sportsman's Park and Club Association was placed in receivership early in 1898 and the entire mess ended up in court. It was a difficult year for Von der Ahe. He was ordered to pay damages in the Baldwin Affair and was jailed, for a short period, when he failed to do so. His second wife divorced him and that settlement was rather costly. New Sportsman's Park burned to the ground during a ballgame on April 16th and it was discovered the Von der Ahe did not have sufficient insurance to cover the remaining debt on the park. He was also forced to pay damages to those who were injured during the fire. He struggled to pay his players. He struggled to pay the rent on the new ballpark he was forced to build after the fire. He had to sell his stock in the SPCA to raise cash to get through the season and may have sold more shares than he actually owned. At that point, it became unclear who even owned the club, as those who held a majority of the shares in the SPCA claimed ownership while Von der Ahe claimed that the SPCA only owned the ballpark and that the baseball franchise was his personal property. Interestingly, Von der Ahe had several offers to purchase the club in the summer of 1898, all of which would have supplied him with enough money to pay off all of his creditors, but he rejected all overtures to sell.xl
On January 23, 1899, the courts ruled that the property of the SPCA would be sold to pay off the ballpark debt and a public auction was held on March 14, doing just that.xli However, there were still legal questions regarding ownership of the baseball franchise and Von der Ahe insisted that he still owned the club. Finally the National League, which the Browns had joined following the merger between the AA and NL in 1892, was forced to settle the situation. As the sale of a baseball franchise was technically forbidden by League rules, it was decided to dissolve the existing St. Louis National League franchise and award a new franchise to a consortium led by Edward Becker and the Robison brothers. After fighting for over a year to keep control of his baseball club, the League had taken it away from him and he was left only with the $150 that the courts had awarded him for serving as a trustee of the club during the period of receivership.xlii
It was an incredible fall from grace and Von der Ahe had no one to blame but himself but his failures in the late 1890s do not take away from his extraordinary accomplishments and achievements. They merely show that he was human. His legacy can not be erased by bankruptcy and the public humiliation of having his club taken away from him. It can't be erased by the jealousy and enmity of his peers, by anti-German bigotry, by the stories of baseball raconteurs, or even by the poor work of baseball historians. He had accomplished too much and had shaped the game of baseball in ways that few men ever had.
Von der Ahe's greatest legacy is the more than 130 years of major league baseball in St. Louis. The proud, rich tradition of St. Louis baseball is a direct result of the vision that Chris Von der Ahe had in 1881 of a new kind of baseball and a new way of organizing and marketing the business of of the game. His legacy is the three million people who flock to Busch Stadium ever year to watch the club he created play a baseball game. There is no one in the Hall of Fame who has a greater legacy and there is no one in the Hall of Fame who helped shape the game more than Chris Von der Ahe. It's a shame that the only reason he isn't recognized as one of the greatest and most innovative men ever involved in the game is because he went bankrupt during a depression and because people liked to tell funny stories about him.
Notes
i New York Clipper; September 3, 1859
ii This Game of Games; Invited To The Field: A Source-Based Analysis of Baseball in St. Louis During the Civil War
http://tinyurl.com/o3uxp5v
iii Morris, Peter (ed.); Base Ball Pioneers 1850-1870; p 291-292.
iv This Game of Games; Maybe We Should Go Find Some Professional Players
http://tinyurl.com/qjm3vju
v Cash, Jon David; Before They Were Cardinals; p 11.
vi Ibid; p 33; p 48.
vii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 1, 1877.
viii This Game of Games; Here's Another Fine Mess
http://tinyurl.com/kka6hmn
ix This Game of Games; Some General Thoughts on the 1877 Gambling Scandal
http://tinyurl.com/pgcyhjs
x St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 1, 1877.
xi Ibid
xii Base Ball Pioneers; pp 291-296.
xiii This Game of Games; The Guardians of Baseball High Culture
http://tinyurl.com/lkus4no
xiv This Game of Games; The End of the Interregnum
http://tinyurl.com/lwfyowp
xv Spink, Al; The National Game; p 46.
xvi Nemec, David (ed.); Major League Baseball Profilles, 1871-1900, Volume 2; p 190.
xvii Hetrick, J. Thomas; Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns; pp 4-5.
xviii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; March 2, 1876.
xix St. Louis Globe-Democrat; March 11, 1877.
xx This Game of Games; More On The Possibility of Von der Ahe Playing Baseball
http://tinyurl.com/l9knvfv
xxi St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 7, 1880.
xxii This Game of Games; The End of the Interregnum, Part Four
http://tinyurl.com/p4ag9qs
xxiii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; October 11, 1881.
xxiv Hetrick; p 8.
xxv Nemec; Profiles; p 189.
xxvi Goldstein, Warren; Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball; p 43. Seymour, Harold and Dorothy Seymour
Mills; Baseball: The Early Years; p 90-93.
xxvii Per Capita Income in the United States, 1880-1910
http://tinyurl.com/mar9828
xxviii Seymour; p 91-92.
xxix Morris, Peter; A Game of Inches, Volume 2; p 108.
xxx Seymour; p 91.
* It should be noted that 19th century attendance data is wildly inaccurate. The numbers at Baseball-Reference are taken from newspaper accounts of the games played rather than official records. However, they are the best numbers we have available and are a useful tool when comparing the attendance of various clubs. While the specific numbers can be questioned, I believe that the conclusions reached here are accurate and there is little doubt
that the Browns had higher attendance figures than any other major league club in the 1880s.
xxxi Nemec, David; The Beer & Whiskey League; p 69.
** The $15,000 Slide was neither a slide nor was it worth $15,000 but such are the vagaries of history.
*** They didn't. The series ended in a tie.
xxxii Ibid; pp 106-107 and 124-125.
xxxiii Nemec; Profiles; p 190.
xxxiv Ibid; p 191.
xxxv This Game of Games; Some Final Thoughts On The Browns' 1887 Player Sale http://tinyurl.com/k5unqc2
xxxvi Ibid
xxxvii This Game of Games; A Kind Of Farm Team – The St. Louis Whites, Part 2
http://tinyurl.com/mz86jol
xxxviii Morris, A Game of Inches, pp 8-9; Nemec, Beer & Whiskey; p. 146.
xxxix This Game of Games; The Fall of Von der A he: $67,000
http://tinyurl.com/qh73gop
xl This Game of Games; The Fall of Von der Ahe http://tinyurl.com/nk9nld9
xli Sporting Life, January 28, 1899 and New York Times, March 15, 1899.
xlii Sporting Life; April 1, 1899 and April 8, 1899.
Bibliography
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
Missouri Republican
St. Louis Daily Bulletin
The Sporting News
Sporting Life
Chicago Tribune
New York Times
New York Clipper
Spink, Al; The National Game
Cash, Jon David; Before They Were Cardinals
Achorn, Edward; The Summer of Beer & Whiskey
Nemec, David; The Beer & Whiskey League
Nemec, David (ed.); Major League Baseball Pioneers, 1871-1900, Volume 1 & 2
Seymour, Harold and Dorothy Seymour Mills; Baseball: The Early Years
Morris, Peter; A Game of Inches
Morris, Peter (ed.); Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870
Hetrich, J. Thomas; Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns
Goldstein, Warren; Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball
This Game of Games (thisgameofgames.blogspot.com; thisgameofgames.com)
Baseball-Reference (baseball-reference.com)
The problem with this is that, from a historical perspective, almost none of it is true. The way Von der Ahe is perceived has little to do with the reality of the man's accomplishments. The historical record presents a man who is arguably the most significant figure in the history of St. Louis baseball. If we look at the facts of the historical record, rather what was said about him by his friends and foes, we see, in Chris Von der Ahe, a man who helped shape the history of baseball in ways that few others have ever done. Looking only at his accomplishments, it is possible to argue that Chris Von der Ahe helped create the modern game of baseball.
To appreciate what Von der Ahe did, it's necessary to take a look at the early history of the game in St. Louis. The New York game of baseball was first played in St. Louis in 1859 and was almost immediately popular.i In 1860, which was the first real baseball season in the city, there were eight clubs playing match games and baseball established a solid foundation in St. Louis that helped it not only survive the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 but allowed it to thrive in the city, in a way that it did not in most of the other major cities of the United States. Civil War St. Louis was one of the great hotbeds of baseball in the country and there were more clubs and games played in the city by the end of the war than there had been at the beginning.ii
Like most of the rest of the country, St. Louis baseball enjoyed a boom period after the end of the war and the second half of the 1860s was a golden age of amateur competition, as the great Empire and Union Clubs fought for baseball supremacy in the city. While these clubs dominated regionally, they struggled when faced with the superior talents of the best Eastern clubs from New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati.iii Gallingly, they also struggled against the best clubs from Chicago. In 1874, the Chicago White Stockings played eleven games against the best clubs from St. Louis and won all eleven of them, with a run differential of plus 152. To add insult to injury, they also stole second baseman John Paul Peters from the Red Stockings and pitcher Dan Collins from the Empires. Not only were the best clubs in the country beating up on the St. Louis clubs, they were stealing their best players.iv
To defend the honor of the city and the local baseball fraternity and to put a team on the field that could beat the White Stockings, in 1875, a group of former Union Club members, led by J.B.C. Lucas, created the first openly professional baseball club in St. Louis, the Brown Stockings, and entered them into competition for the national championship by joining the National Association.v The directors of the club hired the very best baseball players that they could from around the country and achieved their goals when the club not only beat the Chicagos on the field but also finished ahead of them in the NA standings. After this successful season, Brown Stockings management was actively involved in the formation of the new National League and, during the 1876 season, probably put up the best club St. Louis had ever seen, led by the phenomenal pitching of George Washington Bradley. The 1876 Brown Stockings, with the best pitching and defense in the league, finished in a tie for second and great things were expected for 1877. Those expectations were not met. The club failed to resign mainstays like Bradley, Lip Pike, and Ned Cuthbert, lost more games than they won, and finished a distant fourth place in a six team league. After the 1877 season, the club disbanded. The first attempt in the history of St. Louis baseball to establish a major league club had failed.vi
There are two reasons for this failure. First, the club lost money in both 1876 and 1877.vii Major league baseball, as run by the directors of the Brown Stocking club, was not profitable and the directors and shareholders of the club decided to pull the plug on the enterprise. The second reason is probably more significant and likely led to the first. From the very beginning, there was a culture of corruption that existed around the club and, every year that the club existed, there were rumors and accusations that members of the club were throwing games.viii The players were accused of throwing games. The manager was accused of bribing umpires. The umpires employed by the club to work home games were accused of taking money to throw games to the Brown Stockings. Gambling was prevalent in the stands and in what were called “pool halls,” where people could bet on the outcome of a game or an individual inning. Reports of gambling activities filled the local papers.ix
On October 31, 1877, William Spink published an article in the Globe-Democrat about a gambling scandal that had broken out involving members of the Louisville Grays.x The Brown Stockings were placed in a rather awkward situation, as they had signed several of the players involved in the scandal for the 1878 season. The following day, the situation became untenable as Spink published one of the greatest pieces of writing in the history of St. Louis sporting journalism. This article, published in the Globe on November 1, described in detail, with supporting evidence, the attempts by Brown Stockings players to throw games in August of that year. It was evident that the club was aware of these activities as well as previous attempts to throw games during the 1876 season. Not only had the club not rid themselves of the crooked ballplayers but they had gotten rid of players like Bradley, Pike, and Cuthbert who had brought questionable activities to the attention of management and then signed more players of questionable character to replace the honest players.
The timing of the Spink articles could not have been worse for Brown Stockings' management. On the evening of November 1, 1877, a meeting of the club shareholders had been scheduled, in order to raise funds for the 1878 season.xi As noted, the club had lost money the previous two years and did not have enough cash on hand to finance another season. With the depths of the corruption in the club coming to light and the scandal that this created, the Brown Stockings were unable to raise funds for the 1878 season and folded.
It is significant to note that this first effort to establish major league baseball in St. Louis was not only unprofitable but it had ended in scandal. The culture of corruption that surrounded the Brown Stockings damaged the reputation of baseball in St. Louis and brought down the city's first major league team. It's also important to note, specifically, who had failed to successfully establish major league baseball in St. Louis and who had brought this scandal down upon the local baseball fraternity. The people who had been involved with the Brown Stockings – who formed the club, who manged the club, who financed the club, who supported the club – were some of the most influential people in St. Louis. J.B.C. Lucas, the club president, was, for instance, the son of Henry Lucas and grandson of the original J.B.C. Lucas. The Lucas family was one of the two largest landowners in the city and the probably the wealthiest family in St. Louis. Directors of the club included Joseph Carr and Charles Hunt Turner, both members of the Lucas family. Lucas, Carr, and Turner had all been members of the Union Club, a club that is known historically for the fact that its members were the scions of some of the most wealthiest and influential families in St. Louis. The secretary of the Brown Stockings, Orrick Bishop, had also been a member of the Unions.xii
Brown Stockings' management was made up of people who James Brunson has referred to as the guardians of baseball high-culture.xiii The were the baseball establishment in St. Louis. The Union Club had been founded in 1860 and was one of only two clubs to win the St. Louis and Missouri championship during the amateur era. They had built the first enclosed baseball grounds in the city and most likely where the first club to pay their players. They had founded the Missouri state baseball association and been active in the National Association of Base Ball Players. They had been involved with the game in St. Louis from the very beginning and had, more than any other club, shaped the evolution of the game in the city. They were powerful men, on and off the field, and they were not used to failure. But, in this instance, they not only failed but had embarrassed the St. Louis baseball fraternity.
The years after the collapse of the original Brown Stockings were dark times for professional baseball in St. Louis.xiv From 1859 to the present, the game has probably never been less popular than it was during the years after the scandalous failure of the city's first major league club. In 1878, a new Brown Stockings club was organized by William and Al Spink and August Solari, the operator of the Grand Avenue Grounds. This club operated as a minor, independent, professional club and struggled to attract customers to their games. While the original goal was to get the club accepted into the National League, those dreams were quickly dashed and the club was unable to schedule a high level of competition. Al Spink, in The National Game, wrote about this dark period and the difficulties that he faced trying to keep the team afloat. He talked about how disgusted the fans were with the game and how sometimes the club didn't take in enough money at the gate to pay the street car fare for the players to get home.xv By the end of the 1880 season, after three years of scuffling along, Solari gave up his lease on the Grand Avenue Grounds, a ballpark that he had built and operated for fourteen seasons.
Like the gentlemen of the Union Club, who had operated the original Brown Stockings, the Spink brothers and Solari were members of the St. Louis baseball establishment. William Spink was the sporting editor of the Globe-Democrat and Al Spink held the same position with the Missouri Republican. Those two newspapers had, by far, the best and most extensive baseball coverage in St. Louis. Solari had been a member of the Empire Club, was the proprietor of the best ballpark in the city, and was involved in the management of several prominent St. Louis clubs. They were highly influential men within the St. Louis baseball fraternity and, like the directors of the original Brown Stockings, they failed to create a profitable professional baseball club in city.
By the end of the 1880 season, two attempts had been made to establish high-level, professional baseball clubs in St. Louis. Both had failed. The guardians of St. Louis baseball high-culture had tried to create a major league baseball club in the city, only to lose money, damage the reputation of the game, and alienate the St. Louis baseball fans, bringing scandal upon themselves in the process. A second attempt was even less successful, attracted little national attention, and is not much more than a footnote to the history of the game in St. Louis. At the end of the 1880 season, this semi-professional Brown Stocking crew was scuffling along and struggling to stay afloat. One of the most prominent members of their management team had, after years in the game, finally had enough and gave up his lease to their ballpark. The future of the club and of baseball in St. Louis was very much in doubt.
Baseball in St. Louis has faced numerous difficult moments over the last one hundred and fifty years but there has probably never been a darker moment, when the very future of the game in the city was at stake. It was not preordained that professional, major league baseball was going to be successful in St. Louis. There is a long list of cities that had major league clubs in the 19th century and lost them. Cities such as Buffalo, Hartford, Indianapolis, Louisville, Providence, and Syracuse all had major league clubs in the early years of the game. No one today thinks of those cities as major league baseball cities. St. Louis could have easily joined that list. Professional baseball in St. Louis, going into the 1881 season, had been a miserable failure and there was no reason to believe that things were going to change. The best professional club in the city was losing money. The National League had no interest in placing a club in St. Louis. The baseball establishment of the city was demoralized. The popularity of the game in St. Louis was at an historical low. Things were bleak and the future was uncertain.
And into this bleak uncertainty came Chris Von der Ahe.
The son of a local grain merchant, Von der Ahe was born in Hille, Westphalia on October 7, 1851. Seeking to escape compulsory military service, he, like many Germans of his generation, immigrated to the United States, arriving in New York in 1867. He quickly found his way to St. Louis and began working as a clerk in a local grocery. A bright, personable, and driven young man, Von der Ahe was soon a partner in the grocery store and, in 1870, he married Emma Hoffmann, the American-born daughter of German immigrants. By 1872,Von der Ahe had started a family and bought out his partner in the store, becoming its sole owner and operator. Only twenty-one years old, Chris Von der Ahe was already the prototypical American success story.xvi
As a local business owner and a man of considerable charm, Von der Ahe was active and influential in the local German immigrant community of North St. Louis. He was a member of the Democratic Party, counting among his friends the local aldermen and Congressman, and was also active in the local German Immigration Society. At the same time his business venture was successful and expanding. He added a tavern to the grocery store and, by 1875, moved the operation to Grand Avenue, across the street from the Grand Avenue Grounds. He would soon add a butcher shop and a feed store to his ever-expanding operation.xvii
It is in his tavern and grocery store on Grand that Chris Von der Ahe first began to consider the idea of getting involved in baseball. While there is some evidence to suggest that Von der Ahe may have been a playing member of a local baseball club in the early 1870s, the strongest sources point to his involvement in the game beginning in 1875. The 1874 season, involving an extraordinarily competitive championship series between the Empires and Reds and visits from the great Chicago White Stockings, generated an excitement among local baseball fans that had not been seen in the city in several years. Von der Ahe, ingrained in the community as he was by this point, was most likely caught up in this outbreak of baseball fever and decided to get involved with one of the local, neighborhood baseball clubs. In 1875, he became a member of board of directors of the Grand Avenue Club, who played their games across the street from Von der Ahe's tavern and was operated by August Solari.xviii The Grand Avenues were an outstanding baseball club and, in 1876, were probably the best amateur club in the city. Over the course of two seasons, the only games that the Grand Avenues lost were to the major league Brown Stockings. By 1877, Von der Ahe was the vice-president of the club.xix
This information from the contemporary source material exposes the traditional story of Von der Ahe's earliest involvement in baseball as a myth. The traditional story portrays Von der Ahe as being ignorant of the game and unaware of what was happening across the street from his business establishment. This story, which has been repeated in baseball histories and in newspapers for more than a century, suggests that Ned Cuthbert, the great Brown Stockings player and an employee at Von der Ahe's tavern, had to explain to his boss why his tavern filled up on certain days and why all of those customers left around 2:30, only to return three hours later. Von der Ahe had already shown, by 1875, that he was an intelligent and shrewd businessman. He had likely played baseball in the early 1870s and was already involved in the running of a club by late February of 1875.xx He didn't need Ned Cuthbert to point out the existence of the game of baseball to him and he didn't need Cuthbert to explain to him what drove customers to his tavern. By moving his business across the street from the best ballpark in St. Louis and becoming involved in the management of the best amateur club in the city, Von der Ahe showed by his actions that he was already well aware of the game and of the connection between baseball and the tavern business before Ned Cuthbert ever arrived in St. Louis.
In October of 1880, after Solari gave up on baseball and let the lease to the Grand Avenue Grounds lapse, Chris Von der Ahe stepped into the void created by the failures of the St. Louis baseball establishment and formed the Sportsman's Park and Club Association. With Von der Ahe as president and largest shareholder, the SPCA signed a new lease on the grounds and refurbished the ballpark. The main tenants of the ballpark were, once again, the scuffling Brown Stockings. Going into the 1881 season, Chris Von der Ahe had taken a great financial risk but he controlled the best ballpark in St. Louis.xxi
The 1881 baseball season in St. Louis was rather unique. The nation had been suffering from a severe economic downturn, due to the Panic of 1873, and this recession had certainly affected the baseball business, with numerous clubs folding and the National League retreating from well-established baseball markets such as St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville. While there are numerous reasons why the League had abandoned these markets, such as the gambling scandals in St. Louis and Louisville, it was difficult during the recession of the 1870s for clubs to travel great distances without a guarantee of a profit. With the nation beginning to see the fruits of an economic recovery in 1881, more clubs began to operate profitably and began, once again, to travel across the country in search of better competition. Specifically, those markets that had been abandoned by the League and lacked major league baseball began to schedule games between their best clubs. The 1881 season saw the best clubs from New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville all come to St. Louis and play the Brown Stockings at Von der Ahe's ballpark. For the first time in several years, Chicago clubs made a trip south to play the best St. Louis clubs. With better competition coming to town and a surprisingly competitive Brown Stockings club holding their own against some of the best clubs in the country, the St. Louis fans began, once again, to flock to ballpark. In 1881, Von der Ahe's newly christened Sportsman's Park was filled with fans and the young tavern owner was financially rewarded by the money the fans spent on tickets and the readily available beer that Von der Ahe was more than happy to sell them.xxii
The significance of the 1881 baseball season is that baseball men in these abandoned markets – which were and are some of the best baseball cities in the United States – recognized that there was tremendous potential for growth at the highest levels of baseball. They saw the crowds that were flocking to the park to watch the Brown Stockings and their counterparts in New York, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Louisville and realized that a business opportunity existed. If the National League failed to recognize the potential of these markets or refused, out of spite, to expand into those markets, there was no reason why a new major league couldn't be created. There were baseball men around the country who recognized the increase in demand for high-level baseball and were more than willing to supply a product that baseball fans could enjoy.
The first report of a new baseball association appears in the New York Clipper on September 17, 1881, and mentions the fact that St. Louis was one of the cities involved in its possible creation. On October 10, Chris Von der Ahe attended a meeting in Pittsburgh that laid the groundwork for the establishment of the new American Association.xxiii However, there was one small problem. Von der Ahe had control of the ballpark in St. Louis but didn't have a club to place in the new league. He would quickly rectify that situation.
A rather interesting squib appeared in the Globe-Democrat on August 24, 1881, that mentioned a meeting of Brown Stockings' players and the most significant part of this meeting is that it was held at Chris Von der Ahe's tavern. Given how events would transpire over the next two months, it is likely that it was at this meeting that Von der Ahe first mentioned to the players the possibility of forming a new club to play in a new league. On October 2, another article appeared in the Globe that mentions a disagreement between Von der Ahe's SPCA and Brown Stockings' management, a group that still included the Spink brothers. Brown Stockings' management stated in the article that they were tired of interference by the SPCA in the management of the club and Von der Ahe complained that neither he, nor the players, were getting a fair cut of the gate receipts. Regardless of the specifics of the argument between Brown Stockings' management and Von der Ahe, it's apparent that Von der Ahe was already involved in the creation of the American Association and was attempting to get more control over the ball club, in anticipation of placing the Brown Stockings in the new major league. Once the season had ended, Von der Ahe, with the profits he had earned during the season, bought out his partners in the SPCA and had complete control over the best ballpark in St. Louis.xxiv With the advent of a new major league, he also wanted control over the best baseball club. Between the meeting with players and the argument with club managers, it seems obvious that Von der Ahe was attempting to seize control of the Brown Stockings.
The baseball establishment in St. Louis was not about to cede control of the Brown Stockings to Chris Von der Ahe and given him complete control over the suddenly valuable St. Louis baseball market. Regardless of his involvement in the game and his activities in the community, Von der Ahe was still an outsider in St. Louis. He was a German immigrant who struggled with the English language and the subtleties of American culture. He was not one of the landed, wealthy elite in St. Louis. He had not been involved with the baseball fraternity going back to the antebellum era. He had not been marketing and selling the game in the newspapers for fifteen years. He had not been among the men who had done the job of up-building the game for decades, through good times and bad. He was seen as a relative newcomer to the St. Louis baseball fraternity and the fraternity was not about to step aside for Chris Von der Ahe, who was nothing more to them than a small-time tavern owner. But Von der Ahe had plans. He had a vision of what he wanted to do and how he wanted to achieve it. Something as trivial as standing, place, and class was not about to get in the way of a self-made man.
On October 4, 1881, the Globe-Democrat reported on the irreparable schism between Brown Stockings management and Chris Von der Ahe. The club publicly stated that they would no longer play games at Von der Ahe's ballpark and that there had been an attempt, by Von der Ahe, to entice the Brown Stockings' players to desert their colors and join a new, Von der Ahe-led club. The Globe stated that all of the players had refused Von der Ahe's overture and had remained loyal to the club. This proved not to be true. The best players on the Brown Stockings, including Cuthbert and the Gleason brothers, joined Von der Ahe's new club, which was, of course, called the Brown Stockings. For a short period in October, there were actually two clubs named the Brown Stockings playing in St. Louis – one run by Von der Ahe and playing games on Grand Avenue and another, a remnant of the old club, playing at the Compton Avenue Grounds. The rump Brown Stockings quickly faded away and Von der Ahe's club was left as the one, true Brown Stockings club in St. Louis.
The St. Louis baseball establishment had stood in the way of Chris Von der Ahe's vision of what St. Louis baseball could be and he swept them aside. By the beginning of November 1881, he had control of the finest ballpark in St. Louis. He had control of the best baseball team in the city. He had completed the establishment of new major league. Going into the 1882 season, Von der Ahe had accomplished something that the St. Louis baseball establishment had been attempting – and failing – to do since the end of the 1877 season. Chris Von der Ahe , a self-made German immigrant, had, single-handedly, returned major league baseball to St. Louis. In the process, he earned the enmity of the baseball establishment in the city and they would never forgive him for his success.
With the success of the American Association and the Browns, Chris Von der Ahe would become one of the most famous men in America in the 1880s.xxv He would become wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. His club would bring championships to his adopted city. He would succeed – and fail – in ways that would make news across the country. He would become arguably the most dominant figure in American baseball during the last two decades of the 19th century. Most importantly, Chris Von der Ahe's legacy – the baseball club that he created in October of 1881 – would endure for one hundred and thirty years and counting.
This baseball club, which was first known as the Brown Stockings, then the Browns, then, unofficially, the Perfectos, and then, finally, the Cardinals, is Von der Ahe's greatest achievement. It is one of the most significant professional sporting clubs in the United States and it's impossible to tell the history of baseball in American without including the story of this club. Setting aside the New York Yankees, it is probably the most successful sports club in the country and is at the core of identity of a city and region. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that when most people think of St. Louis, they think of two things – the Gateway Arch and the St. Louis Cardinals. Chris Von der Ahe created something that defines the people of St. Louis and has brought pleasure and enjoyment to untold millions. That, in and of itself, is an extraordinary achievement and a legacy that few can match.
But, as extraordinary as this achievement is, Von der Ahe did not simply create a great and enduring baseball club. He essentially created the modern St. Louis baseball market and, in doing so, helped to create the modern game of baseball. Over the course of almost two decades, Chris Von der Ahe would change the game of baseball. He would be attacked and mocked, without mercy, for the things he would do but, in the end, we have to look back at Von der Ahe's achievements and note the visionary nature of the innovations and changes he helped introduce into the game. Very few men in the history of baseball changed the game in such lasting ways as did Chris Von der Ahe. Baseball, after Von der Ahe, would never be the same and it looked substantially more like the modern game than it did like the game he first became involved in.
Von der Ahe found a way to make major league, professional baseball profitable in St. Louis, where everyone else had failed in their attempts to do so. The National Association/National League Brown Stockings were not a profitable enterprise and neither was the independent Brown Stockings that followed them. Having been involved in St. Louis baseball since 1875 and having seen how these clubs were run, Von der Ahe was aware of this and attempted something new and different. He marketed the club to a new set of customers – the working class of St. Louis. Von der Ahe created a business model that offered common, blue-collar, working men and women of St. Louis an ease of access to major league baseball that had not been offered to them in the past and offered them amenities that enticed them to come to the ballpark.
Generally, the baseball fraternity, going back to the 1850s, always seemed somewhat embarrassed by their involvement in the game. There was an awareness that the game had evolved from children's games and that the game often attracted, among the players and fans, a rough and tumble type of character. Those who were at the forefront of advancing the game and turning it into a profitable business almost always took severe measures to distance themselves from the game's humble origins and what they saw as the vulgar characteristics of those who played and were fans of the game. It was common in the early sporting press to see references to the manly nature of the game, to the gentlemanly character of the players, and to a ballpark atmosphere that was appropriate for ladies and the higher class to visit. Gambling, drunkenness, rowdiness, yelling, booing – all of these were frowned upon and chastised in the sporting press and baseball organizations were encouraged to eliminate this kind of behavior from both club and crowd. Three ways that baseball clubs attempted to do this was by setting ticket prices at a level that was difficult for the working class to afford, by not selling beer and liquor at games, and by not scheduling games on Sunday, which was the one day that most people were off work.xxvi
Chris Von der Ahe, in creating a new St. Louis baseball market, did the opposite of this. While the National League charged fifty cents for a ticket, Von der Ahe charged twenty five cents and encouraged the other clubs in the American Association to do the same. With the per capita income in Missouri in 1880 being only $157, a fifty percent reduction in ticket prices made it substantially easier for the average working class person in St. Louis to afford a ticket to Sportsman's Park.xxvii By setting ticket prices at the level he did, Von der Ahe expanded the customer base that could afford to attend a major league baseball game.
A lower ticket price not only created a large potential fan base but it also gave those fans a bit more disposable income to spend at the ballpark and Chris Von der Ahe was more than willing to sell them all of the beer, liquor, and food that they wanted. William Hubert, the first president of the National League, had been opposed to the sale of alcohol at baseball games and one of the reasons that the Cincinnati club was thrown out of the League in 1880 was because of their insistence upon offering their customers beer and liquor.xxviii Von der Ahe, as a man of German heritage who had made a good deal of money in the tavern business, saw nothing wrong with giving baseball fans what they wanted. If the fans wanted to drink lager beer at the ball game, Von der Ahe would offer it to them at a fair price. One of the reasons that Von der Ahe's club was so profitable was this expansion of potential concession sales. At the same time, the sale of beer and liquor at the ballpark sent a signal to the working people of St. Louis that they were welcome at the ballpark and that the club's owner cared about them and what they wanted.
It also should be noted, as far as innovative concession sales is concerned, that there is some evidence to suggest that the hot dog, that staple of the ballpark diet, was first offered for sale by Chris Von der Ahe at Sportsman's Park in 1886.xxix While it's certainly open to debate, it's possible to argue that the “Weiner wurst” stand at Sportsman's Park was the first time hot dogs were offered at a major league game. While Von der Ahe was a man of great achievement, it would be difficult to top being the man who popularized the sale of beer and hot dogs at baseball games.
Von der Ahe not only offered his customers tickets, beer, and food at fair prices, he also expanded the opportunity that they had to watch his club by playing games on Sunday. The issue of playing baseball on Sundays was a contentious one in the 19th century and the National League had a prohibition against their clubs playing League games on the Sabbath.v For a variety of reasons, including the Creole heritage of the city and the large influx of German and Irish Catholic immigrants into the city during the second half of the 19th century, Sabbatarianism was never particularly popular in St. Louis and baseball was often played on Sunday in the city. But Chris Von der Ahe was the first person to offer major league baseball on Sunday to the people of St. Louis and this was an important innovation. People worked six days a week and long hours during those days. The five-day workweek and the eight hour day was something that the working class was still fighting for in the 1880s and they had little leisure time to get to the ballpark and watch games that were being played during the day, as all games were in the 19th century. Chris Von der Ahe offered the working people of St. Louis the opportunity to come to watch a baseball game on Sunday, the one day off that most people enjoyed, and the people of St. Louis seized upon the chance, packing Sportsman's Park, Sunday after Sunday.
Von der Ahe's vision of a new kind of baseball market – one that included and was primarily marketed to the working class – was an extraordinary success. By lowering ticket prices, offering fans the type of concessions that they wanted, and scheduling games when the majority of fans were most likely to be able to attend, he created a brand new fan base and the results must have exceeded his wildest expectations. According to the attendance data at Baseball-Reference, the Browns led all major league baseball clubs in attendance during the 1880s, finishing first among all major league clubs in attendance in 1882, 1884, 1886, and 1891. From 1875 to 1877, the NA/NL Brown Stockings totaled about 143,500 fans in attendance. In 1882, Von der Ahe's Brown Stockings, marketing to this new fan base, drew 135,000 fans to Sportsman's Park. The following year, they drew 243,000. Even when the club was bad and losing one hundred games a season in the late 1890s, the Browns were still bringing in 150,000 fans a year.*
Von der Ahe's vision of what baseball could be and who baseball fans were created a new type of baseball market that brought tens of thousands of new customers to the ballpark every year. By creating a new type of fan experience and new opportunities to experience major league baseball, he created something that is recognizable to modern baseball fans. Place a modern baseball fan among the rowdy Sportsman's Park crowd on any given Sunday in the mid-1880s, put a beer and a hot dog in their hand, and they'd be comfortable in a way that they wouldn't be if they were attending a National League game during the same period. Baseball in the last century looks much more like Von der Ahe's vision than William Hulbert's. Von der Ahe created a new way of operating the business of baseball that was extremely successful and that style of economic management remains an important part of baseball to this day.
Chris Von der Ahe was also instrumental in bringing about the modern two-league system and the post-season championship series that resulted from it. As noted earlier, Von der Ahe was involved, from the beginning, in the formation of the American Association and the economic success of the Browns helped to solidify and stabilize the new league in its early years. It's difficult to imagine the American Association succeeding to the extent that it did without the financial success of its St. Louis franchise. Von der Ahe and the Browns were, in many ways, the face of the league in the 1880s and Von der Ahe was certainly one of the leaders of the AA, as well as its most prominent voice. While in recent decades, we've seen a dilution in the distinction between the leagues due to interleague play and the elimination of league presidents and distinct league umpires, for more than a century, major league baseball has been defined by a two-league system that began with the advent of the American Association. Chris Von der Ahe was instrumental in helping to create that system and in making that system function.
One of the fruits of the modern two-league system that Von der Ahe helped to create was, of course, post-season baseball and the World Series. After the 1881 season was completed, the Chicago National League champions played a post-season exhibition series against the Cincinnati American Association champions, setting a precedent that continued until the merger of the two leagues, after the 1891 season.vi This annual series quickly became known as the “World's Championship Series” and as the “World's Series.” While the idea of a “World's Series” did not originate with Chris Von der Ahe, his clubs played in four them, including what was probably the two most famous Worlds Series of the 19th century – the 1885 and 1886 series against the Chicagos. The 1886 World Series included what is arguably the most famous baseball play of the 19th century, Curt Welch's $15,000 Slide.** The Browns victory over the White Stockings in 1886 was the first time the AA champion had defeated the NL champion in a post-season series, although there is little doubt that the Browns would have argued that they had achieved that distinction in 1885.*** The success of Von der Ahe's club against the NL champions helped to legitimize the American Association and a two-league system while, at the same time, helping to popularize the idea of a post-season series to determine a “World's Championship.”xxx
Not content with helping to invent the modern two-league system and to popularize the post-season championship, in 1893, Chris Von der Ahe created the modern baseball park. A century ahead of its time, New Sportsman's Park, located at the intersection of Vandenventer and Natural Bridge Avenue in St. Louis, was referred to, in the contemporary press, as the “Coney Island of the West” and was the forerunner of the modern sports complex, with not only a baseball field but also a horse track and a cycling track. The ballpark, which was hailed as the most beautiful in the country, included such modern amenities as private boxes in the upper deck, large ladies' restrooms, and a beer garden underneath the grandstands. Outside of the park was a chute-the-chute ride and a large, artificial lake, which was used for ice skating in the winter. Von der Ahe was mocked for the extravagance of the new ballpark and the Coney Island moniker was not necessarily a compliment but in light of trends in modern ballpark development, New Sportsman's Park appears as a visionary accomplishment. Von der Ahe's ballpark certainly prefigured the modern ballparks and their restaurants, hotels, waterfalls, hot tubs, trains, kid zones, and exploding scoreboards. Von der Ahe's vision of what a baseball park was and could be certainly is in line with the idea of the modern fan experience. If someone built a large water ride just outside the right field fence of a modern ballpark today, nobody would say anything about it. When Chris Von der Ahe did it in the 19th century, they called him a fool.xxxi
But Von der Ahe was not just a visionary businessman, he was also an innovative baseball man. The attacks on Von der Ahe and the jokes that have been told at his expense have, more than anything, erased the idea of Von der Ahe as a baseball man. The historical image of the man is inconsistent with that of an intelligent and innovative baseball manager but that's what he was. Chris Von der Ahe, in his capacity as President of the Browns, served as what, today, we would call the general manager of the club. The popular interpretation of the success of the Browns in the 1880s has always been to credit Charles Comiskey for putting together and running a club that won four consecutive championships. But there is no evidence to suggest that Comiskey, who was, without a doubt, a great baseball man, an extraordinary leader, and an admirable person, had any involvement in the signing of players. On the other hand, there is multiple references in the contemporary press to Chris Von der Ahe going on the road, identifying players that he believed would help the Browns, and signing them.xxxii There is also the inconvenient fact that the core of the championship club had already been put together before Comiskey ever became field manager.
It is simply an historical fact that Chris Von der Ahe put together a baseball club that won four consecutive championships. There is no doubt that he had help and that he surrounded himself, in the 1880s, with talented people. Like all great managers, he relied upon the expertise of others and men like Ned Cuthbert, Ted Sullivan, and Comiskey were important to the success of the club. The club also had excellent secretaries in David Reid and George Munson. But it's important to note that all of these men were hired by Chris Von der Ahe. He created the a championship organization. He hired the managers and secretaries. He scouted players and signed the ones he thought would help the club. There was no one else doing this work other than Von der Ahe.
He is often criticized for holding what is perceived as the first fire sale in baseball history, when, after the 1887 season, he sold off the core of a club that had just won three consecutive pennants. There are numerous reasons why Von der Ahe, in November of 1887, sold Bob Caruthers, Dave Foutz, Curt Welch, Doc Bushong, and Bill Gleason.xxxiii He was severely disappointed in the way the players played in the World Series against Detroit and generally unhappy with the behavior of his stars during the season itself, when they were constantly demanding higher salaries and refusing to play in exhibition games. There was a general belief about the club, that season, that the egos of the players had gotten out of check and were becoming unmanageable. Also, Foutz and Bushong were both thirty years old and there were questions about their future durability. Gleason had just had his worst season as a professional. Most importantly, the club had a wealth of young talent in players like Silver King, Nat Hudson, and Jack Boyle that were ready to play everyday. Most of the criticism that Von der Ahe has received over the years regarding the 1887 sale of the players fail to recognize these facts and largely focus on the money that Von der Ahe received in return, painting him as greedy and shortsighted. The historical criticism also fails to recognize the fact that, in 1887, there was no other way to move players. If one wanted to get rid of a player, you released him or sold him. If you wanted to acquire a player, you bought him. The idea of a player-for-player trade had not been developed at this point. The fact that Von der Ahe received a great deal of money for these players merely speaks to the quality of the players he was selling and says little about Von der Ahe's possible avarice.
The other fact that critics of the sale leave out is that it worked. After selling five players, Von der Ahe reinvested a great amount of his return back into the club, purchasing enough players to stock two baseball teams.xxxiv The 1888 club that Von der Ahe put together won the American Association championship – the fourth in a row – while lowering salaries, bringing in a younger core, and removing several perceived troublemakers. The Browns finished second in 1889 and missed winning their fifth straight championship by two games. The 1890 club was gutted by defections to the Player's League and finished third. The 1891 club, with the return of several of the defectors, again finished second. So in the four seasons after he supposedly and greedily gutted his championship club, Von der Ahe's Browns won a championship, finished second twice, and third once, during the contentious year of a major league-wide player's revolt that hurt his club more than any other. That's an admirable record for someone who destroyed his club through greed and stupidity. In the end, one must view the “fire sale” as an innovative tactic that stocked the club with young talent and allowed the Browns to contend into the next decade.
Von der Ahe was also involved in the development of the baseball farm system. As mentioned, after the 1887 player sale, Von der Ahe reinvested a great of the money that he had gotten from the sale back into the club. While in the East, selling off his stars, he signed numerous players and, in the end, had enough players to stock two clubs, the Browns and the St. Louis Whites, who, in 1888, would compete in the Western Association. The Whites operated as a kind of proto-minor league club for the Browns, with players who were not good enough to make the Browns assigned to the farm club. The relationship between the two clubs also worked the other way and, in 1888, three of the Whites were, essentially, “called up” to the parent club. Von der Ahe had scouted and signed wisely, as twelve members of the Whites played in major leagues at some point, including Jake Beckley, who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.xxxv
Peter Morris places the Whites squarely withing the evolutionary development of the minor league farm system and both he and David Nemec credit Von der Ahe with operating a farm club.xxxvi Von der Ahe was certainly not unique in recognizing the advantages of a minor league farm system and there are several clubs who tried the same thing in the later part of the 1880s. Almost all of these proto-farm clubs failed to make money and no one had the vision in the 19th century to accept the financial loss as the price of developing young talent. Von der Ahe, himself, pulled the plug on the Whites midway through the 1888 season, as the cost of running the team became prohibitive. But it cannot be denied that Von der Ahe made a rather innovative attempt at developing young players for the Browns and had actually gathered together a great deal of young talent, including one player who would go on to have a Hall of Fame career.
If we look at the historical facts of Chris Von der Ahe's baseball career and disregard the myths and legends and “funny” stories, we see an innovative and visionary figure. We see a man who shaped baseball in a positive way and someone who probably had more influence upon the game in the 1880s than anyone else. He created a successful, major league, professional baseball market in St. Louis where others had failed and that market remains, to this day, one of the very best – if not the best – in the country. He helped to create the two-league system and post-season baseball. He built the first multi-use baseball stadium. He was an innovative baseball man who used unique tactics to acquire and develop talent. The talent that he signed and the organization that he built won four consecutive championships and was in contention throughout the 1880s. He put together one of the most famous baseball teams of all-time and he, himself, was one of the most famous figures of his day. He was probably the most influential and powerful baseball men of his time.
Chris Von der Ahe, of course, was not without flaws. He was not a saint nor a perfect human being. He was a serial philanderer, who publicly and scandalously cheated on his first two wives. He was quick-tempered and, at times, difficult to deal with. He had a rather large ego and there is no doubt that he thought highly of himself and his talents. But Von der Ahe's greatest failure, as far as baseball is concerned, had little to do with his character and everything to do with the way in which the Browns were taken away from him in 1899.
By the end of the 1897 season, Von der Ahe was, essentially, bankrupt. The Panic of 1893 stuck just as he had leveraged himself to build his new ballpark and the nation entered a severe economic depression that lasted through most of the decade. The mid-1890s also saw a downturn in the on-field fortune of the Browns and this decreased attendance and the club's cash flow. Von der Ahe had probably made more money off of the game in the 1880s than any other person in baseball and, by the later part of the decade, it had become his primary business. He had invested heavily in real estate and the economic depression of the 1890s had destroyed the value of those investments. So with a decrease in money coming in from the club and without a market to sell off his real estate investments, his bills piled up and he fell behind on the interest payments on the money he had borrowed to build New Sportsman’s Park. At that point, his creditors came after the club.xxxix
The St. Louis Muddle, as the situation was known in the press, was an extremely complicated affair and it would take a lawyer and an accountant to sort out all of the details. With Von der Ahe insolvent, the Sportsman's Park and Club Association was placed in receivership early in 1898 and the entire mess ended up in court. It was a difficult year for Von der Ahe. He was ordered to pay damages in the Baldwin Affair and was jailed, for a short period, when he failed to do so. His second wife divorced him and that settlement was rather costly. New Sportsman's Park burned to the ground during a ballgame on April 16th and it was discovered the Von der Ahe did not have sufficient insurance to cover the remaining debt on the park. He was also forced to pay damages to those who were injured during the fire. He struggled to pay his players. He struggled to pay the rent on the new ballpark he was forced to build after the fire. He had to sell his stock in the SPCA to raise cash to get through the season and may have sold more shares than he actually owned. At that point, it became unclear who even owned the club, as those who held a majority of the shares in the SPCA claimed ownership while Von der Ahe claimed that the SPCA only owned the ballpark and that the baseball franchise was his personal property. Interestingly, Von der Ahe had several offers to purchase the club in the summer of 1898, all of which would have supplied him with enough money to pay off all of his creditors, but he rejected all overtures to sell.xl
On January 23, 1899, the courts ruled that the property of the SPCA would be sold to pay off the ballpark debt and a public auction was held on March 14, doing just that.xli However, there were still legal questions regarding ownership of the baseball franchise and Von der Ahe insisted that he still owned the club. Finally the National League, which the Browns had joined following the merger between the AA and NL in 1892, was forced to settle the situation. As the sale of a baseball franchise was technically forbidden by League rules, it was decided to dissolve the existing St. Louis National League franchise and award a new franchise to a consortium led by Edward Becker and the Robison brothers. After fighting for over a year to keep control of his baseball club, the League had taken it away from him and he was left only with the $150 that the courts had awarded him for serving as a trustee of the club during the period of receivership.xlii
It was an incredible fall from grace and Von der Ahe had no one to blame but himself but his failures in the late 1890s do not take away from his extraordinary accomplishments and achievements. They merely show that he was human. His legacy can not be erased by bankruptcy and the public humiliation of having his club taken away from him. It can't be erased by the jealousy and enmity of his peers, by anti-German bigotry, by the stories of baseball raconteurs, or even by the poor work of baseball historians. He had accomplished too much and had shaped the game of baseball in ways that few men ever had.
Von der Ahe's greatest legacy is the more than 130 years of major league baseball in St. Louis. The proud, rich tradition of St. Louis baseball is a direct result of the vision that Chris Von der Ahe had in 1881 of a new kind of baseball and a new way of organizing and marketing the business of of the game. His legacy is the three million people who flock to Busch Stadium ever year to watch the club he created play a baseball game. There is no one in the Hall of Fame who has a greater legacy and there is no one in the Hall of Fame who helped shape the game more than Chris Von der Ahe. It's a shame that the only reason he isn't recognized as one of the greatest and most innovative men ever involved in the game is because he went bankrupt during a depression and because people liked to tell funny stories about him.
Notes
i New York Clipper; September 3, 1859
ii This Game of Games; Invited To The Field: A Source-Based Analysis of Baseball in St. Louis During the Civil War
http://tinyurl.com/o3uxp5v
iii Morris, Peter (ed.); Base Ball Pioneers 1850-1870; p 291-292.
iv This Game of Games; Maybe We Should Go Find Some Professional Players
http://tinyurl.com/qjm3vju
v Cash, Jon David; Before They Were Cardinals; p 11.
vi Ibid; p 33; p 48.
vii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 1, 1877.
viii This Game of Games; Here's Another Fine Mess
http://tinyurl.com/kka6hmn
ix This Game of Games; Some General Thoughts on the 1877 Gambling Scandal
http://tinyurl.com/pgcyhjs
x St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 1, 1877.
xi Ibid
xii Base Ball Pioneers; pp 291-296.
xiii This Game of Games; The Guardians of Baseball High Culture
http://tinyurl.com/lkus4no
xiv This Game of Games; The End of the Interregnum
http://tinyurl.com/lwfyowp
xv Spink, Al; The National Game; p 46.
xvi Nemec, David (ed.); Major League Baseball Profilles, 1871-1900, Volume 2; p 190.
xvii Hetrick, J. Thomas; Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns; pp 4-5.
xviii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; March 2, 1876.
xix St. Louis Globe-Democrat; March 11, 1877.
xx This Game of Games; More On The Possibility of Von der Ahe Playing Baseball
http://tinyurl.com/l9knvfv
xxi St. Louis Globe-Democrat; November 7, 1880.
xxii This Game of Games; The End of the Interregnum, Part Four
http://tinyurl.com/p4ag9qs
xxiii St. Louis Globe-Democrat; October 11, 1881.
xxiv Hetrick; p 8.
xxv Nemec; Profiles; p 189.
xxvi Goldstein, Warren; Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball; p 43. Seymour, Harold and Dorothy Seymour
Mills; Baseball: The Early Years; p 90-93.
xxvii Per Capita Income in the United States, 1880-1910
http://tinyurl.com/mar9828
xxviii Seymour; p 91-92.
xxix Morris, Peter; A Game of Inches, Volume 2; p 108.
xxx Seymour; p 91.
* It should be noted that 19th century attendance data is wildly inaccurate. The numbers at Baseball-Reference are taken from newspaper accounts of the games played rather than official records. However, they are the best numbers we have available and are a useful tool when comparing the attendance of various clubs. While the specific numbers can be questioned, I believe that the conclusions reached here are accurate and there is little doubt
that the Browns had higher attendance figures than any other major league club in the 1880s.
xxxi Nemec, David; The Beer & Whiskey League; p 69.
** The $15,000 Slide was neither a slide nor was it worth $15,000 but such are the vagaries of history.
*** They didn't. The series ended in a tie.
xxxii Ibid; pp 106-107 and 124-125.
xxxiii Nemec; Profiles; p 190.
xxxiv Ibid; p 191.
xxxv This Game of Games; Some Final Thoughts On The Browns' 1887 Player Sale http://tinyurl.com/k5unqc2
xxxvi Ibid
xxxvii This Game of Games; A Kind Of Farm Team – The St. Louis Whites, Part 2
http://tinyurl.com/mz86jol
xxxviii Morris, A Game of Inches, pp 8-9; Nemec, Beer & Whiskey; p. 146.
xxxix This Game of Games; The Fall of Von der A he: $67,000
http://tinyurl.com/qh73gop
xl This Game of Games; The Fall of Von der Ahe http://tinyurl.com/nk9nld9
xli Sporting Life, January 28, 1899 and New York Times, March 15, 1899.
xlii Sporting Life; April 1, 1899 and April 8, 1899.
Bibliography
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
Missouri Republican
St. Louis Daily Bulletin
The Sporting News
Sporting Life
Chicago Tribune
New York Times
New York Clipper
Spink, Al; The National Game
Cash, Jon David; Before They Were Cardinals
Achorn, Edward; The Summer of Beer & Whiskey
Nemec, David; The Beer & Whiskey League
Nemec, David (ed.); Major League Baseball Pioneers, 1871-1900, Volume 1 & 2
Seymour, Harold and Dorothy Seymour Mills; Baseball: The Early Years
Morris, Peter; A Game of Inches
Morris, Peter (ed.); Base Ball Pioneers, 1850-1870
Hetrich, J. Thomas; Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns
Goldstein, Warren; Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball
This Game of Games (thisgameofgames.blogspot.com; thisgameofgames.com)
Baseball-Reference (baseball-reference.com)
