Let's take a look at Ed Konetchy - the man who always seemed to be the best player on the worst teams. I've uploaded a bunch of these newspaper scans for free here: baseballreplay... #baseball #mlb #baseballhistory
The story of the rise and fall of the Cardinals from 1909-12 is pretty interesting. It was a case of Roger Bresnahan taking a very poor team and raising them to acceptability only to wind up feuding with the owner. That wasn't very unusual. The fact that the owner was Helen Hathaway Britton, first woman to own a major league team, certainly was different, as was the fact that, because of the contractual agreement to give him 10% of Cardinal profits, it became a matter of adjudication by the National League itself when he was summarily fired by Britton and then traded to the Chicago Cubs. The League actually declared him a free agent and he went ahead and negotiated a lucrative contract with the Cubs
My heart goes out to Harlond Clift. Suffered with the Browns for years. They traded him in 1943, and the Browns went to the World Series the next year.
A truly awful Orioles team had two Hall of Fame players near the peaks of their careers (Cal Ripken, Jr. and Eddie Murray)... and a comination of twenty-three minor-leaguers and washed-up veterans.
Amazing how awful the 1918 Braves were just four years after the Miracle Braves. Would be interesting to see how they declined from World Champs to near last place so quickly.
Lave Cross is an interesting situation. He was third baseman and manager for the first 38 games of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the worst MLB team ever. He was sent back to St. Louis by the teams' owners, after they had sent him to Cleveland to be their manager. It is believed that the fact that he managed for part of the Spiders season is the reason why he is not in the HOF. .292 BA, 2,651 H, 1,371 RBI. He was considered among the best 3rd basemen of his day, and held just about every fielding record when he retired.
