Before the Tigers: The End of an Era

In my final article of a three part series, I take a look at the final season of the Detroit Wolverines.

Heading into the 1888 National League season, the Detroit Wolverines had a good chance to repeat as NL pennant winners and World Series champions. With a core group consisting of some of the best players in the game returning, there was no reason the Wolverines couldn’t have sat on top of the National League once again.

It didn’t happen.

No one at the start of the season would have thought that Bill Watkins wouldn’t finish the year as manager. No one would have told you with a straight face that Larry Twitchell and Count Campau would be starters for the defending champs. And you’d be laughed at if you said that president Fredrick Stearns would fold the team at the end of the season.

But that did happen.

The trouble actually all started when Stearns purchased the ‘Big Four’: Dan Brouthers, Hardy Richardson, Jack Rowe, and Deacon White, from Buffalo after the 1885 season. In order to pay for their bulky salaries, Stearns was banking on large crowds to watch his team full of stars, both at home and on the road, where he was entitled to 30% portion of the gate receipts as the visitors.

This plan enraged many of the other National League owners, except for Chicago owner Al Spalding, who supported Stearns’ thinking. The outburst was led by Boston president Arthur Soden, who in turn proposed that the visiting teams receive a flat rate of 100 dollars for road games, regardless of the attendance. If these terms were not agreed upon, Soden threatened, the four eastern teams (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington) would all leave the NL to join the rival American Association.

National League president Nicolas E. Young finally intervened and forced all members of the NL to agree on a compromise. Young mandated that all visiting teams would be given $125 by the host team from the gate receipts. Stearns decided to test if the National League was serious about the new policy and made his move, applying for membership in the AA. Young bit on Stearns’ bluff, not wanting to lose an upstart team to a rival, and reinstituted the 30 percent rule for the 1886 season until a better plan could be put in place.

However, after the 1886 season, manager Bill Watkins decided maybe joining the AA wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. He went to a meeting of the AA owners and put the possibility of the Wolverines joining the Association out there, which was greeted with a warm response by the other AA owners. Watkins pitched the idea to Stearns, who told Watkins he’d get back to him.

Why would Stearns make the leap from the NL to the AA? The AA could provide him with better income, with Sunday baseball and alcohol sales at the park among other things. For Detroit, a marginal sized major league city, the reward of joining the AA could have been huge but Stearns decided against it. Being in the National League was a prestige thing and plus, he told Watkins, Young had bitten on their bluff and met all of their demands.

After the 1887 season, in which the team won the World Series, the team looked in good shape. Stearns, despite all of the high salaries he was paying, turned a reasonable profit. But, the 1888 season was everything short of a disaster. They had a one-game lead in the standings in late July until it started to fall apart. Sam Thompson got hurt and the team went on a 12-game losing streak. Attendance was down on the road, and more importantly, at home. They finished fifth in the National League, 17 games behind the pennant winning New York Giants.

Stearns’ master plan had crashed smack into the center field fence. He lost a considerable amount of money in 1888, despite still raking in 30 percent of the gates on the road. Star players began to moan about not receiving their full paychecks and he lost his interest. Stearns began to cut his losses, auctioning off his best players to the highest bidder before finally folding, walking away from the game where he had been king just a year before.

Veteran catcher Charlie Bennett, one of the two players to play every season with Detroit, was sold to the Boston Beaneaters. The other player, Ned Hanlon, was sold to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. Sluggers Dan Brouthers and Hardy Richardson joined Bennett in Boston while outfielder Sam Thompson was sold to Philadelphia, where he would continue his path to Cooperstown. Deacon White was originally sold to Boston, but the sale was nullified and he too went to Pittsburgh, along with ‘Big Four’ member Jack Rowe.

The Wolverines tenure in the National League was like a roller-coaster. They had a very interesting existence, despite only living for seven years. Thirteen long years passed by before the upstart American League awarded the Motor City another baseball team, the Tigers in 1901. The Tigers have now been in existence for over a century, leaving the Wolverines as a long afterthought of Detroit’s baseball past.