Lying on the ground are: John McGraw and Willie Keeler. Front row: “Kid” Bill Gleason, Joe Kelly, Ned Hanlon, Wilbert Robinson, Bill Hoffer, and Hughie Jennings. Second row: Walter Brody, Henry Reitz, John McMahon,
Frank Bowerman, and Artie Pool. Third row: Arthur Clarkson, George Hemming, George Carey and Bill Clark.
Courtesy of Ghosts of Baltimore – The Orioles and baseball go back a long way with the city of Baltimore. Before the current O’s arrived in 1954, there were earlier teams of the same name.
1894 Orioles flag
We came across an interesting article in The Baltimore Sun from August 15th, 1920 detailing the wild celebrations following the Orioles success in the 1894 pennant race. Below is the article.
The shades of night were falling fast in Baltimore on Tuesday, September 25, 1894, when a telegram was flashed from Cleveland to all corners of this land. There was nothing much to that telegram, merely the statement:
Baltimore, 14; Cleveland, 9.
And yet that little telegram had a meaning of its own. It brought sorrow and gloom to New York and Boston. It set the tongues of a million baseball fans wagging from northeast Maine to Southwest Texas; from Atlantic City to San Francisco.
That telegram set loose the vocal chords of tens of thousands of residents of this jolly old town–a vast, wonderful, heart-tickling cacophany [sic] of cheers, whistles, hurrahs and plain old Rebel Yells. That telegram had given Baltimore its place in the sun, had made this city the pride of the home-folk and the envy of every stranger without our doors.
That meant that the Orioles, Ned Hanlon’s own Orioles, had won the National League pennant–the first baseball pennant that ever had come to this town in the history of baseball.
…
Up at Ford’s Opera House, where the marionettes had reproduced, play for play, the game in Cleveland, the rooters simply acted liking whirling dervishes. The cheers and yells threatened to rock the theatre to its foundation stones. Bedlam broke all bounds when Treasurer Vonderhorst, of the Baltimore team, walked out upon the stage at the end of the game carrying the pennant the Orioles had won.
For several days the ultimate triumph of Hanlon’s men had been a certainty, and the pennant had been made for the big celebration.
Out in Cleveland, the Orioles were given an ovation as they drove through the streets from the ball grounds to their hotel. Boys ran after their carriages and the whole town acclaimed them.
The champions were like schoolboys. As they rode through the Cleveland streets they yelled:
Are we in it,
Yes we are,
Baltimore, Baltimore,
Rah! Rah! Rah!As the Orioles entered the lobby of The Hotel Hollenden they were mobbed by baseball bugs, all of whom told the victors how glad they were that Baltimore had won. The Orioles surrounded Hanlon, gave him three cheers and a tiger and then called upon him for a speech.
Those boys of 1894 had a great team, the greatest ever brought together on a diamond, but they knew it was Hanlon, Foxy Ned, who had led them on to fame. Not only had Hanlon made deals with other teams which made him out-Harum David Harum but he had kept his wonderful baseball machine steady all through the season.
Read more at Ghosts of Baltimore
Great team! Nice article. Photo appears to be the 1895 team, though, not 1894. Also, in the caption, the player identified as Artie Pool is likely to be the pitcher Arlie Pond [please insert Caddyshack joke here].