American Baseball Association. Est. 1901.

[Syt]

ALLEGHENY EXAMINER

Wednesday, January 2nd, 1901

The craze of Baseball holds our nation firm in its grip, and it will be fuelled further with the latest reports of a new professional league being set up in the east: the American Baseball Association is scheduled to begin play in April!

Play will be organized in two leagues, Union and Federal:

The teams will face a gruelling schedule of 162 games until Fall, after which the two league leaders will face off for the World Title in a series of best of nine.





The owners of the teams have already made clear that they will run a tight ship. There will be no contract arbitrations, a demand made by some malcontents among the prospective professional players. Furthermore, the players will not be able to refuse being sent to his Major League's minor affiliate. Nevertheless, the ABA will be the first Major League to allow negro athletes in their ranks.

Speaking of minors - the old Bald Eagle Championship have affiliated themselves with the ABA, bringing the experience of such well known teams as the Madison Browns, Scottsdale Harvesters and the Chester Giants.

We will follow the league with great interest and keep you up to date with news from our own team, the Pittsburgh Red Caps who have recently hired local talent Alex Heller as their general manager.

In our next edition we will take a look at the Red Caps' roster and other prospects in the league before the action commences.

Friday, January 4th, 1901

Today we take a closer look at the Pittsburgh Red Caps lineup for the upcoming ABA season.

Pitching Staff


The Red Caps pitching rotation is not too strong, it appears. From left to right we have:
Ken Hartman, an intelligent 25 year righty, from Orford, N.H.
José Morán, lefty, 29, from Jacksonville, NC.
Willie Sherman, right handed 29 years old hailing from Methuen, MA.
Clyde Turner, born in Queens, NY. The eager right hander is 23.
Jack Helton will act as reliever. The 32 year old right hander comes from Mt. Prospect, IL.
Closer will be Earl Case from Rockledge, FL. The experienced righty is 32.

The staff will not finish among the best, so it will be the job of the offense to win the games. No prospects are coming up in the minors, either, so management will keep an eye out on the market for free agents.

Field Staff


Catcher: Luke Doyle, a left hand batting 29 year old New Yorker has good chances to be an above average fielder.


1st Base: Bartolo Ramos, 33, LHB from Cortland West, NY. Ramos was very impressive during the try outs and will act as Red Caps cleanup hitter.


2nd Base: John Swain from Rialto, CA. The 33 year old may well prove to be a weak spot in the field squad.


3rd Base: Ángel Vázquez, 25, from Las Vegas, NV. A decent baseman, Vázquez will bat 8th.


Short Stop: From New York hails Tom Hawkins, 27 year old right hander. Many believe he will leave a mark in the league. He will bat 3rd.


Left Field: Shigochiyo Ozaki is certainly the most exotic of the Pittsburgh team players. The Japanese has impressed scouts playing the minors and was eagerly sought out by many owners, but the Red Caps were the lucky ones to sign the 20 year old switch hitter.


Right Field: native Pennsylvanian (Throop) George Krause, 20, is another great prospect that should go places. We look forward to seeing the lefty lead the batting lineup.


Center Field: Ignacio Maldonado, 29 year old right hander from Renton, WA. Another great looking chap that will wow the Pittsburgh kranks.

On the minors team, interesting prospects are being grown on the pitching staff. The Stockton Divers have several relievers that might make it big in the majors some time: Christensen, Harper, Haynes, and McClendon. Catcher Lopez shows promise but will need more polishing.

[Viking]

So who desegregated baseball?

[Syt]

Who cares? I'm too lazy to reset the black players to caucasian all the time.

[Syt]

The Red Caps have started well into their first three game series against the Brookly Brawlers, leading 2-0. On game one Ken Hartman shut out the Brawlers completely, while batting in a run. Tom Hawkins scored a 2 Run Homer to seal the win. Game two ended 2-4 in favor of Pittsburgh. Krause hit a triple, Ozaki batted in two.

Unfortunately, Ozaki injured himself in the game:

He will be replaced by José Arroyo from Beaverton, OR, in the upcoming games.

[Syt]

The Pittsburgh Red Caps proved yesterday that they do have fighting spirit in them!

After four straight losses that put them at 2-4 - the latest loss a 9-0 shutdown at home against the Bronx Sluggers - they bounced back and won 4-3 against the Baltimore Beefeaters.

It can be claimed that this was due to Vazquez' lucky home run that scored three. The hitting leaves much to be desired however, as does the pitching by Willis Sherman.

[Syt]

The Red Caps won in Baltimore, putting them at 5-5 and a .500 win rate. However, Clyde Turner's shutout of the Beefeaters was overshadowed by Ramos' injury. The news arrived shortly before injuared Japanese marvel Ozaki announced he would require an additional week for recovery.

[Syt]

Two weeks into the season, let's take a look around the ABA.

In the Federal League the Bronx Sluggers are dominating. They are leading the Union League in battinge average and slugging (.338/.384) as well as in ERA (2.25).

Batting leader for the moment is Jorge Rodriguez, at an impressive .463. He has hit in 14 consecutive hits and is looking to expand this streak.


In the Union League the Louisville Lightning lead the pack, though their stats are less impressive than those of the Sluggers (batting .276, slugging .378).

[Sophie Scholl]

   Niucely done so far.  I await further installments.  Also:  Let's go Cleveland!  Good Hod, even in a made up league my chosen teams suck!

[Eddie Teach]

He has hit in 14 consecutive hits

That is indeed an impressive streak.

[Syt]

He has hit in 14 consecutive hits

That is indeed an impressive streak.

The streak ended the following game.

I will probably run month end reports (ack, sounds like at work ) in future.

[sbr]

I don't have much to say yet, but I will be following.

[Eddie Teach]

The chances of a .400 hitter getting 14 consecutive hits are 1/300000. The chances of a .300 hitter doing it are 1 in 25 million. In other words, I think you meant to say consecutive games.

[Syt]

The chances of a .400 hitter getting 14 consecutive hits are 1/300000. The chances of a .300 hitter doing it are 1 in 25 million. In other words, I think you meant to say consecutive games.

Yes. I did.

[Syt]

ALLEGHENY EXAMINER

Wednesday, May 1st, 1901

By request of many readers with limited time who have asked repeatedly we supplement our paper with a monthly baseball review, namely of the American Baseball Association, this is the first PITTSBURGH BASEBALL MONTHLY presented to you, our esteemed audience.

The first month of play in Federal and Union League has concluded, and what a month it was! Manyfold were the voices that predicted that the leagues would fold within a week. A league that allowed Blacks, Hispanics, even prospects from overseas into their ranks? The fears of riots at the sight of whites competing against other races have proven unfounded, fortunately.

Similarly, including the Atlanta Rebels, founded by a Confederate veterane proved to not be as volatile as feared, even though negroes occasionally get heckled by the Atlanta crowds.

How did our Red Caps do? Despite their bad luck with injuries (Ramos out for 4 months, Ozaki missing three weeks, Maldonado gone for a week) it's this commenter's opinion that they did very well.

Let's look at the Federal and Union League standings:

After Ozaki's return to the team the Red Caps have not lost a single game, even though the hot shot Japanese disappointed with a .150 batting average. Thanks to his patience he at least kept up his OBP, at .350, being awarded 11 bases on ball in 12 games.

As predicted before the season, Hawkins is doing quite well for himself. Rather unexpectedly, however, is the performance of the Pittsburgh pitchers.

Their combined ERA is 2.6, which ranks them 3rd in the Federal League, with one home run allowed. Hartman's 18 strikes rank him second in the FL behind Juan Sánchez of Cleveland. Luke Doyle leads the RBI lists for the ABA, tied in first with the Cyclopes' Juan Rodríguez. John Swain has scored in each of the last six games, a streak that the Pittsburgh fans would surely want to see continued.

The Red Caps have positive records against all teams so far, except Cincinnati (0-3), the Bronx (0-3) and Cleveland (1-2).

The FL is dominated by the Bronx Sluggers so far.

Tom Stephens and Chris Dickerson are ranked 1st and 3rd respectively in batting average (.404 and .386) at this point. Additionally, Stephens was voted batter of the month.


Bronx pitchers Cliff Gilbert (starter) and Domingo Martínez (reliever) are similar set 1 and 3 for ERA at .068 and 1.52. Cliff Gilbert, a young hopeful was honored as FL rookie of the month.


Carl Campbell was ranked #2 in ERAs and won the honor of FL pitcher of the month. The 27-year-old is in the prime of his career and pitching like he intends to stay around baseball for quite some time to come. He threw 37.2 innings over 15 relief appearances and collected a 7-0 record with 17 strikeouts and 2 saves while etching his 1.19 ERA.

Trailing the league are the Chicago Challengers at 7-22 and an ongoing six game losing streak.

General manager Will Smith was not available for comment.

Matters are tighter in the Union League. The St. Louis Knickerbockers have a half game lead on the Blues and only 8.5 on last ranked Washington and Manhattan.


Eric White of the Louisville Lightning leads in batting with .379. His efforts got him voted UL batter of the month. He hit for 1 homer, batted in 14 runs and scored himself 8 times.


Although tied for the last spot, Washington Wonder did win one honor: their Juan Segura was voted rookie of the month. The center fielder hit for .292, batted in 10 and scored 9 runs.


Best UL pitcher of the hour is Orlando Jiménez. The 26-year-old Blues  racked up an impressive 5-2 won-lost record in 7 starts. This month he fanned 10 batters in 66 innings and compiled a 1.36 ERA.

[Syt]

The final standings of the regular season:


Yes. The Bronx vs. Philly in the Championship series. Heh.

The Pittsburgh season leaders:

George Krause set a record with hitting in 26 consecutive games. Injuries plagued the Red Caps. At the end of the season Turner (SP) is still out for weeks, Hartman (SP) is out till February or March, and Cooper (RF) two months more than that, even.

For the new season there shouldn't be many roster changes. There were a few trades during the season, but those were usually for young or talented players. Maybe free agency will turn up something interesting.