April 24, 1901, 125 years ago: The American League plays its 1st games. The National League had been playing this season's regular-season games since April 18, but the AL was now making its debut.
The AL had offered the NL a deal: Accept us as a full major league, and we will respect your contracts, and not take any of your players. The NL refused to accept them, and so, the AL "declared war." On January 27, Hugh Duffy "jumped" from the Boston Beaneaters to the Milwaukee Brewers. On February 8, Napoleon "Nap" Lajoie, Charles "Chick" Fraser and Bill Bernhard jumped from the Philadelphia Phillies to the Philadelphia Athletics.
On March 2, Jimmy Collins jumped from the Beaneaters to the Boston Americans. Sometime before March 11, John McGraw signed to manage, and play 3rd base, for an AL team with the same name as his now-defunct former NL team, the Baltimore Orioles. On March 19, Cy Young jumped from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Americans.
(Baseball-Reference.com says McGraw signed with the AL Orioles "Before 1901 Season." Nor does Wikipedia provide a definitive date. The reason we know it was before March 11, 1901 is that it has been established that, on that date, he signed Charlie Grant, a black player, and attempted to pass him off as a Cherokee Indian named Charlie Tokohoma. But, that day, the Orioles played a Spring Training game against the Chicago White Sox, whose owner, Charlie Comiskey, the AL's co-founder with League President Ban Johnson, and a former star 1st baseman for the team that became the Cardinals, recognized Grant, and told McGraw that he'd blow the whistle on him if he didn't dump Grant. McGraw guessed that Comiskey wasn't bluffing, which was probably true, and released Grant.)
The 1st AL game was played at South Side Park, at 38th Street and Princeton Avenue, in Chicago, about 4 blocks south of where the home team from that game would play for most of the 20th Century, and about 3 blocks south of where it plays now. The Chicago White Sox defeated the Cleveland Blues, 8-2. Attendance was listed as 9,000, at a ballpark that seated about 15,000.
The White Sox were managed by Clark Griffith, who was still an active pitcher. He had been an ace for the previous team known as the Chicago White Stockings, in the NL.
According to the account written many years later, in the visiting team's hometown newspaper, The Plain Dealer:
The date was April 24, in Chicago's White Sox park, when Ollie Pickering stepped to the plate for the Cleveland Blues. Pickering, an outfielder, hit the second pitch from Chicago White Sox right-hander Roy Patterson to center field. William Hoy, a deaf-mute who was cruelly nicknamed Dummy, caught the routine fly, and with that the American League was officially underway.
Hoy, whose batting, baserunning and fielding skills have led later observers to suggest that he should be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, was long erroneously credited with being the source for umpires using their left hands to call balls and their right hands to call strikes, because he couldn't hear their verbal calls. Pickering is correctly credited with coining the term "Texas leaguer," a looping hit that falls between the infielders and the outfielders.
The White Sox scored 2 runs in the 1st inning, and 5 in the 2nd, and coasted the rest of the way, and won the game on this Wednesday, 8-2.
The next day, the White Sox beat the Blues again, 7-3. Erve Beck of the Blues hit the AL's 1st home run. In 1902, the Blues acquired star 2nd baseman Napoleon Lajoie, and named him their manager. For the 1903 season, they changed their name to honor him: The Cleveland Naps.
He left after the 1914 season, when the World Series was won by the Boston Braves. They'd used the Native American nickname for only 3 seasons. So the Naps then changed their name to the Cleveland Indians, and used that name until 2021, then becoming the Cleveland Guardians. The stories that they'd been named the Indians after tribesmen living on the shore of Lake Erie, and that they'd been named after the 1st Native American player in the majors, former Cleveland Spiders star Louis Sockalexis, have been proven incorrect.
One other game was played on Thursday, April 25: The Detroit Tigers beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 14-13 at Bennett Park in Detroit. The Brewers led 7-0 after just 3 innings, and 13-4 going into the bottom of the 9th. But the Tigers scored 10 runs to win it. And they did it without the benefit of a home run. (This was the Dead Ball Era.)
In 1912, a new ballpark would open on the site of Bennett Park, named Navin Field. It would be expanded and renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.
The Brewers would move after just 1 season, becoming the St. Louis Browns in 1902, and later the new major league version of the Baltimore Orioles in 1954. A new minor-league team would take up the Brewers name, before making way for the Boston Braves to become the Milwaukee Braves in 1953. They moved to Atlanta in 1966, making possible a new AL Milwaukee Brewers in 1970.
On Friday, April 26:
* The Washington Senators beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-1 at Columbia Park in Philadelphia. The Senators became the Minnesota Twins in 1961. They were replaced by an expansion team with the Senators name that year, but that team also moved, becoming the Texas Rangers in 1972. The Athletics moved to Kansas City in 1955, to Oakland in 1968, and to Sacramento in 2025, and hope to move to Las Vegas in 2028.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Boston Americans, 10-6 at Oriole Park in Baltimore. The Americans would change their name to the Boston Red Sox in 1908. The Orioles would break up in 1902, and a new franchise was created in its place for the 1903 season: The New York Highlanders, who, in 1913, officially changed their name to what people had been calling them for a few years already: The New York Yankees. (Research by Yankee historian Marty Appel has proven that the New York franchise of 1903 onward is not the Baltimore franchise of 1901 and '02.) A new minor-league team would take up the Orioles name.
* The Tigers beat the Brewers, 6-5 at Bennett Park.
And there were 3 games played in the National League that day: The New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Superbas, 5-3 at the Polo Grounds in New York; the Boston Beaneaters beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-3 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia; and the Cincinnati Reds beat the Chicago Orphans, 8-7 in 12 innings at West Side Park in Chicago.
The Superbas became the Dodgers in 1911, changed their name to the Robins in honor of new manager Wilbert Robinson in 1914, and became the Dodgers again in 1932 after he was fired. They moved to Los Angeles in 1958. At the same time, the Giants moved to San Francisco.
The Beaneaters became the Braves in 1912, and, as I said, moved to Milwaukee in 1953, and to Atlanta in 1966. The former Chicago White Stockings had long been led by Adrian Constantine Anson, known as "Cap" for "captain," and "Pop" as he got older, and after his 1897 retirement, were known as "the Orphans, because they missed their Pop." They became the Cubs in 1903.
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