St. Louis Browns: Difference between revisions

[[File:Barney Pelty.jpg|thumb|180px|[[Barney Pelty]]]]

In their first season in St. Louis, the Browns finished second under manager [[Jimmy McAleer]], five games behind Philadelphia. This was mainly because Hedges and McAleer persuaded six Cardinals to jump to the Browns. They looked to become even more powerful in 1903 when Hedges signed [[San Francisco Giants|New York Giants]] ace [[Christy Mathewson]] to a deal that would have paid him almost four times what he was earning in New York. However, as part of the settlement that ended the war with the National League, Hedges and Mathewson tore up the contract. Years later, Hedges said that while he knew he was likely giving up a pennant by relinquishing Mathewson to the Giants, it was more important to bring peace to the game.<ref name=SABR/>

 

Although the Browns had only four winning seasons from 1902 to 1922, they were very popular at the gate during their first two decades in St. Louis. They trounced the Cardinals in attendance; in 1908, for instance, they attracted four times as many fans as the Cardinals.<ref name=SABR/> Pitcher [[Barney Pelty]] was a workhorse for the Browns, and a member of their starting rotation from 1904, when he pitched 31 [[complete game]]s and 301 [[inning]]s, through 1911.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{cite web|url=http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=1548&pid=19110 |publisher=bioproj.sabr.org |title=The Baseball Biography Project |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070421021705/http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&pid=19110&bid=1548 |archive-date=2007-04-21 }}</ref><ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=omTUOMzj5-0C&dq=barney+pelty&pg=PA22 ''Baseball in Saint Louis 1900-1925'' - Steve Steinberg<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> In [[1909 Major League Baseball season|1909]], the Browns rebuilt Sportsman's Park as the third concrete-and-steel park in the major leagues.