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BURT SOLOMON has been a staff correspondent for the National Journal since 1985, where he has covered the White House, lobbying, and ideas. A native of Baltimore and a lifelong Orioles fan, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

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In the 1890s, the legendary Baltimore Orioles of the National League [sic] under the tutelage of manager Ned Hanlon, perfected a style of play known as "scientific baseball," featuring such innovations as the sacrifice bunt, the hit- and-run, the squeeze play, and the infamous Baltimore chop. Its best hitter, Wee Willie Keeler, had the motto "keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't"--which he did. He and his colorful teammates, fierce third-baseman John McGraw, avuncular catcher Wibert Robinson, and heartthrob center fielder Joe Kelly, won three straight pennants from 1894 to 1896. But the Orioles were swept up and ultimately destroyed in a business intrigue involving the political machines of three large cities and collusion with the ambitious men who ran the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. Burt Solomon narrates the rise and fall of this colorful franchise as a cautionary tale of greed and overreaching that speaks volumes as well about the enterprise of baseball a century later.

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, the legendary Baltimore Orioles of the National League [sic] under the tutelage of manager Ned Hanlon, perfected a style of play known as "scientific baseball," featuring such innovations as the sacrifice bunt, the hit- and-run, the squeeze play, and the infamous Baltimore chop. Its best hitter, Wee Willie Keeler, had the motto "keep your eye clear and hit 'em where they ain't"--which he did. He and his colorful teammates, fierce third-baseman John McGraw, avuncular catcher Wibert Robinson, and heartthrob center fielder Joe Kelly, won three straight pennants from 1894 to 1896. But the Orioles were swept up and ultimately destroyed in a business intrigue involving the political machines of three large cities and collusion with the ambitious men who ran the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. Burt Solomon narrates the rise and fall of this colorful franchise as a cautionary tale of greed and overreaching that speaks volumes as well about the enterprise of baseball a century later.

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Where They Ain't

Main Street Books

Chapter One

The Eutaw House was already past its prime. The lazy southern charm that had so enchanted Charles Dickens and Henry Clay and Ulysses S. Grant (while he was still a general) and had enticed Mary Todd Lincoln to stop off for a light meal on her way to New York after her husband was killed had become a little seedy. Maybe that was why the visiting ballclubs could afford it.

The rooms upstairs, moderately priced at $2.50 to $4.50 a night, each had a wooden bed, a straight-backed chair, and a marble-topped dresser with a washstand, but no private bath.

The six-story hotel of yellow brick was ponderous in its presence at the corner of Eutaw and Baltimore streets. Nothing stood taller on Baltimore's skyline than the steeples, and the hotel commanded a view of the bustling harbor a half-dozen blocks to the southeast and, beyond, of Federal Hill, which controlled the entrance to the Inner Harbor and thus to the heart of the city. Around the hotel, a jumble of horsecarts and drays jammed the streets. In the daytime the streets were always noisy - the shouts of humans and the snorts of animals and, more every day, the squeal of metal.

Cranks crammed the lobby and even the corridors of the Eutaw House on this cloudy April morning. They came to gaze with awe upon the New York Giants. They were giants. Amos Rusie measured six-foot-one and 210 pounds. Roger Connor, the aging first baseman, was two inches miler and ten pounds heavier and had hit more home runs as a ballplayer than anyone ever had. Duke Farrell, the catcher just acquired from the Washington Senators, was six-two. Jouett Meekin, whose pitching almost rivaled Rusie's, was six-one. Except for Yale Murphy, the tiny new shortstop, the smallest man on the team was Johnny Ward, the second baseman and manager, who was a lithe, dapper five-nine.

He and his bigger boys had arrived at Camden Station the previous evening. They had gone immediately to the Eutaw House, for a good night's rest before the opening game of the 'ninety-four season. Johnny Ward paid for a shave and sauntered off to find Ned Hanlon and Harry von der Horst. Ward and Hanlon, old comrades from the Brotherhood, now notables in the League they had battled, good-naturedly wished each other misfortune for the three games to come.

"The Southern trip benefited the Baltimores, but we are still with them," Johnny Ward told the scribes who had gathered, pencils in hand. "What do we expect to do in this series? Well, we will be satisfied with two games, and let you down easy." He had really expected, it was reported afterward, to win all three.

Many of the sporting pundits favored the Giants to take the 'ninety-four pennant. The Orioles were known to be considerably improved, possibly enough to finish fifth or sixth in the twelve-team League.

The men from both teams fraternized in the crowded lobby and rocked in the oversized chairs. By late morning they had donned their uniforms, in anticipation of the one o'clock parade. The Maryland Naval Reserve Band had been playing since ten. Outside the Eutaw House, five thousand Baltimoreans buzzed around the forty open carriages. The musicians, packed uncomfortably onto a barge, played popular tunes as small black boys danced.

In bad times and in good times, Baltimore loved its parades. Sauerwald's Band and Drum Corps rode at the head in a six-horse wagon. After the carriage of newspapermen, Ned Hanlon and Johnny Ward shared a barouche, its driver at the reins on the high front seat. The two catchers, Wilbert Robinson of Baltimore and Duke Farrell of the Giants, occupied the next carriage, with a pair of Orioles and a pair of Giants in each carriage behind. Then came the personages of every description - the politicians and the men of affairs who were only too happy to associate themselves with the city's finest sportsmen.

The parade took an intricate circuit of the principal avenues, from Eutaw street to Lombard to Sharp to Camden to Charles to Pratt and so on, past the harbor. How pretty the city looked, even as the sun played hide-and-seek. The iron-fronted buildings glistened. All the cornices and ornamental molding were no fancier than the day deserved. Even the plainest of the gray-faced buildings looked revived when they were swathed in orange and black bunting. (Nobody before Hanlon had thought to identify the ballclub with the colors of the Baltimore oriole.) Ladies waved from arched windows on the upper stories of the finest commercial establishments. On the crowded brick sidewalks, throngs of people cheered the players as they passed - the businessmen in their silk hats and cravats, the street brats who darted from lamppost to lamppost, even the matrons with their parasols and fruited hats. The opposing buildings lining the narrow streets blurred the noise into a din.

At the harbor the tugboats tooted their good wishes. The carriages rattled over the cobblestones, as the parade passed saloons and social clubs, coal dealers and grand hotels, hosiery shops and toy stores. The city's lethargic pace had quickened.

The parade wound back again to Charles street and turned north along the spine of the city. Charles street was too narrow for such an elegant thoroughfare. The three-story buildings bore down on one another; even in early afternoon they blocked out the sun. Yet how glorious an avenue it was, home to jewelers and importers and the city's most eminent clothiers. Men lifted their derbies from their heads and shouted as the carriages rolled by. The parade passed the sixty-five-year-old grand marble shaft that was the nation's original Washington Monument. (The obelisk in the nation's capital, thirty-some miles away, was less than ten years old.) The ballplayers rolled by the city's loveliest residences, its most elaborate churches, and felt at home.

Beyond North avenue, Charles street widened. Scattered houses and fruit trees bordered the drowsy, dusty road. Even there, rooters lined the route and cheered the rebirth of baseball.

Dozens and scores and hundreds of cranks followed the parade all the way to Union Park. Electric streetcars had recently supplanted the old horse-drawn cars, and all of the extra streetcars that had been put on along the York road, a block east of Union Park, were filled to overflowing. Many a venturesome crank risked life and limb to hang by a strap from the doorway, but the nickels kept rolling into the till.

Others came by cable car or by horse-drawn conveyance of every class and description. The livery stables had done a lively business in hiring out rigs. When the carriage yard beside Union Park filled up, nearby residents made some money by using front yards as impromptu stables. Safety bicycles, all the rage with their low wheels and air-filled tires, swooshed along the streets, seeking out the slot rails the cable cars used. The bicycle racks beyond the left-field fence, along Barclay street, found their purpose.

The crowd had swelled around the ticket windows in front of Union Park, a ballpark that looked every bit as unprepossessing as the residential neighborhood in which it sat, with brick row houses on all sides. The front of it was a broad wooden wall twelve feet high, with ornamental lettering, opposite vendors' stands that the crowd swallowed up.

The game was set for four o'clock, but by three the management ceased...