This week’s trivia challenge is brought to you by Mike Schilling!
In order: Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Baltimore.
This is an exhaustive list. Tied cities are listed in alphabetical order.
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I only see two possibilities for tie rankings based on the rule: (Chicago and Cleveland) and (Boston and Washington). Not clear whether those ties actually exist, though.
All the cities have all 4 major professional sports franchises except Milwaukee (MLB and NBA only) and Baltimore (MLB and NFL only). So I’m guessing it’s baseball. But after that I’ve got nothing yet.
I assume it has to do with baseball because its Mike.
Baltimore may not have an NBA team now, but it once featured both the Baltimore Bullets and the Baltimore Clippers.
Also, I see that with a 2012-2013 record of 24-58, Cleveland only barely qualifies as having an NBA-caliber team.
Nit pick:
The Baltimore Clippers never played in the NBA. By the time they joined, they were already known as the Bullets. They folded in 1954.
The second incarnation of the Bullets are now known as the Washington Wizards.
I’ll try this as a first guess to get things going: Least amount of pennants per years in MLB.
oh wait… that would not be an appropriate answer if this is an exhaustive list.
Let’s see:
Detroit – according to Moe Szyslak, them people is living in “Mad Max” times
Chicago – gangster problems
Cleveland – location of secondary Hellmouth
Boston – drunk Irishmen everywhere, caterwauling “Danny Boy” at every opportunity
Washington DC – a rampaging Marion Barry on the loose
Philadelphia – secretive government time-travel experiment location; setting of maudlin BRUUUUCE song
Milwaukee – Squiggy, drunk on “The Beast” – ’nuff said
Baltimore – Chris & Snoop might drop my body in a ‘vacant’
“Cities pop culture has told me I would not want to live in?”
Cities who have had different major league franchises with the same name.
Nope. New York would be there (Giants)
After thinking about it in the back of my mind all morning in court, my guess will be “Cities whose MLB teams had performance leaders of some kind (e.g., Cy Young award winners, Rookies of the Year) whose contracts were subsequently gobbled up not at all unlike Pac-Man power-up dots by the New York Yankees” ranked by the number of times this has happened to them.
It would’tbe exhaustive then… Oakland would need to be there.
I’ll go with baseball teams that have lost playoff series on walk off HRs… Perhaps even walkoff HRs in extra innings.
Number of teams with animal names.
That wouldn’t be an exhaustive list, though.
The order of founding of the original franchises in the American League.
Getting close.
That had a team leave and a new team come in?
Or, more accurately, which had interruptions in team hosting?
Tuesday hint:
These are indeed the cities in which the 1901 American League had franchises.
The Detroit Tigers have been the Detroit Tigers from their beginnings in 1894.
The Chicago White Stockings officially became the Chicago White Sox in 1903.
The Cleveland Bluebirds became the Cleveland Indians in 1915.
The Boston Americans became the Boston Red Sox in 1908.
The Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins in 1960.
The Philadelphia Athletics became the Kansas City Athletics in 1955, and has been the Oakland Athletics since 1968.
The Milwaukee Brewers of 1901 became the St. Louis Browns of 1902, and has been known as the Baltimore Orioles since 1953.
The Baltimore Orioles of 1901 became the New York Highlanders in 1903 and has been the New York Yankees (ptui!) since 1913.
I can’t see a pattern here that fits the prescribed order. Nor can I find any such pattern in games played, games won, hall of famers, players on the roster, runs, at-bats, batting average, homers, ERA, attendance, pennant or World Series wins, or longevity of tenancy in ballparks for these teams in any of their various incarnations over the years. So there must be something else going on here, which is related to the city rather than the franchise.
Jealousy is so, so ugly…
Anyway, the Yankees don’t even acknowledge their Baltimore roots. Any Yankee media guide gives the birth of the team as 1903.
Wait… I-95 is what, a mile from Yankee Stadium, isn’t it?
LOL 0.99 miles up the Major Deegan Expressway, to be precise.
During the 1902 season, the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds owners purchased a controlling interest in the Orioles and raided it for its best players, including player-manager and former Oriole minority owner John McGraw. The AL seized control of the team and sold it to new ownership, who moved it to New York. As a result, even though they were technically the same franchise, the 1902 and 1903 teams had almost nothing in common.
Build dates of their stadiums?
Seems appropriate: today, April 22, marks the anniversary in 1876 of the first ever game of the National League. The Boston Red Caps defeated the Philadelphia Athletics 6-5. WP: Joe Borden, who is also the first professional pitcher to ever throw a no-hitter.
The Red Caps were the same team now known as the Atlanta Braves. The Athletics were expelled from the league at the end of the year for refusing to make a required road trip out west (“west” meaning Chicago and St. Louis) and disappeared. They were not related to the much later Philadelphia Athletics of the American League.
No? I thought they moved to KC in ’55 and Oakland in ’68. But you say it ain’t so. The 1876 A’s broke up and what became the 1901 Athletics were a new organization that adopted the familiar name?
What MikeSchilling was saying was the Philadelphia Athletics of the NL did not simply jump ship and join the AL. They were two distinct and unrelated franchises. The AL incarnation is indeed now playing in Oakland.
Yes. Many of the original AL franchises adopted names that had previously been used by NL teams in their cities, e.g. the Boston Red Caps later became the Red Stockings before settling on the Braves, and so the new AL team called themselves the Red Sox. Likewise the Cubs had previously been the White Stockings, and there had been a 19th-Century NL team called the Washington Senators.
And, more recently
* There had been a Pacific Coast League team called the Los Angeles Angels from 1903-1957, when they vacated town because of the Dodgers’ move west. The AL franchise created in 1961 took the name “Los Angeles Angels”.
* When the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee in 1970, they adopted the name Brewers, because that’s the traditional name for Milwaukee teams.
The Orioles are another example. In the NHL, both iterations of the teams in Ottawa were called the Senators.
Teams containing people stabbed by Ray Lewis.
And healed by Tim Tebow.
Additional hint: the only tie is Chicago and Cleveland.
Wednesday hint: The AL became a major league in 1901, but its history as a minor league goes back almost a decade before that. (Before 1900 it was called the Western League.)
Pre-merger victories of the original 8 AL teams?
I don’t think it’s total wins because Boston was late to the game (1900). Perhaps it’s win percentage pre-merger.
Good point. But it can’t be win percentage pre-merger, because Philadelphia and Boston would be higher on the list in that case.
Merger?
Hmm, the order doesn’t seem to correlate with team founding or even when the teams joined the Western League (it looks like Boston was one of the last few teams to be created) or number of pre-1901 pennants.
Years an original 8 AL franchise played in those cities? Detroit is the only team to have both been founded as a Western League franchise and to have never moved. Chicago and Cleveland, so far as I can tell, both moved to their respective cities in 1900 and never moved again. Boston was an expansion franchise in 1901 and has never moved. The DC franchise stayed in DC from 1901 – 1955, so 54 years. The Philadelphia Athletics stayed there from 1901-1954, so 53 years. The original incarnation of the Milwaukee franchise was found in 1894, and moved to St. Louis in 1903, so 9 years, and the Baltimore franchise moved to New York after 2 years.
We have a winner! (The dates are a bit off, but close enough.)
Detroit: 1894-present (120 years)
Chicago and Cleveland: 1900-present: (114 years)
Boston: 1901-present: (113 years)
Washington DC: 1901-1960 (60 years)
Philadelphia: 1901-1954 (54 years)
Milwaukee: 1894-1901 (8 years)
Baltimore: 1901-1902 (2 years)
1) Congrats to Mark Thompson.
2) I realize we aren’t keeping score, but I think I deserve an assist.
That’s going to be up to Mike Schilling to rule on since he was the triviamaster this week.
(Dan Aykroyd as Tom Snyder): Fair enough, sir
Definitely assist-worthy.
You are a gentleman and a scholar.