ABOUT THE NEW YORK GOTHAMS
The Gothams were founded in 1883 during the heart of the baseball war between the rival Border Association and Century League. The Border circuit had a club in New York while the Federals did not. James Darrow was the club's original owner and convinced his friends and political cronies, Charles and Miles Bigsby, to refurbish their harness racing track into a baseball stadium. That the Bigsby Oval was located directly across the street from the home of the Border Association's New York Stars was the icing on the cake. Still, a club founded largely out of spite turned out to be a pretty good product on the field. Stumbling in their first two seasons, the Gothams found their footing and became one of the Century League's top teams for the balance of the 1880s. In the 90s, they took their winning ways into the newly founded FABL winning three pennants and three World Championships, including the very first one in 1893 (and following up in 1895 and '96). Though real success was harder to come by in the 20th century, by the late 1920s the Gothams were again in the pennant mix in the Federal Association.
TRIVIA: Bigsby Oval, the team's home park, was originally built as a harness-racing venue. When the Gothams became successful, the politically-connected Bigsby family sought and received permission to expand the eastern and western seating areas over Riverside Drive and Broadway, respectively, creating "tunnels" on the streets below in order to add seating capacity to a park originally built in 1876.
ABOUT THE NEW YORK STARS
The oldest team in New York, the Stars beat the Gothams into town by one year as the Border Association snuck one over on the Century League. Initially playing in the Bigsby Oval while the venue was empty, the arrival of the Gothams forced the Stars to move into a wooden park across Riverside Drive from the Oval - purposely putting the Stars as close to the Gothams as possible to further the effort to unseat the Century League. While the FABL agreement of 1892 ended the outright feud between the leagues, the Gothams-Stars feud continued to simmer. With the original Riverside Park destroyed by fire in 1905, the club moved two blocks south and built a bigger, concrete-and-steel structure that maintained their proximity to the Oval and was a key motivator in Miles Bigsby's civic shenanigans in shoehorning a 52000-seat rebuilt Oval by building over Broadway and Riverside Drive themselves. Aside from the ongoing battle with the Bigsby-owned Gothams, the Stars have had good success on the field, winning six pennant and five world titles in the first quarter of the 20th century while the Gothams were shut out over the same period.
ABOUT THE PHILADELPHIA KEYSTONES
The Philadelphia Keystones club is one of just two of the original Century League organizations to survive the tumultuous 19th century. Established in 1876 alongside the Chicago Chiefs, the-then Centennials were one of the best clubs in the Century League during that precursor circuit's 17 season run. Named in honor of the city's status as the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Centennials were renamed to their current Keystone moniker in 1884. The early club featured the game's best hitter in Zebulon Banks, who would establish a slew of career records (all eventually surpassed in the 20th century) and the one constant was owner Jefferson Edgerton. "Old Jeff" as he would come to be known was a young businessman when the team was born in 1876 - 50 years later he'd be the octogenarian face of baseball's Golden Jubilee and still sharp and in charge of the club's business operations.
ABOUT THE PHILADELPHIA SAILORS
The Border Association's Philadelphia entry, the Sailors earned their nickname thanks to the Civil War service of their founder, Victor Crary. Crary was graduated early from the U.S. Naval Academy in order to serve in the war and was assigned to the ironclad warship USS Patapsco. In memory of his fellow Navy veterans, Crary named his team the "Sailors" and when he convinced the city of Phialdelphia to help him build a concrete-and-steel ballpark for his team in the waning days of the First World War, he convinced them to name it the Philadelphia Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Stadium - but the fans ended up calling it Sailors Stadium. The team, created towards the end of the Border Association's run in 1889, won a pennant in its second season and was the fledgling Continental Association's top team in its early years, winning three pennants in five seasons. Alas, those days did not last and the team slowly sank to the bottom of the standings. Along the way, Victor Crary developed into a bit of an old crank to the delight of the city's newsmen who could always count on a quote from Crary even when the Sailors & Keystones were bad (which was often during the early 20th century). Some of his better musings were that Zebulon Banks was "an awful player," Keystones owner Jefferson Edgerton "fought for his namesake and friend Jeff Davis" (Edgerton had in fact served in the Union Army), and that the Keystones should leave the city as "everyone knows the Sailors embody the true spirit of Philadelphia."