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League Park Timeline

Cleveland Indians/League Park Timeline

1891: Cleveland Spiders ace Cy Young wins the home opener at the newly christened League Park, thumping Cincinnati 12-3 before 9,000 fans.

1892: Cleveland won its first ever championship by taking first place in the second half of the season.

1893: Cleveland wins in a forfeit at League Park when Baltimore catcher Wilbert Robinson refused to return the ball to pitcher Kirtley Baker, reasoning it was too dark to continue.

1894 Cy Young goes 26-21 for the Cleveland Spiders.

1895: Cleveland Spiders lead-off hitter and left-fielder Jesse Burkett a.k.a. “The Crab” hits for a scorching .423.

1896: Cleveland Spiders finish the season with a 80-48 record and meet the Baltimore Orioles in the Temple Cup Series for the second year in a row, only to be swept in four straight.

1897: Louis Francis “Chief” Sockalexis, a Penobscot Indian , joins the Cleveland Spiders and smacks home runs in his first two at-bats, finishing the season with a .338 average

1898: On June 19th, The Cleveland Spiders played Sunday baseball at Euclid Beach Park  in Collinwood, 9 miles east  of Cleveland in order to elude the league’s Blue Laws (also known as Sunday laws). After the Spiders took a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the 8th inning, the Collinwood police arrived on the scene to arrest the entire Cleveland team for participating in Sunday baseball.

1899: The Cleveland Spiders (on September 16) lose to the Washington Senators at Boundary Field in Washington D.C., making it the Spiders 24th consecutive loss, a National League record.

1900: The Grand Rapids Rustlers of the Western League (founded in Michigan in 1894) moved to Cleveland in 1900 and was named the Cleveland Lake Shores, a minor league team.

1901 The Cleveland Bluebirds (or Blues) their first season in the majors, started with a woeful 4-16 record.

1902: The Cleveland Bluebirds change their name to the Cleveland Bronchos (or Broncos).

1903: The Cleveland Bronchos change their name to the “Naps’’ in honor of  Napoléon “Nap” Lajoie

1904: Cleveland Naps led the American League with a.260 batting average and 647 runs scored, while finishing fourth, 7.5 games out of first place.

1905: Bedford, Ohio native Elmer Flick won a batting title with the Cleveland Naps , hitting .308, the lowest average awarded a batting title recipient until Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox hit .301 in 1968, the year of the pitcher.

1906: The Cleveland Naps stellar pitching staff consisted of three 20 game winners: Bob Rhoads (22-10) Addie Joss (21-9) and Otto Hess (20-17).

1907: Detroit Tigers manager Hughie Jennings offered Ty Cobb to the Cleveland Naps in exchange for outfielder Elmer Flick. Cleveland owner Charles Somers considered the troublesome Cobb to be too great of a risk, and declined the trade offer.

1908: Cleveland’s own Addie Joss tossed a 74-pitch perfect game on October 2, over future Hall of Fame pitcher Ed Walsh of the Chicago White Sox.

1909: The Cleveland Naps acquire their former pitching ace, Cy Young, 42, who returned to Cleveland after having spent the eight previous seasons with the Boston Americans/Red Sox. Young won 19 games for the Naps in 1909.

1910: Before the start of the season, League Park underwent a facelift. The wooden grandstands were replaced by steel and concrete.

1911: League Park hosted the first all-star game–a benefit game for the family of Cleveland pitcher Addie Joss who had died of meningitis a few months earlier

1912: Napoleon Lajoie was honored with a “Lajoie Day” at League Park on June 4th and was presented with 1,000 silver dollars “set in a huge floral horseshoe” that took four men to carry.

1913: The Cleveland Naps finished in third place; they led the the majors with 208 sacrifices and shortstop Ray Chapman won the first of three sacrifice hit titles with 45.

1914: On September 27, Nap Lajoie becomes the first Cleveland Naps (Indians) player to reach the exclusive 3,000 hit mark.

1915: Based on the results from a newspaper contest, the new name for the Cleveland club (with Nap  Lajoie no longer with the team) was “Indians,”  a name selected (at least partly) in recognition of the legendary Louis Francis Sockalexis, the first Native American to play professional baseball.

1916: Charles Somers sold the Cleveland Indians on February 21 to a group headed by James C. “Sunny Jim’’ Dunn, a railroad contractor, for $500,000. League Park would be renamed Dunn Field

1917: 21,000 crammed into Dunn Field (League Park) on Opening Day against the Detroit Tigers, the largest crowd in the city’s history.

1918: Stan Coveleski on May 24th pitched a 19-inning complete game, leading the Tribe to a 3-2 win over the New York Yankees at the Polo Grounds in New York.

1919: Tris Speaker became the Cleveland Indians player/manager on July 19 after manager Leo Fohl resigned over a dispute between himself and Speaker (his assistant) over which pitcher would face Babe Ruth with the bases loaded at League Park.  Fohl settled on Fred (Fritz) Coumbe and the Bambino slammed his slow curve over the right-field wall for a majestic grand slam.

1920: The Cleveland Indians , their 20th season in club history, win their first World Series title in the history of the franchise, beating the Brooklyn Robins (Dodgers) five games to two.

1921: The Cleveland Indians rolled out new uniforms, replacing the letter “ C” on their chest with the words: “World Champions” in recognition of winning the 1920 World Series.

1922: Outfielder Jack Graney retired after the 1922 season, having played his entire career with the Cleveland Indians; and nine years later became the radio voice of the Cleveland Indians at WHK.

1923: The Cleveland Indians right-handed pitcher and native Clevelander George Uhle  led the American League in victories (26), complete games (30), and innings pitched (357 2/3) as the Tribe ended the season in third place behind New York and Detroit.

1924: Pitcher Stan Coveleski was traded to the Washington Senators on December 12 for pitcher Byron Speece and outfielder Carr Smith.

1925: Cleveland Indians player/manger Tris Speaker belted a home run on Opening Day and went on to have a spectacular season, compiling a .389 average, his best season of his 22-year major league career.

1926: The Cleveland Indians the season in second place, three games behind the New York Yankees. The team was stunned to learn player/manager Tris Speaker was resigning as manager when he announced his retirement after being accused by former Detroit Tigers pitcher Dutch Leonard that he and Ty Cobb conspired to fix a game played between the Tigers and Indians in 1919.

1927: When the Dunn family sold the Cleveland Indians for $1 million to a syndicate headed by Alva Bradley in November, the facility reverted back to being called League Park.

1928: In November, Cleveland voters approved a $2.5 million bond issue to support construction of a municipal stadium on the city’s lakefront.

1929: On August 11, Babe Ruth, the “Sultan of Swat’’ belted his 500th home run over the 290 feet and 40  foot high right field fence at League Park. The historic solo shot was hit off of Indians’ pitcher Willis Hudlin in the second frame of a game between Cleveland and the New York Yankees.

1930: Five Cleveland Indians’ regulars batted over .300, including second baseman Johnny Hodapp  (.354), sixth in the American League. Poor defense, however, left them in fourth place when the season ended, 21 games behind the league leading Philadelphia Athletics.

1931: A public address system was installed at League Park in 1931, replacing the antiquated megaphones behind home plate.

1932: The Cleveland Indians played their first game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on July 1. They would play the entire season at Cleveland Municipal in 1933.

1933: On June 7, Cleveland Indians general manager Billy Evans fired manager Roger Peckinpaugh and replaced him with Walter Johnson, “The Big Train.’’

1934: The Cleveland Indians moved back to League Park for all of their home games.

1935: The Cleveland Indians sign Bob Feller , a 16-year-old, with a blazing fastball, from Van Meter, Iowa,  for one dollar and an autographed baseball.

1936:  Bob Feller mows down 15 St Louis Browns’ hitters with a blistering fastball in his first major league start. “Rapid Robert’’, in fact, struck out the first eight batters he faced in his League Park debut. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/bob-feller-strikes-out-17-at-17

1937:  Cleveland Indians pitcher Johnny Allen started the season with 15 consecutive wins, a league record at the time.

1938: Cleveland Indians center fielder Earl Averill was honored on “Earl Averill Day’’ in Cleveland where he was showered with a number of gifts, including a new Cadillac, the same year his batting average rebounded to .330.

1939: On May 16, the Cleveland Indians played in the first American League night game against the Philadelphia Athletics at Shibe Park in Philadelphia before 15,000 fans.

1940: Cleveland Indians ace Bob Feller tosses an Opening Day no-hitter against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

1941: On July 16, the hot hitting Joe DiMaggio stretched his consecutive hitting streak to 56 games, going 3-for-4 in front of 15,000 fans at League Park. His streak would end the following night at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

1942: Shortstop Lou Boudreau begins his first season as player/manager of the Cleveland Indians, becoming the youngest manager in baseball at the tender age of 24.

1943: Because World War II drained teams of talent, Cleveland Indians manager Lou Boudreau was forced to use Jim Bagby , one of his best pitchers, as the team’s backup second baseman.

1944: Cleveland Indians player/manager Lou Boudreau won the batting title with a .327 average; batting a blistering .392 in September to nip Bobby Doerr of the Boston Red Sox by two points.

1945:  League Park played host to the Negro League World Series  in which the Cleveland Buckeyes swept the Homestead Grays ; the same year the Cleveland Rams played their last game at League Park by defeating the Boston Yanks, 20-7.

1946: On June 22, Bill Veeck became principal owner of the Cleveland Indians https://goo.gl/ma1T69  and wanted his new team to play the all games at Cleveland Municipal Stadium. As a result, the Indians final game at League Park was September 21, 1946 in front of a small gathering, 2,772, in a 5-3 win over the Detroit Tigers.

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