It’s time to talk about the Spiders — the only team ever worse than the Rockies

The Cleveland Spiders were the worst team in baseball history, undone in part by empty ballparks. The Colorado Rockies are vying to be next — thanks in part to fans who keep showing up.

The year is 1892, Ellis Island opens its doors, the Diesel Engine is patented and the first basketball game is played publicly. Here in Colorado, the state has picked James B. Weaver to be president with 53,584 votes, but Benjamin Harrison was elected. Covering that election is The Denver Post, which was founded a few months earlier, just four days before the Brown Palace opened downtown.

Across the country, the Cleveland Spiders are in a tough battle with the Brooklyn Nine for the top of the National League. In 453 innings of work, Cy Young pushes the team from Ohio ahead to their best season ever, thanks to his 36-12 record on the hill. They meet Boston, who won the pennant in a six-game precursor to the World Series, where Kid Nichols was nails.

Seven years later, in 1899, the first automobile arrived in Denver. Back in baseball, the Spiders are the worst team in the history of the sport, finishing their season with a record of 20-134. The Spiders fell so deep in seven years — really overnight — and it was because of one of the strangest stories in baseball history, which forced rule changes.

In 2018, the Colorado Rockies are locked in a race for the National League West with that same franchise that moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. In an extra game, the Denver team fell short, but it was still maybe the best season in franchise history, as they went on to the playoffs and also were swept out of the postseason.

Seven years later, in 2025, the Rockies are gunning for baseball immortality and seemingly chasing the Spiders’ historical mark. But even being in comparison and the number of similarities already ascribed should be embarrassing enough.

You see, the Spiders weren’t a real major league team despite what the records will forever say. They were a “sideshow” — that’s not me just saying something over a century later; that’s what their owners, the Robisons, announced after buying the St. Louis Perfectos that offseason.

That’s right — they owned two teams in the NL, and before the season began, they traded all their good players, including Young and two other future Hall of Famers in Jesse Burkett and Bobby Wallace, as well as manager Patsy Tebeau, to the Missouri squad.

But it didn’t stop there; they exchanged a few players throughout the year who were doing well in Cleveland — including player-manager Lave Cross — to the Perfectos, and they even transferred their home opener to be played in St. Louis. The headline in The Plain Dealer the morning after that April opener: “THE FARCE HAS BEGUN.”

Cleveland had its first real home game —  a doubleheader — on May 1 in front of 100 fans. Only 6,088 fans paid to attend the Spiders’ home games in 1899, an average of 145 spectators per game in the 9,000-seat League Park. At one point, the other 11 NL teams refused to come to Cleveland as their cut of the revenue from ticket sales did not get close to covering hotel and travel expenses.

The Spiders were thus forced to play 85 of their remaining 93 games on the road. Only New York and Boston still came, thinking their teams could draw fans anywhere. They were mostly wrong. A season’s-best crowd of 1,500 watched the 95-win Boston group surrender a seven-run bottom of the ninth and lose on a walk-off in extras. Only 200 fans showed up on their next trip to town, same for New York. It was the first time Cleveland had played at home in two months, thanks to the record 50-game road trip.

It was around then that the Cleveland Press noted that “although [Frank Bates] succeeds in turning almost every game into which he participates into a howling farce, he is sent into the box in his turn, only to bring ridicule upon his unfortunate associates.”

The Spiders got worse, losing 40 of their final 41 games — which does not even include an early September loss to an amateur team from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

The Rockies won’t get their chance to lose a late-season exhibition, but the Savannah Bananas’ August dates at Coors Field will be the best baseball played there this summer.

The Rockies are 9-45, which paces them for a 27-135 record. It’s a better winning percentage because we play more games now, but it’s one more loss and would shatter the modern record for losses, which was set by the Chicago White Sox at 121 last year.

Like the Spiders, the Rockies are last in batting average and strikeouts by pitchers and have the worst ERA in the sport. Unlike that Cleveland team, Colorado appears to be trying. Where the Spiders’ owners traded all of their best players from their great team several years before on purpose, the Rockies brass has let most of that talent, like Trevor Story and Jon Gray, walk out the door for nothing.

Still in the Mile High City, the club doesn’t have the lowest payroll in the league, nor were there any comments from leadership about a tough season ahead. The Rockies actually only have the seventh-lowest payroll in the league, which is actually pretty low for the team over the past decade. And before the season, owner Dick Monfort boasted that the team could have the best defense in the history of the game. The Rockies lead baseball in errors.

The Rockies as a team are hitting .219, which is a lot worse than pitcher German Marquez’ career .241 at the dish. This season, Marquez has a 7.66 ERA, which is worse than both position players who have gotten a chance to hurl.

Colorado was once made fun of for giving Mike Hampton $121 million. The left-handed starter never figured out pitching for the Rockies, but his 152 appearances at the plate as a right-handed hitter were worth 1.9 WAR as he OPS+’d 109. Only Jordan Beck and Ezequiel Tovar have had better hitting seasons so far than the pitcher Hampton’s two years with the Rockies as a hitter. Hampton had a better on-base rate and slugging percentage than the Rockies do as a team this year, and his 10 home runs would lead the club.

Speaking of bad contracts, the $182 million man, Kris Bryant, played just 11 games before getting hurt again. Despite a negative WAR in limited time, the Rockies actually played just normal bad baseball instead of historically terrible with him in the lineup at 3-8. Taking his place at first base has been Michael Toglia, who has more strikeouts (318) in 228 games started than 1899 Spiders manager Cross did (217) in his 21-year career that spanned 2,277 games.

I’ve long flirted that the Rockies could be as bad as the Spiders, but that was in humor. This is real. We’re here. Colorado has a team threatening to be the worst team in the history of a league that was once featured Civil War veterans. At the very least, the Rockies are on par with a team that existed when Nikola Tesla operated a science experiment lab in Colorado, where he ran strange electrical-based science experiments.

Again — not only did the Spiders not try to win, but they were forced to play so much on the road, where they went 11–101  against 9–33 at home.

The Rockies just hosted the New York Yankees, who experienced a bigger crowd at Coors Field, 128,000 fans, than five of their eight home series at Yankee Stadium thus far. The fans keep coming in Denver, and they will continue to do so.

The two worst teams in baseball history are one with such bad attendance that they disbanded and one with such good attendance that it proved to the owner that the on-field product matters little. What’s common is that the baseball being played is a sideshow; what’s different is that the Rockies have the best bar in Denver — Coors Field, which is the real show.

The Spiders’ story is already penned in books, but the Rockies have over 100 games left to change their fate. While you watch this summer, maybe keep the words of my long-past sportswriting peer Elmer Bates of The Cleveland Press in mind, it’s the best Rockies take you’ll get:

1. There is everything to hope for and nothing to fear.
2. Defeats do not disturb one’s sleep.
3. An occasional victory is a surprise and a delight.
4. There is no danger of any club passing you.
5. You are not asked 50 times a day, ‘What was the score?’ People take it for granted that you lost.

(Related) The only MLB team with more? The 1899 Cleveland Spiders- a team gutted of talent by ownership when they also bought the St. Louis Perfectos (later Cardinals). Due to low fan interest, they played 111 of 154 games on the road and would be disbanded by the National League https://t.co/a66WFklFI6 pic.twitter.com/m0mG27dUfE

— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) September 28, 2024

Related

Rockies pound out 15 hits, but it’s far from enough against relentless RaysRockies giving Mickey Moniak new two-year contract: ReportRockies buy low on former top prospect, flip relieverRockies trade longest-tenured player on deadline dayRockies make a surprising outfielder trade in first deadline moveFreeland’s first complete game came with thoughts that it could be his last in a Rockies uniform