Baseball history unpacked, February 3

Feb 3, 2023 - 12:00 PM

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Bleed Cubbie Blue is pleased to present a light-hearted, Cubs-centric look at baseball’s colorful past, with plenty of the lore and various narratives to follow as they unfold over the course of time. Here’s a handy Cubs timeline, to help you follow along.

Today in baseball history:

• 1886 - Albert Spalding begins a sporting goods company with $800. He will become the manufacturer of the first official baseball as well as tennis balls, and equipment for basketball, golf and football. (2)
• 1900 - Rival forces fight for control of the Union Park Ball Grounds in Baltimore. John McGraw’s men camp around a fire at third base. Ned Hanlon, his former manager in Baltimore in the 1890s, now manager of Brooklyn and still president of the Baltimore club in the National League, has forces camped around first base. (1,2)
• 1934 - The St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns decide to cease broadcasting home games. The teams hope the move will result in better attendance at their shared ballpark. (2)
• 2014 - In a matchup of unbeaten teams at the 2014 Caribbean Series, the Navegantes del Magallanes knock Naranjeros de Hermosillo starter Nate Reed out in the second inning, up 4-0, with Ezequiel Carrera scoring and driving in runs. Carlos Zambrano* winds up the victory in a 6-3 win. Mexico is down, 4-3, with Jon Weber on third in the sixth but Luis Ramirez retires cleanup man Zelous Wheeler and No. 5 batter Daryle Ward. Ramón Hernández hits a two-run insurance homer off Jose Lopez. In the other game, Villa Clara again falls flat, losing, 9-2, with Jon Leicester of Licey tossing seven shutout innings of three-hit ball. (2)
• 2022 - With the start of spring training threatened, MLB proposes that a federal mediator be invited to assist in the talks with the Players’ Association in order to help resolve the issues that have led to the current lockout. However, the players will reject the offer within 24 hours, asking instead for the owners to table the counter-proposal to their latest offer, as promised earlier. (2)

Cubs birthdays: Newt Randall, Don Kaiser, Joe Coleman.

Today in history:

• 1451 - Sultan Mehmed II, the Conqueror, inherits the throne of the Ottoman Empire.
• 1783 - Spain recognizes US independence.
• 1815 - World’s first commercial cheese factory established, in Switzerland.
• 1928 - Paleoanthropologist Davidson Black reports his findings on the ancient human fossils found at Zhoukoudian, China in the journal Nature and declares them to be a new species he names ‘Sinanthropus pekinensis’ (now known as ‘Homo erectus’).
• 1959 - ”The Day the Music Died” plane crash kills musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper), and the pilot. near Clear Lake, Iowa.
• 2021 - Engineers at MIT announce they have engineered spinach to send emails when detecting explosive materials in groundwater as part of plant nanobionic research.

Common sources:

• (1) — Today in Baseball History.
• (2) — Baseball Reference.
• (3) — Society for American Baseball Research.
• (4) — Baseball Hall of Fame.
• (5) — This Day in Chicago Cubs history.
• For world history.

*pictured.

Some of these items spread from site to site without being verified. That is exactly why we ask for reputable sources if you have differences with a posted factoid, so that we can address that to the originators and provide clarity if not ‘truth’. Nothing is posted here without at least one instance of corroboration. Thanks for reading.