Fun Fact #336 The Orphans

 Fun Fact #336

The Orphans

After starting a Ginger Beer company whose bottles had the unfortunate ability to explode on shelves due to natural fermentation, Cap Anson decided to sell his Majority share in The Chicago White Stockings to pay for the damages. In response the Newspapers labeled the National League team: “The Chicago Orphans'' for having lost their “Pops”. The name would stick, followed shortly after by the creation of the American League. 

Here the White Stockings would face trouble as the AL declared a “Baseball War” and moved one of their teams into Chicago renaming them “The White Sox” to draw fans away from the Orphans. This would succeed and in 1901 most of the veteran players of the Orphans would join the Sox, leaving the orphans made up mostly of rookies –which the Sox would take advantage of by calling them “Cubs”. Then the Leagues would strike a truce, agreeing to work together to promote baseball with their league’s winners meeting once a year to determine who was the best in an event known as “The World Series”. 

The two leagues would remain legally separate until 1999 when they merged into one governing body “Major League Baseball” with two conferences allowing for far more midseason interplay between teams. Interestingly enough The Cubs still have a reference to their time as Orphans with the blue “O” which encompasses the rest of their logo.