Not Again: Chicago and St. Louis Met in 1885 and 1886 Playoff

Chicago and St. Louis have met before in the postseason. It took six balls to draw a walk, and hitters could request a high or low ball from the pitcher, who was only 50 feet away. It was baseball, but certainly not baseball as we know it.

You will hear a lot about how the division series beginning Friday is the first in the postseason between the Cubs and the Cardinals, longtime rivals. In a way, that is not true.

While teams called the Cubs and the Cardinals have never previously met in the playoffs, their precursors played two hard-fought series at the dawn of organized baseball. Those contests included a team stalking off the field in protest, a disputed championship and a winner-take-all prize pool that came down to a play at home plate.

Though earlier St. Louis teams existed, the Cardinals are generally considered to have been born in 1882 as the Brown Stockings, shortened a year later to the Browns. They were members of the upstart American Association, and in 1885 they won the league by 16 games under their new manager, Charles Comiskey, who also played first base.

The Cubs were originally known as the White Stockings and were charter members of the National League. The 1885 squad, with the Hall of Famers Cap Anson and King Kelly in the lineup, was a stunning 87-25.

In 1884, the New York Metropolitans of the American Association had challenged the Providence Grays of the National League to a postseason series at the Polo Grounds, which the Grays won. Though not officially recognized as a World Series by Major League Baseball, it was the first organized baseball “world championships.”

The next year the new tradition was renewed, and the White Stockings (Cubs) prepared to face the Browns (Cardinals) for the championship, this time in a seven-game series.

Game 1 in Chicago ended in a 5-5 tie on account of darkness. The series moved to St. Louis for Game 2, and with Chicago leading by 5-4 in the ninth, Comiskey decided he did not like the umpiring and pulled St. Louis from the field.

His team won the next two games in St. Louis, and Chicago then won a game in Pittsburgh on a cold day in front of only 500 spectators. The final two games were split in Cincinnati, leaving the series even at three games all, with one tie.

Or was it even? St. Louis insisted that Game 2, which it had walked out on, should not have counted. After an extended dispute, the teams eventually agreed to split the $1,000 prize.

It was an era of colorful nicknames. Second baseman Fred Pfeffer, known as Dandelion, hit .400 in the series for Chicago. St. Louis’s star was third baseman Arlie Latham, known as the Freshest Man on Earth, for his practical jokery. Both teams used just two pitchers for the entire series.

The next year, the teams were on top of their leagues again, St. Louis winning the American Association by 12 games over the Pittsburgh Alleghenys (later the Pirates) and Chicago taking the N.L. by two and a half games over the Detroit Wolverines.

The first three games of the championship series were in Chicago, and the home team took a two-games-to-one lead. When the series shifted to St. Louis, the teams faced what Bill James in “The Historical Baseball Abstract” called “the most notorious fans in the sporting world.” St. Louis turned it around, winning two straight and going into Game 6. Chicago took the early lead, 3-0, but St. Louis rallied to tie the game and send it into extra innings. In the bottom of the 10th, with the speedy Curt Welch on third, Chicago pitcher John Clarkson uncorked a wild pitch, and Welch came home to score and win the game and the series.

The American Association went out of business in 1891, and St. Louis quickly joined the National League, later becoming the Perfectos in 1899 and the Cardinals in 1900. Chicago tried out “Colts” and “Orphans” before settling on Cubs in 1903. The stage was set for a century-long rivalry.

So Kris Bryant, Jake Arrieta, Jason Heyward and John Lackey are indeed making Cubs-Cardinals history this month. But they are also walking in the footsteps of Parisian Bob Caruthers, Dave (Scissors) Foutz and George (Piano Legs) Gore.