Old Judge label question

[Fred]

Originally Posted by prewinter

I would dispute that the Whites were a minor league club for the Browns. It is true that they were owned by Chris Von der Ahe, who also owned the Browns. And when he sought to put a club into the Western Association in the fall of 1887, he was initially rejected because he wanted to use the club as a place to hold players for the Browns, and the rest of the league objected to that premise. Ultimately, after he was given a club in the league (under Manager Tom Loftus), that is not how it worked at all. Only one player moved from the Whites to the Browns - Joe Herr - after Chippy McGarr got hurt in early June. As the Whites flushed down the drain, he sold the two best players from the club (Harry Staley and future HoF Jake Beckley) to Pittsburgh instead of transferring them to the Browns. And due to the rules of the time, he was unable to transfer Jim Devlin to the Whites as he wanted to at the start of the season. Finally, after selling Staley and Beckley to Pittsburgh, and Jack Crooks to Omaha, he tried to use Devlin in a game with the Whites twice, and the Whites were forced to forfeit both games, because Devlin was ruled ineligible. The club folded at that point.

(It is unclear to me if Kenyon was formally a member of the Browns at the time he played for the Whites in April of 1888, filling in for an injured Hines. There was a transaction in the spring at some point indicating he signed with the Browns. There are also is a pair of transactions reported in late March/early April formally releasing Parson Nicholson from the Browns and signing him by the Whites.)

Jeff Kittel suggested that Von der Ahe wanted a club in the Western Association in case the American Association collapsed during the offseason of 1887-1888. The Maroons may have been in a similar boat, as there were rumors at that time that the eastern clubs were going to form a major league that offseason excluding the western clubs. Had that happened, the Western Association may have tried to claim major league status, and Von der Ahe wanted in on that.

What does this have to do with Old Judge set? I think that Goodwin saw the possibilities that the Western Association could become more than just a minor league, and so included them in their set for that reason. Otherwise, why else include a brand new, completely unestablished league?

That was worth the read!

[ramram]

Nice research Paul.

[oldjudge]

Paul—Interesting read. Thanks for the information. In answer to your final question, one additional reason to include the WA was to sell cigarettes. People differentiated between brands based on the inserts they got with the purchase. By adding the WA, Goodwin added teams in states that were in neither the NL or the AA. This was a carrot for people in those states to buy Old Judge cigarettes. This is probably the same reason that Goodwin added the California League in 1889.

[oldjudge]

Here is the only known (at least to me) Whites N173. This is not surprising given the teams short 1888 tenure in the WA.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Here is the only known (at least to me) Whites N173. This is not surprising given the teams short 1888 tenure in the WA.

Love the different color mounts too. Thanks for sharing...

[prewinter]

Including the Western Association did open up new markets to pitch the product in. But why only that league among the minor leagues? And three of its eight cities were covered by the NL and AA. But the goal was, of course, to sell cigarette, no disputing that. And adding the Western Association added teams in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, so a nice chunk of territory there.

The short tenure of the club may be why the Tug Arundel card with St. Louis never saw the light of day. They only lasted a couple of months after he was signed, and then poof, gone.