1899 Eastern League

A charged run by renewed Rochester, who took possession of first place shortly after veteran first baseman Dan Brouthers quit the team amid a batting slump, gave manager Al Buckenberger his second Eastern League championship in three years.

The boon to this league was the transfer of Hartford by Billy Barnie from the Atlantic Association to the Eastern League. Barnie had been unceremoniously released by the Brooklyn Dodgers early in 1898 and then suffered a further indignity that August when a slew of investors abandoned his vision of a new minor league - the Union League - while it was still on the drawing board. Barnie seemed to recoil and take stock in what he had: he moved to Hartford and became a prominent citizen there.

Unfortunately, his lack of managerial genius continued to follow him and the highlight of the season was Hartford's 28-28 record on the Fourth of July. On May 22 Barnie gave ex-major leaguer Lou Sockalexis the left field position to lose. Sockalexis lost it. On June 8th, lackadaisical baserunning by the Indian clogged up the basepaths and Worcester turned Gatins' bases-loaded rbi-single into a triple play, 8-2-1-4. Criticism in the Hartford papers began to wear on Barnie and in late July he grabbed a sportswriter by the neck and threw him out of the ballpark. The Sporting Life, the best baseball weekly newspaper published on the east coast, noted at the time that coverage of the Hartford team improved after that incident.

Worcester, the other new team in the league, fell victim to a boycott, mid-July when labor unions found out that pitcher Fred Klobedanz worked as a stage man for a Boston theater over the winter when union stage hands were on a protracted strike.