Baltimore wins the 1896 Temple Cup... illustration of Hugh Jennings...

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October 09, 1896

THE WORLD, New York, October 9, 1896

* Temple cup baseball championship
* Baltimore Orioles

Page 10 has a one line, one column head about the winning of baseball's coveted Temple Cup by the Baltimore Orioles: "Cup Goes To Baltimore" & subheads: "Four The Fourth Consecutive Time Tebeau's Men Fell Before The Champions" "Last Game The Hardest Fought" "Corbett Held Cleveland Down to Four Singles and Struck Out Six Men" "Cold Weather And A Small Crowd" "Baltimore's Victory Conceded to be Well Earned--The Final Score was 5-0."

Includes a summary of the game, plus a box score (see). In another column on the same page is a nice 3 1/4 by 1 3/4 inch illustration of Hugh Jennings, star player of the Baltimore team, in uniform holding a bat. There is also a brief caption about Jennings. Note: Jennings was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. Somewhat early to see an illustration of a baseball player in a newspaper report.

Fourteen pages, a bit pulpish at the margins causing a few tears.

wikipedia notes: The Temple Cup was a trophy awarded to the winner of a best-of-seven, post-season Major League Baseball championship series that was conducted for four seasons in the National League, from 1894–1897. The Temple Cup was also known as the World's Championship Series. If one team won three titles, that team would have possession of the trophy in perpetuity. The idea failed to gain fan support, partly because the second place team won three of the four series.

The 30-inch-high silver cup was donated by coal, citrus, and lumber baron William Chase Temple, the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time. There was only one major league at the time, so the Series was played between the first- and second-place teams.

The revenue was to be split 65% to 35%; however, the players of the first series (1894) decided to evenly split the money. However, after the series the Giants cheated some Oriole players out of their money, tainting the Cup and prompting Temple to sell the Pirates in disgust.

Interest in the Series faded quickly, as it seemed artificial, with the second-place team winning three of the four series. It would be nearly 100 years before a non-first place team would be allowed to participate in a baseball post-season series, with the introduction of the wild card qualifiers in 1995.

In 1939, the Cup itself was tracked down by The Sporting News. It was in the possession of a Temple family member in Florida. The Cup was displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Temple family sold the Cup for $750 to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, where it remains today.

Category: Post-Civil War