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APBL 1898: PROVIDENCE FINALLY GOES DOWN – SIX-YEAR REIGN ENDED BY BUFFALO & EXCELSIOR!

Going into the 1898 preseason the Northeastern punditry decided that after the Providence Saints won yet another President’s Cup, even though they lost ace and team leader Charles Wilkerson to conference rivals Buffalo, they were probably going to win 90+ games and, much to the chagrin of everyone else, bring the cup home for the seventh year in a row. Despite the best efforts of the rest of the American Professional Baseball League, it now seemed predestined that until the core members of the Saints lineup aged and retired the team would have champagne-filled nights with the President’s Cup each September for the foreseeable future. Some were thinking that ten titles in a row wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, as the team had retooled its lineup, changed managers, and even switched pitching aces during its six-year championship run with nothing stopping them.

At the end of July Providence was right where they wanted to be, sitting at 70-35 with the Buffalo Blues one game back at 69-36. Another late-season dogfight was on the cards but, given the now perennial late-season heroics that the Saints routinely pulled off, the main issue to many was simply a matter of how many games Providence would win the Colonial Conference by.

Sure enough, Providence started the stretch run by winning their first four games in August, including a three-game sweep at Buffalo to take a four-game lead in the C.C. which led to the assumption that the race was over. This wasn’t just because of the results themselves, but also because of the scores:





It was extraordinary stuff, even by Providence’s standards.

However, what followed was six losses over the team’s next seven games, and Providence’s near-mythical form never materialized. After winning those first four games of August the Saints were a shocking 9-14 the rest of the season. Meanwhile, Buffalo responded to the embarrassment of the home demolition at the hands of Providence by holding a Players Only meeting and then proceeding to play their best baseball of the year. After that pivotal moment the Blues were 18-6 over their final two dozen games, turning what should have been the sweep that ended their season into an 87-45 record and the Colonial Conference title by four games over the Saints.





Buffalo would go on to play last year’s P.C. runners-up the Excelsior Knights, who managed to improve on their identical 90-42 records of the previous two seasons by going 93-39. Passing and then fending off the mighty Saints over the last few weeks of the season proved to be a task that took too much out of the Blues, as Excelsior took the President’s Cup four games to two. Charles Wilkerson, who never had an ERA higher than 2.79 in his five P.C. series triumphs with Providence, allowed fourteen Earned Runs (7.41 ERA) and 26 hits (.377 AVG) over seventeen innings. Knights catcher Joseph Fields, who drove in no less than thirteen runs over the six games, was named Most Valuable Player.

It was the first time the President’s Cup had made its home outside of Providence, Rhode Island since 1891, when the Manhattan Knickerbockers also beat Buffalo four games to two.