[tm1681]

THE 20TH CENTURY STARTS WITH TWO CLASSIC PENNANT RACES IN THE ABA

The beginning of the Twentieth Century gifted baseball fans with two fantastic pennant races in the member leagues of the American Baseball Association.

With one week of games left, a maximum of three games separated first place from second in any of the four collective divisions of the APBL and the MWBA. In the American Professional Baseball League, familiar faces were a in battle to the finish as Buffalo was holding off Providence in the Colonial Conference and Brooklyn was barely ahead of Pennsylvania in the Metropolitan:

Over in the Midwestern Baseball Association things were even tighter, as there were no less than seven teams still competing for the two spots in the Lincoln Memorial Cup and there were ties atop both the Eastern League and Western League:

In the Eastern League it was no surprise to see the old guard of Detroit, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee so close to the top of the standings, but it was very much a surprise to see Cincinnati, sixth-place finishers each of the previous three seasons, right there with them.

In the Western League the 1A & 1B combination of Lake Michigan & Minneapolis was a logical one since both teams had been easily over .500 in recent seasons and Lake Michigan won the Lincoln Memorial Cup via a memorable sweep of Milwaukee in 1898. However, Missouri had finished seventh, last, and seventh the previous three seasons so their presence in the pennant race with just a week to go was a major shock.



.................................................. .........................................



The final week of the APBL season didn’t see either conference lead change hands. In the Colonial Conference, both Buffalo and Providence went 4-2 and that meant Buffalo took the Colonial pennant by three games. In the Metropolitan Conference, Brooklyn only went 3-3 over the final week and that gave Pennsylvania a major chance to force a one-game playoff. However, the Kings were able to hold on to their one-game lead on the final day and make a return appearance to the President’s Cup:

In the MWBA, the final week of the Eastern League was crazy as the league pennant was decided on the final day of the season and the top four teams – Detroit, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, & Indianapolis – ended up separated by four games. The standard of play wasn’t great – Detroit was only 3-3 but Cincinnati had a 2-4 final week to lose the Eastern League by a single game. In the Western League, Minneapolis took the pennant by three games after Lake Michigan wilted under the pressure and had a terrible 1-5 week to end the season.

The two leagues’ championship series weren’t the nailbiters that their regular seasons were, but they did give a couple of teams ends to years of frustration. In the President’s Cup, the Buffalo Blues beat Brooklyn 4-2 behind the MVP play of Mogens Markert (11/25, 4 SB) and finally took home the P.C. on their third try spanning eleven years. The Lincoln Memorial Cup was much the same, as the Detroit Robins took it home on their third try over the span of eleven years by dispatching Minneapolis in five games. For Buffalo, it was their first APBL title since the single-division days of 1875, and for Detroit it was their first MWBA title since the end of their three-peat at the close of the single-division years (1887-89).