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NBBO 1903: SotO HAS HISTORIC SEASON BUT ALBANY LIFTS THE CUP
WALLERSTEIN LEADS NBBO IN AVG & OPS; GARDNER WINS 8th HotY

The 1903 National Baseball Organization season didn’t see any changes off the field. All six member leagues stayed the same size and played the same number of games that they did in 1902. However, on the field there were changes. There were some surprise award winners. There were some extraordinary newcomers. Old champions returned in three NBBO leagues, new champions emerged in two more, only one team repeated as their league’s title holders, and Vermont was knocked off the throne in New England.


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The New York League saw the return of one of its oldest champions to the top of the pack in 1903. The Manhattan Orangemen won the New York Finals for the first time since the league’s second year (1891) while winning the New York City Championship for the sixteenth time going back to the single-competition days of the NBBO that began in 1857.

Manhattan’s road to the NY title was a challenging one. It took a victory on the final day of the season to beat the Yonkers Hilltoppers by a single game for the NYC Championship, and the two teams had been tied atop the standings for three games before that. They would go on to play Atlantic BBC, winners of the Brooklyn Championship by five games, for New York bragging rights. It was a quick series, as the Orangemen won it in a sweep by scores of 6-2, 2-0, and 8-0, with their pitchers striking out 23 Atlantic batters in the process.

The main driver of the Orangemen’s 1903 success was Batsman of the Year Henry McDaniels, who led the league with 173 hits, a .377 average, and a .918 OPS alongside 4 homers and 75 RBI. Hurler of the Year was Oliver Bennett, back with Bedford BBC for another full season after failing to make Providence’s APBL roster in 1902. He was 20-10 with a 2.84 ERA, leading the league in wins, strikeouts (182), and WAR (7.3). Continental BBC’s Thomas Willard was an extremely rare case of a pitcher who was not the Hurler of the Year winning the Most Valuable Player award. Willard was 18-7 with a 2.07 ERA and 154 Ks, and his 8.0 WPA was more than any other player in the league while his Continental team finished barely above .500.

The above taken into account, the most exciting player in the league was Newcomer of the Year Eugenio Lupino of Yonkers. The 27-year-old Italian was playing amateur baseball in the New York metro area when their front office signed him last October. For his debut season, Lupino hit .320 with 3 home runs & 76 RBI, led the league with 79 steals, and led all batters in WAR at 7.2. He struck out only 26 times, was an above-average fielder at shortstop, and was near the league leaders in extra-base hits. He would’ve also won BotY if not for Willard’s season on the mound, and it will be interesting to see if Lupino improves in his second season.


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The New England Baseball Association had both a strange and familiar feel to it in 1903, as the seemingly invincible Vermont Green Stockings were finally dethroned after six consecutive Ben Franklin Cup wins but the ones to dethrone them were the Sons of the Ocean, who took the original Tucker-Wheaton Cup four times but surprisingly had yet to hoist the Franklin Cup.

Neither NEBA division was close, which was no surprise given Vermont went 75-37 and Sons of the Ocean were 77-35. The Ben Franklin Cup series figured to be an epic, but SotO put an end to Vermont in a three-game sweep – scores were 10-4, 9-8, and 5-2, with Game Two going seventeen innings.

The Sons of the Ocean cruised to the NEBA title thanks to the best pitching & defense of any NBBO team ever, going all the way back to 1857. Their pitching staff led the league in every notable category except Strikeouts, and the team’s defense led the league in the three main categories: Errors, Zone Rating, and Defensive Efficiency.

Leading SotO’s historic group of pitchers was George Bryan, who went 24-6 with a 2.06 ERA and 167 Ks. He led the league with a 6.9 WPA while finishing second with 8.1 WAR, and his efforts led to him being named both NEBA Hurler of the Year & Most Valuable Player. On top of that, Bryan had the best Defensive Efficiency of all NEBA pitchers so a Golden Glove was added to his award haul. Three other SotO players won Golden Gloves: Harvey Costello (C), Kenneth Lowe (2B), and Rex Waltz (LF).

There was only one choice for Batsman of the Year: Vermont’s Angus Quinn, who finally got one after ten years of high-contact, high-patience batting as a first baseman. He pulled off a rare feat in that he led the NEBA in both hits (169) and walks (72), which led to him posting a .394 average, .996 OPS, and 7.3 Offensive WAR. It was the sixth time in eight years he’d led the NEBA in free passes, and his mantra of patience at the plate finally paid off with a major individual award. He was further rewarded with an October contract offer to become the regular first baseman for Toledo in the MWBA.


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The 1903 Northeastern League season was one of major parity. Rounding up, no less than eighteen of the league’s twenty teams won 45% of their games. 9th place out of ten went to Frontier BBC in the New York Conference at 51-63 (.447) and the Wilkes-Barre Coal Barons in the Northeastern Conference at 55-59 (.482) – absurdly high marks for bottom-feeding teams.

Leading the close-knit pack were the Albany Minutemen in the NYC at 70-44 (.614) and the Reading Athletics in the NEC at 65-49 (.570). In a battle befitting such a league, the series for the newly renamed Roosevelt Cup went the full five games, with Albany winning their first ever championship thanks to a Grover Gannon shutout in Game Five and Lewis Berry’s 10/21 batsmanship throughout the series.

Once again, the NEL was a league where there were no truly dominant players. However, there was one player who made history this season: Batsman of the Year Charles Gideon of the Utica Stompers, who became the NEL’s youngest BotY at the ripe old age of 21. Gideon, in his first season as a regular and playing as a 20-year-old until the end of May, hit .368 (1st) with 11 homers (2nd) and 68 RBI (3rd) while also leading the league in OPS by more than fifty points at .978.

Fans had figured that the Most Valuable Player award would go to champion Albany star Carl Bird (.289, 1 HR, 45 RBI) thanks to his Golden Glove outfield defense, 52 steals, and 5.5 WAR, but it wasn’t to be. Instead, the MVP went to a most unusual third baseman: Corey McLaughlin (.298, 2 HR, 38 RBI) of the 52-62 Auburn Woodsmen. McLaughlin, who doesn’t have outfield range to match his considerable speed and thus is best playing defense at third, became the first corner infielder in any league to steal 100+ bases in a season, stealing exactly 100 (2nd place: 68) while being caught only 19 times. He also led the league in runs (97) and WPA (5.5), and he took the MVP home as a result.

Hurler of the Year was a very contentious decision, as the writers went with the tried & true method of awarding the pitcher who clearly had the most wins: Samuel Cohen (23-4, 2.09 ERA, 76 K, 3.3 WAR) of Albany. It was a very close vote, with Bob Clemons (Binghamton; 20-13, 2.90 ERA, 125 K, 6.1 WAR) finishing 2nd, and Onan Rowley (Utica; 19-12, 3.05 ERA, 116 K, 7.8 WAR) finishing 3rd, with George Nugent (Phila; 19-4, 1.42 ERA, 87 K, 3.7 WAR), Charles Church (Elmira; 19-7, 1.99 ERA, 124 K, 6.1 WAR), and Lewis Taylor (Olympic; 18-11, 2.18 ERA, 122 K, 6.2 WAR) also receiving votes.


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The Great Lakes Baseball Conference was once again a tale of two teams: the Erie Lakers (70-40) and the Saginaw Lumberjacks (69-41), with Erie winning the GLBC title by one game over Saginaw for the second season in a row. This time, the teams weren’t level with one week to go. Instead, Erie was three games ahead of Saginaw and held on for dear life to repeat as champs.

And just like last year, Erie’s Gabriel Duclos was the GLBC’s Batsman of the Year. His numbers were way down – .300, 5 HR, 62 RBI, 4.4 oWAR – but offense in the league was down to just four runs per game and most of the leaders in the race for the average or OPS titles were patient slap hitters like James Hershey (Saginaw; .361, 1 HR, 47 RBI), George Douglas (Duluth; .342, 1 HR, 51 RBI), and Fanahan Stewart (Rockford; 329, 5 HR, 44 RBI), who ended up winning Most Valuable Player thanks to his league-leading OPS (.875) and WAR (6.3).

As it was in the Northeastern League, the Hurler of the Year award was a source of controversy in the GLBC. There were two main candidates. First was last year’s winner: Andrew Carides of Saginaw, who tied for the league lead in wins, finishing 23-7 with a 2.14 ERA, 130 Ks, 3 shutouts, and 5.3 WAR. The other candidate was Erie’s 24-year-old rookie Frederick Foote, who was the league’s other 23-game winner. He was 23-9 with a 1.89 ERA, 139 Ks, 4 shutouts, and 5.5 WAR – the other numbers all superior to Carides. The writers gave HotY to Carides in a vote that was derided as being based on his reputation from having won it last year. With Foote shut out of HotY, he was unanimously named Newcomer of the Year.


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In the Prairie League the Wichita Wranglers were unable to repeat, instead finishing 2nd to the Dubuque Explorers. With one month to go, Wichita was 51-30 and Dubuque was two games back at 49-32. However, Wichita went 13-16 over the final month while Dubuque went 22-7, and that meant Dubuque were PL champions by seven games. For the Explorers it was their third PL title, their first since 1892. Nobody else mounted a serious title challenge, with the Des Moines Oaks and Southern Missouri Ozarks tied for 3rd at eleven games back.

When 1902 Canadian BotY Harry Steele stunned pretty much everybody by signing a two-year deal with Southern Missouri last November his name was penciled in for 1903 PL Batsman of the Year. Unfortunately, although he hit .361 with a .950 OPS, a hamstring injury in June put him out of action for five weeks and thus he was out of award contention. Not that he would have won BotY anyway, because champions Dubuque employed the NBBO’s best hitter in first baseman Gottfried Wallerstein. The 22-year-old was tied for 2nd in home runs with 8 and alone in 2nd with 71 RBI, but he led the league with a .392 average, .462 on-base, .547 slugging, and 1.009 OPS. He was the only player in any of the six NBBO leagues to put up an OPS over a thousand in 1903, and he had to be the PL’s Batsman of the Year.

The man who finished 2nd in BotY voting, Eulogio Aldono of Sioux City, had to settle for being named the PL’s Most Valuable Player for the third time in his ten seasons in the league since leaving the Brooklyn reserves. His numbers: .355, 2 HR, 57 RBI, 27 SB, and he led the PL in both WPA (5.2) and WAR (5.8) for the third time. Had he won Batsman of the Year, it would have been his fourth.

There were multiple good candidates for Hurler of the Year, but, in the end, it went to the one with the lowest ERA: Henry Durham of Southern Missouri, who was 20-9 with a 1.90 ERA and 10.2 R9-WAR. Wins leader Howard Rosenberg (Wichita; 21-8, 2.33 ERA, 117 K, 6.7 WAR) was 2nd, Marion Gregory (Des Moines; 20-10, 2.91 ERA, 160 K, 4.3 ERA) was 3rd, and Ambrose Rossito (Dubuque; 17-2, 2.01 ERA, 99 K, 3.7 WAR) received some points in the voting.


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The Southern League saw its third different champion in its three years of existence in 1903, and it was a closer affair than it was in ’01 or ’02. Instead of two teams clearly being better than the rest, this season five teams – the Gulf Coast Pelicans, Houston 36ers, Little Rock Hilltoppers, New Orleans Gators, & San Antonio Riflemen – were within seven games of each other in the top five spots in the standings. It was Houston who came out on top with a 64-48 (.571) record, finishing three games better than New Orleans and San Antonio.

Although the league was spread evenly, the major awards all went to the champions.

First up: Batsman of the Year, which went to 21-year-old first baseman Bernard Custer. Custer, who played all of ten games in 1902, started every game in ’03 and was the best hitter in the NBBO other than Wallerstein in the PL. Custer was three points of average off the Triple Crown, finishing at .361 (2nd) with a league-leading 10 homers and 89 RBI. In addition, he led the league in hits (161), total bases (223), on-base (.427), OPS (.927), and Offensive WAR (5.9). If the league had been around enough to award Newcomer of the Year, Custer certainly would have taken that as well. For the record, it was Austin slap-hitter Frank Stawicki (.363, 16 XBH) who won the batting title.

Next up: Hurler of the Year, which went to Emerson Gardner for the second year running. Gardner was the only SL pitcher to win 20 games and he led the league in strikeouts. A final line of 20-10 with a 2.80 ERA, 168 Ks, and 6.5 WAR for the league champions was enough to see him pick up his eighth HotY award in an NBBO league (6x NEL, 2x SL).

Finally: Most Valuable Player, which went to center fielder Emil Rutland. Rutland hit only .255, but he led the league in runs (97) and steals (54, 9 CS) while putting up an above-average OPS (.769) and winning a Golden Glove for his work in center field. The result was a league-leading 6.6 WAR and another major award to a Houston player.


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For the second edition of the new Tucker-Wheaton Cup, there really wasn’t a lot to write home about. The Albany Minutemen apparently responded to winning its first championship in 47 years of competitive baseball by thinking, “Oh what the hell, let’s go win another one!” because they took the rest of the competition by the scruff of the neck and strangled it, as they won on Gameday One and never let up:

It was a complete team effort by Albany to go 8-2 in the TWC. Minutemen left fielder Ray Smith was easily the competition’s Most Valuable Player, hitting .486 (17/35) with five doubles, a home run, five RBI, and ten runs scored while walking five times to boot. Grover Gannon was 3-0 with a 1.61 ERA and a trifecta of Complete Game wins. Frederick Foote was 2-1 with a 2.08 ERA and 14 Ks over 26 innings. Catcher Daniel Scanlan led the TWC with a pair of dingers and ten RBI. First baseman Lewis Berry hit a pair of homers of his own, drove in seven, and scored eight times. Outfielder Carl Bird didn’t hit well, but he scored five runs and stole more bases than anyone else (4).

Although Albany was clearly the class of the competition, the highlight of the competition was provided by Dubuque pitcher Ambrose Rossito. On Gameday Nine, Rossito threw a no-hitter against NEBA champs the Sons of the Ocean, walking four and striking our four while throwing 113 pitches.