This is a something I'm looking for information on while looking up some 19th Century baseball players. The details I'm find on some baseball sites and Wikipedia aren't matching up. The Chicago Colts, now the Chicago Cubs, the team was traveling on August 6, 1893 according to http://www.baseball-fever.com/showthread.php?70636-Jimmy-Ryan-Thread when at 6am the train derailed. The same link says he was injured on the "Lake Shore". The poster also says the team was going from Cleveland to Louisville and the derailment happened near Toledo, OH. Using http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/1893-schedule-scores.shtml I can see that on 8/5/93 the Colts had finised a 6 game series in Cleveland and somehow in spite of the early morning derailment (if that is accurate) played a game in Louisville that day (there were no night games for several decades after this). Assuming what I've read is accurate any idea of how to get from Toledo to Louisville in about 6-8 hours by train?
This is where I get confused. I looked up Lake Shore on wiki and got "Lake Shore Limited". A NYC train. The Lake Shore Limited ran from 1897 to 1956. The predecessor was the Exposition Flyer which was running in 1893. Maybe a baseball fan not knowing much about trains used the name of a later train on the same route.
Any clarification would be great.
The railroad was the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern absorbed into the New York Central System but maintained its identity for several years afterward.
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If the train derailed at 6 am near Toledo it was likely still on the LS&MS as Henry has stated. I suppose it might have been possible for the team to get to Toledo in time to catch another train departing from there around 8 am. The most direct route from Toledo to Louisville would have been via the Baltimore & Ohio. I don't have access to B&O schedules anywhere near as far back as 1893 so I don't know if there was a morning train to Louisville much less what its schedule was. In later years the running time between the two cities was about 8-1/2 hours so assuming there was an 8 am departure from Toledo, the team wouldn't arrive in Louisville until 4:30 pm.
I think the above represents a "best case" schedule and 1893 running times were probably longer - maybe by as much as four hours. There was no Daylight Saving Time in those days so I don't think it would have been possible for the team to reach Louisville and get from the station to the ball park and ready to take the field in time to start a daylight game.
Mark
NY Times says the "wreck occurred about midnight," either late on Aug. 5 or early on Aug. 6.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B04E5D7143EEF33A25754C0A96E9C94629ED7CF
cmulligan01 Using http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/1893-schedule-scores.shtml I can see that on 8/5/93 the Colts had finised a 6 game series in Cleveland and somehow in spite of the early morning derailment (if that is accurate) played a game in Louisville that day (there were no night games for several decades after this). Assuming what I've read is accurate any idea of how to get from Toledo to Louisville in about 6-8 hours by train?
Using http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/CHC/1893-schedule-scores.shtml I can see that on 8/5/93 the Colts had finised a 6 game series in Cleveland and somehow in spite of the early morning derailment (if that is accurate) played a game in Louisville that day (there were no night games for several decades after this). Assuming what I've read is accurate any idea of how to get from Toledo to Louisville in about 6-8 hours by train?
Does your reference give a score which would prove the game in Louisville was actually played that day or was it just scheduled to be played?
The newspaper account of the wreck suggests most of the players were injured to some extent with the catcher and right fielder being the most seriously injured. Given that fact plus the near impossibility of getting to Louisville in time, I think it unlikely that the game could have been played on the 6th. If it was played it's sure a testament to the hardiness of the players of that era compared to that of the prima donnas playing MLB today.
Aug. 6, 1893: The Colts, playing at home in Chicago, beat the visiting Louisville Colonels 12-7.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/LOU/1893-schedule-scores.shtml
Thanks for all the information. I was unaware of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. I'm not very knowledgeable about the predecessors railroads of the New York Central. I found one error I made. The game was not played in Louisville it was played in Chicago. Baseball-Reference said Chicago won 12-7 and the game took 1:50.
Hi, as a SABR member I found this all very interesting!!
Most likely you could have gotten from Toledo to Chicago faster by rail in 1893 than you could today. As noted games were much shorter then - the New York Giants sometimes scheduled day games for 3 PM or so in the summer, so that Wall Street traders / investors could pop over to the Polo Grounds after trading ended for the day and catch a game.
BTW I see the teams had some big names - Hughie "Ee-Yah" Jennings and Pete Browning ("The Louisville Slugger") on Louisville, and Adrian "Cap" Anson, Clark Griffith, and Parisian Bob Caruthers (who twice won 40 games as a pitcher, but by the time of this game was a position player).
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