1916 – The New York Yankees buy pitcher Nick Cullop from the Kansas City Packers (Federal League), infielder Joe Gedeon from the Salt Lake Bees (Pacific Coast League), and infielder Germany Schaefer from the Newark Peppers (FL). Schaefer will announce that he is changing his nickname to “Liberty” because of the war. He noticed that “sauerkraut” had been renamed “liberty cabbage”.
1916 – The New York Giants buy center fielder Edd Roush from the Newark Peppers of the defunct Federal League for $7,500. Roush will hit just .188 in New York before being packaged to Cincinnati, where he will blossom into a Hall of Famer.
Under the terms of the peace agreement, a list of 123 Federal League free agents is released by the National Association. Next month, the upstart league’s year-old suit charging organized baseball of antitrust violations will be dismissed by mutual consent in the U.S. District Court by Judge Kenesaw M. Landis, who will become the game’s first commissioner in 1920.
1916 – The New York Giants purchase three stars from the defunct Federal League: pitcher Fred Anderson, outfielder Benny Kauff, and catcher Bill Rariden.
On January 17, 1916, the New York Giants purchase three stars from the Federal League: pitcher Fred Anderson, outfielder Benny Kauff, and catcher Bill Rariden, from the Brooklyn Tip Tops for $35,000. Kauff, the 26-year-old center fielder was the Federal League’s best player. His first three seasons with New York are solid, but the trash-talking…
1916 – Lee Magee, formerly the player-manager of the Brooklyn Tip-Tops of the Federal League, is sold to the Yankees for about $25,000.
James E. Gaffney sells the Boston Braves for $500,000 to Percy Haughton, Harvard’s head baseball coach and businessman Arthur Chamberlin Wise, who will raise $600,000 to build Fenway Park. The former owner, a Tammany Hall alderman and construction contractor, who bought the team in 1913 for $187,000, recently gained notoriety as a target of Hennessy and Whitman investigations into political graft.
1916 – King Cole, the pitcher who gave up Babe Ruth’s first hit in 1914, dies in Bay City, MI at age 29. Cole was a stellar pitcher while playing for the Chicago Cubs, helping his team to the 1910 World Series.
1916 – The National League, happy to be rid of fractious Chicago Cubs owner Charles W. Murphy, allows Charles H. Weeghman, owner of a restaurant chain and president of the Federal League’s Chicago Whales, to buy the Cubs for $500,000. By putting up $50,000, William Wrigley, Jr. becomes a minority stock holder. Whales manager Joe Tinker succeeds Roger Bresnahan, and the Cubs will play in the Federal League’s newly built ballpark on the North Side, soon to become known as Wrigley Field.
1916 – The St. Louis Browns are the first of two major league franchises awarded to former Federal League owners. Philip de Catesby Ball, ice-manufacturing tycoon and principal stockholder of the Feds’ St. Louis Terriers, pays a reported $525,000 for the Browns and replaces manager Branch Rickey with his own Fielder Jones.
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