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| Chicago Unions | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| League |
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| Location | Chicago, Illinois |
| Year established | 1887 |
| Year disbanded | 1900 |
| Nickname(s) |
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The Chicago Unions were a professional, black baseball team that played in the late 19th century, prior to the formation of the Negro leagues.
Organized as the Unions in 1887, the club was led by Abe Jones (1887–1889) and by W.S. Peters (1890–1900). In 1899 they lost a series for the western championship to the Columbia Giants, also based in Chicago.
The Unions, along with the Cuban Giants, are the only Negro teams to survive the political and economic crisis that eventually lead to the Panic of 1893. Every other significant Negro team which operated prior to the Panic ultimately ceased to exist. (Holway, p.30)
During 1901 and 1902, Frank Leland created the Chicago Union Giants by hiring many players from the Chicago Unions and Columbia Giants. The Union Giants "were recognized as the top team in the West, but lost a challenge playoff to the Algona Brownies in 1903 for the western championship" (Riley 168). The Union Giants were renamed Leland Giants in 1905.
| The Chicago Unions and the Chicago Columbia Giants merged for the 1901 season creating the Chicago Union Giants, who later changed their name to the Leland Giants. The Leland Giants then split into two teams for the 1910 season creating the Chicago Giants and the new Leland Giants, who later changed their name to the Chicago American Giants. |
Andrew "Rube" Foster was an American baseball player, manager, and executive in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981.
The Negro leagues were United States professional baseball leagues comprising teams of African Americans and, to a lesser extent, Latin Americans. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".
Oscar McKinley Charleston was an American center fielder and manager in Negro league baseball. In 1915, after serving three years in the U.S. Army, the Indianapolis, Indiana, native continued his baseball career as a professional with the Indianapolis ABCs; his career ended in 1954 as a player-manager for the Indianapolis Clowns. In addition to a forty-three-year career with more than a dozen teams, including the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords, Negro league baseball's leading teams in the 1930s, he played nine winter seasons in Cuba and in numerous exhibition games against white major leaguers. Charleston was known for his strengths as a hitter and center fielder. Alongside Josh Gibson, he has the record for most league batting titles among players of the Negro leagues with three, and he is the only one among all nine players who won multiple titles to win batting titles in multiple leagues. He was the second player to win consecutive Triple Crowns in either batting or pitching, a feat matched just one time by a batter. Retroactively, he is credited with having won the Triple Crown three times, which is the most for any player in Major League Baseball. To this day, he holds the record for the second-highest batting average of all-time among major league players. He also has the fourth-highest career OPS. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.
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The Leland Giants, originally the Chicago Union Giants, were a Negro league baseball team that competed independently during the first decade of the 20th century. The team was formed via a merge of the Chicago Unions and the Chicago Columbia Giants in 1901, and then split in 1910 to form the Chicago Giants and what would become known as the Chicago American Giants. The team was named after its owner and manager, Frank Leland.
Frank C. Leland was an American baseball player, field manager and club owner in the Negro leagues.
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William Stitt Peters was an American baseball, player, manager, and owner who played in predecessor teams to the Negro leagues. Peters played first base and managed the Chicago Unions from 1887 to 1900. After owner Frank Leland moved many of the team's players to the Chicago Union Giants, Peters formed his owned team, the Peters Union Giants. He ran the club until 1923.