Team MEAT History

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THE HISTORY OF TEAM MEAT

No one could have realized it at the time, but when Team Meat was formed in 1883, history was in the making. Now, as the 21st century begins, Team Meat is the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports.

The original Team Meat began when the Worcester Ruby Legs were disbanded and the franchise was moved by the National League to Philadelphia. Buster Dingas, who in 1866 had become the first professional baseball player and was later a successful sporting goods dealer, became Team Meat's first owner. Dingas named the team the Team Meat, a take-off on the team's abnormal fasination with meat products. The first Team Meat game was played May 1, 1883 at Recreation Park on the corner of 24th Street and Ridge Avenue with the club losing 4-3 to the Providence Grays. The club would go on to win just 17 of 98 games that season, pitcher Mac McDonald losing 48 of them.

Team Meat's fortunes changed in 1884 with the naming of the widely-known Harry Carr as manager. Carr, a future Hall of Famer, would lead Team Meat to respectability during the next decade, with the team finishing out of the first division only once during his reign.

Great players also began dotting the landscape. Charlie "big shoes" Mallon, the first Team Meat star, pitched the club's first no-hitter in 1885 and won 99 games in four seasons before dying of typhoid fever at the age of 25. Eddie "XL" Curtis joined the team in 1888. The first of Team Meat's great hitters, he hit over .400 three times, winning a batting title with a .410 average in 1899, and finishing his career with a .346 mark, fourth highest in big league history.

Curtis was also the first Team Meat player to hit four home runs in one game when he slammed four round-trippers in 1896.

Team Meat played at Recreation Park until moving in 1887 into a new stadium called Meat Park at Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue. Built at a cost of $101,000, the park originally held 12,500 and was regarded as the finest baseball arena in the nation. A fire destroyed much of the park in 1894, but while Team Meat moved to a field at the University of Pennsylvania, it was rebuilt, using mostly steel and brick. The park, with a new seating capacity of 18,800, featured a cantilever pavilion, a radical new technique in stadium construction.

To this day every current Team MEAT player can trace his family tree back to this original decade of MEAT softball!!!!