The Colorado Rockies Are So Bad The Most Obscure Team in MLB History is Involved
The Altoona Mountain Citys have entered the chat.
The Colorado Rockies are so bad after 50 games this season that they’re connected to the Altoona Mountain Citys- also known as the Altoona Unfortunates (yep, really)- in my estimation the most obscure major league team in history. (And you know if I think they’re the most obscure, then that’s a pretty good sign.)
The Rockies are 8-42 after 50 games, the worst MLB start since 1895- the year Babe Ruth was born, how’s that for context- and only four other teams are even on that same list, and all from the first 20 years of major league baseball. Let’s get into today’s history lesson, working from most recent to the original atrocious start. And when I say original, I mean it.
The 1895 Louisville Colonels started 7-43. When the American Association, the first true rival to the National League, failed after the 1891 season, four clubs were added to the NL. The Colonels were one of the four and struggled from then on out. They never finished higher than 9th the rest of the decade so 1895 was a trend, not an aberration. They were almost as bad in 1894 but were “merely” 12-38 after 50 games. Colonels’ owner Barney Dreyfuss eventually bought into the Pittsburgh Pirates (owners were allowed to own more than one team at the time), and transferred all his good players there after 1899, when the NL contracted back to eight teams. None of the 1895 players made the move, but some youngster who made his debut on the 1897 Colonels named Honus Wagner was the prize…
At 8-42, these Rockies are tied with the 1889 Louisville Colonels for fourth-worst start in MLB history. Yes, the Colonels are the only team in the top five twice! This particular Colonel team was the first team in MLB history to lose 100 games in a season, finishing 27-111. (Since the schedule had only recently been upped to 140 games a year, losing 100 in a year had previously been impossible.) Not only that, but they also lost 24 straight road games- still the MLB record, although the 2021 Arizona Diamondbacks somehow tied it- and had two home losses in their to run it to 26 in a row, still the longest-ever losing streak in history.
(26 in a row also happens to be the longest winning streak in MLB history, set by the 1916 New York Giants, and is the title of my book on that season. So, you should go buy that.)
Owner Mordecai Davidson took full control of the Colonels in mid-summer 1888, when he immediately fired the manager and named himself skipper, because that always works. The team, unsurprisingly, was awful the rest of the way. In the offseason, Davidson brought in a new manager, sold his three best players and started looking for a buyer, as this whole owner thing was harder than he thought! He fired said manager just 10 games into the season and went through three others before the season mercifully ended. 1889, unsurprisingly, was his only full year as a baseball owner.
And what did the 1890 Colonels do without Davidson at the helm? Why merely become the first-ever team to go worst-to-first and win the American Association pennant. The issue is that there were three major leagues that season with the advent of the Players’ League, created (as you might expect) by the top players to try and get paid more. Generally, the best players were in the Players’ League, the good players were in the National League, and the worst were in the American Association, which brought in four new franchises to replace the two that had bolted to the NL (Brooklyn and Cincinnati, who are still in the NL) and a third club that had folded.
The extreme dilution of talent allowed the Colonels to add a few decent players and become the class of the American Association very quickly. They went 88-44, won the pennant by ten games and played Brooklyn in the “World’s Series,” (a precursor to today’s Series but officially considered “exhibition games” and not a true champion-deciding slate), making the Brooklyn the last team to win two different pennants in two consecutive years for two different leagues. (The Players’ League asked for a three-team round-robin World’s Series with their pennant-winning Boston team, was denied, and folded after that year, with four teams merging with their NL counterparts.) The series ended in a tie, and as the AA folded after 1891, this was the last two-league World Series until 1903… when the Pittsburgh Pirates, AKA the old Louisville Colonels, lost to the Boston Red Sox from the upstart American League.
And thank you for your patience. We have now reached the part of the story that includes the Altoona (Pennsylvania) Mountain Citys (colloquial spelling has it without the apostrophe), the most obscure team in MLB history. The Union Association of 1884 was the third challenger to the National League, which formed in 1876. The American Association was the first in 1882, and its reasonable success allowed other rich guys delusions of grandeur. Enough of them got together and formed the Union Association for 1884.
The president and founder was Henry Lucas, a beer magnate in St. Louis. He and his buddies were one team short of an eight-team league with two months to go before Opening Day. You need an even number of teams to avoid one team being idle all the time, and they also wanted a team in Pittsburgh. Altoona was baseball-mad and also a railroad hub about 100 miles away from Pittsburgh. The Altoona minor-league team heard about the UA’s issues and sent a telegram offering to become the 8th team in mid-February. The UA, starting to get a little frantic at this point, accepted pretty much blindly.
Altoona, as a major league city, did about as well as you would expect. Though intentions were good with a hastily-built new park, the team didn’t have a chance. They started 0-11, and though they did win four in a row in mid-May, the writing was on the wall. They had already missed several paydays, and the good players had started jumping to other teams. President Lucas showed up for the final homestand to discuss the future of the club and that sealed it. Altoona’s last game as a major league city was May 31st, 1884, and they were so desperate for players they convinced a guy who had played for the minor league team the year before and quit to become a dance instructor to be their left fielder for the final game. His name was George Daisy (you can’t make this stuff up) and in a tie game in the 8th dropped an easy fly ball to allow Baltimore to take the lead and eventually win. Altoona finished 6-19 as a franchise, which is better than what the Rockies were after 25 games this season- they were 4-21!
So, you can understand that in addition to the “Mountain Citys,” they’re also known as the “Altoona Unfortunates,” which is what the local paper started calling them towards the end, a much more memorable moniker. (The current Altoona minor-league team has occasionally worn alternate uniforms with “Mountain City” on them but have never worn an “Unfortunates” jersey. Probably for the best.)
Which is why, in some of these Rockies 50-game start articles, you see it slyly phrased as “a franchise’s first 50 games,” because the replacement team for Altoona started a week later with a fresh 0-0 record. The Kansas City Cowboys, or Unions (they had no official nickname and it’s a matter of whatever you want to call them), made their UA debut a week later, on June 7th, and promptly went 7-43 in their first 50 games, tying for second on this list, despite winning just one more game than Altoona did in 25. They finished 16-63 and somehow still allegedly ended up making money that season, as K.C baseball fans were excited to be part of any major league and showed up anyway.
The 1884 Union Association season has been questioned by most historians as to whether it was a “true” major league because of Altoona and how lopsided it was. Surprisingly, the President who owned the St. Louis franchise stocked his team with the best players and they ran away with the pennant, winning their first 20 games (still the MLB record for a start, and was the pro sports record until the 2015-’16 Golden State Warriors won 24 straight) and finishing 94-19 with an .832 winning percentage, still the best finish ever in MLB. The UA folded after one season and the Maroons joined the National League, where they never finished over .500, moved to Indianapolis three seasons later and folded two years after that.
Which brings us, finally, to the worst 50-game start in major league history… which happened in the very first year of the National League’s existence, 1876, when the Cincinnati Reds started 6-44.
These Reds were a new team for the new league, and they have the second worst total winning percentage for any team that is considered to have played a full season in MLB history. They finished 9-56 with a .138 percentage. (Yes, the infamous 1899 Cleveland Spiders, who went 20-134, somehow beat them with a .130. The Rockies, however, are currently on pace to break both the total losses and lowest percentage records.)
What makes it even funnier is that the Reds started the season 2-0, and then only won seven games the rest of the season. Just like this year’s Rockies, they were 4-21 after 25 games, and just a couple weeks later they were 6-26 after winning two more in a row. Yep, that means they then went on an 18-game losing streak to get to 6-44 after 50. They snapped that streak in game 51 and then finished the season 2-11.
The modern Cincinnati Reds like to say “Established 1869,” connecting them to the very first pro team ever, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. This is, however, revisionist history to the extreme. Most of the original Red Stockings jumped to the newly-formed Boston franchise in 1871, and the Cincinnati franchise disbanded as a result. (The resulting Boston franchise still exists today as the Atlanta Braves, making them the oldest continuous team in American pro sports, and with better connections to the 1869 Red Stockings than the actual Reds.)
The Reds, meanwhile, re-formed for that 1876 season and lasted until 1880, when they were kicked out of the National League for selling beer at games and allowing the park to be used on Sundays. You see, part of the reason for the NL’s formation was to help baseball’s reputation, which was rather unsavory at the time. They wanted clean games to help win over the “proper” people of the time, which included no alcohol at the park and no Sunday games, as many states had “blue laws” banning pretty much anything except church on Sunday.
The Reds then re-formed a third time for the new American Association in 1882, and as mentioned above, jumped to the National League with Brooklyn after the 1889 season. This is the team that still exists today, but that didn’t stop them from having a 150th birthday party in 2019, claiming 1869 as their start. I mean, I guess somebody has to claim it so it might as well be the Reds.
So, this is the exclusive company the 2025 Colorado Rockies have joined. They are well on the way to becoming the first team since the 1935 Boston Braves to win fewer than 40 games in a season, which to me is worse than potentially losing more than 121 games and breaking the modern day record for losses the Chicago White Sox set just last year.
Oh, and who was the most notable player on the 1935 Braves? Babe Ruth, who as you know from the beginning, was born in 1895, the last time a team started this badly through 50 games.
