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Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1899, page 4. |
The Chicago Cubs have not always been known as “Cubs.” They assumed that name, beginning in 1902, when their roster was stocked with young players. Years earlier, when their roster was stocked with another crop of young players, they were dubbed the “Colts,” a name they carried for a decade, before losing their longtime player/manager, Adrian “Cap Anson.” When he retired, following the 1897 season, they became the “Orphans,” reflecting the loss of their father figure.[i] They remained the “Orphans” (for the most part) for several years, until transitioning slowly to the “Cubs,” beginning in 1902. [ii]
But throughout the 1899 season, the “Orphans” were regularly referred to by several new, western-themed nicknames; names that lasted for only one season – the Cowboys, the Rough Riders and the Rancheros.
The Chicago Inter-Ocean preferred “Rough
Riders.”
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Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 21, 1899, page 8. |
The Chicago Tribune preferred “Cowboys.”
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Chicago Tribune, July 2, 1899, page 6. |
The Logansport Pharos-Tribune (and a number of other newspapers throughout the Midwest) preferred “Rancheros.”
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Logansport Pharos-Tribune (Logansport, Indiana), July 13, 1899, page 8. |
The team earned the names, along with their spurs, during spring training at the Casa del Consuelo Hotel in Hudson Hot Springs, New Mexico, now known as Faywood Hot Springs.[iii] They apparently didn’t play much baseball, but they staged a mock-train robbery, rode bucking broncos, learned to use a lariat, hunted jackrabbits and climbed mountains. But it wasn’t all fun and games – they did play a few pick-up games against rough-riding cowboys, rancheros, miners, and veterans of Teddy Roosevelt’s cavalry regiment known as the “Rough Riders.”
The owner of the hotel travelled to Chicago early in the season and helped the players look the part, if only for one game. They may have looked good, but it didn’t help their game.
Just before the serious work of the afternoon the genial Mr. Graham, who runs the hotel at Hudson Hot Springs, N. M., stood up in his private box, bared his head, and made a speech to Chicago’s ball tossers. He told them, among other things, that they were genuine rough riders, and to give the proper emphasis to his assertion the good man from New Mexico presented the bunch with a full cowboy equipment, consisting of saddle, spurs, rifle cases, lariats, schapps, and a broad sombrero decorated with a dozen silver stars. . . .
All this, remember took place before the umpire ordered our young men to “play ball.” Later, when the self-same young men were draining their composite cup of undiluted bitterness to the very dregs and incidentally breaking the hearts of their admirers, the girl in the Nile-green gown who sat near the press box voiced the views of the assembled thousands when she said:
“Well, they may be rough riders, but they are wondrous gentle today. Why don’t they hit the ball?”
Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 30, 1899, page 10.
The story of how and why the team wound up in a remote corner of the New Mexico Territory is an interesting footnote in Cubs’ history. And if nothing else, these mostly forgotten, alternate team names might come in handy on a throwback uniform, or (at least in the case of “Rancheros”) for Hispanic Heritage Month, as an historically appropriate alternative for the conventional “Los Cubs” jersey, or the like (finders’ fee welcome, or I may be open to a licensing deal – call me).
Chicago’s Spring Training History
During the ten seasons previous to 1899, Chicago’s National League baseball team had tried about ten different spring training locations – none of them satisfactory. Thomas Burns, Chicago’s manager, recounted the problems before the 1898 season.
During the past nine years the Chicago team has tried no less than eight different places for spring training, and not one of the eight proved satisfactory from the players’ standpoint. At St. Augustine the weather was too cold; at Denver the weather, the hotel, and the grounds were all unsatisfactory; at Atlanta the weather and the grounds were faulty; at Galveston the grounds, the weather, and to some the hotel came in for the usual amount of condemnation; at Hot Springs [Arkansas] both the weather and the grounds were condemned, and at Kansas City the weather did not please. Chicago was tried as an experiment one year, and it was equally unsatisfactory; therefore I have arrived at the conclusion that a model training place, where the combination of good weather, good grounds, and good accommodations may be obtained, does not exist. If it does, I have not been able to locate it.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 22, 1898, page 5.
The team’s President selected Hudson Hot Springs as the new training site because, “it more nearly combines the requirements for training than any other place yet visited by the Chicago team.” [iv]
Training grounds for the Chicago base-ball team have been decided upon. Far away from the haunts of civilization, in the home of coyotes, mountain lions and bad Indians, the orphans will be taken for their preliminary practice for the pennant race. The home base will be located at Hudson Hot Springs, N. M. The dismembered fragments of the “Rockies” on the north may be used for a backstop. The cactus and sage studded plains on the south will serve for outfield. . . .
There is a splendid hot spring for drinking and bathing, a warm spring with a natural pool for open air bathing, perfect climate, good hotel, delightful natural surroundings and in all probability an acceptable ball field for practicing.
El Paso Herald, January 31, 1899, page 4.
Hudson Hot Springs
Although there is no direct evidence of how or why such a remote location came to their attention, they may well have heard about it from A. G. Spaulding, the former White Stocking and founder of the Chicago-based sporting goods company that still bears his name, a regular guest of the hotel.
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El Paso Herald, October 14, 1897, page 3. |
Mr. A. G. Spaulding the well known sporting goods man of Chicago spent several seasons at the Hudson Hot Springs and pronounced the waters equal to the waters of the famous Carlsbad waters of Germany.
El Paso Herald, October 14, 1897, page 3.
Hudson Hot Springs was then, as now, a remote location. New Mexico was still more than a decade from statehood, and even the railroad ticket agents had a hard time locating it on their maps.
In a word, the local ball tossers are sorely troubled over this question of the location of the spring training grounds. Tall Mr. Donohue put in three solid days in a vain effort to find Hudson Hot springs on the map. Finally, on Friday last, he became desperate and visited the telegraph office. In a fine Italaian hand he penned these words on a yellow blank:
“Proprietor of Hotel, Hudson Hot Springs, Grant County, New Mexico – Wire me location of your palace. Can’t find you on the map, and the guys at the railroad office say you are not on earth. How about it? T. Donohue.”
Yesterday the telegraph people notified him that they were still making heroic measures to deliver the dispatch. As a result, T. Donohue and his associates are sorely troubled. They fear the management of the local club intend to lose the entire bunch somewhere in the alkali country and spring a team of new faces at the Chicago public. T. Donohue will call on President Hart to-day and humbly ask for further information about the springs.
The Pittsburgh Press, January 31, 1899, page 5.
After the travel arrangements were sorted out, the team’s arrival at Hudson Hot Springs was more exciting than they had bargained for.
“HELD UP” BY BILL LANGE.
“Little Eva” Greets the Chicago Ball Tossers in His Own Peculiar Way.
Special Dispatch to The Inter Ocean.
HUDSON HOT SPRINGS, N. M., March 17. –
The Santa Fe train, carrying the members of the Chicago baseball team, was held up by four mounted men at noon today just as it was slowing up at the Hudson station.
Scores of shot were fired in rapid succession, and the timid ball players ducked behind the backs of car seats, while the courageous or inquisitive ones stuck their heads out of the windows and caught a glimpse of banditti. To the tenderfeet they were a new and strange type of men. Mounted on wiry bronchos with felt sombreros pulled down so that they partially concealed their bearded faces, bearskin schapps covering their legs, and armed to the teeth, they were a tough looking lot.
As the train came to a sudden stop Manager Burns yelled, “Keep that gun pointed straight up, Eva,” and it soon dawned upon the members of the party that the supposed highwaymen were “Bill” Lange, Demont, Tim Donohue, and “Sandow” Mertes, the four Chicago players who have been here a week, and who borrowed from their cowboy acquaintances all the “local coloring” they could get to make the reception of the rest of the team as interesting as possible.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 18, 1899, page 7.
The hotel here where the ball players are quartered, Casa del Consuelo, is a new building, planned after the Spanish style, 205 feet square, with a deep veranda etending all the way around it. There are about seventy apartments, all light and roomy; in fact, it has most modern conveniences.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 26, 1899, page 10.
The real practice with the ball started this morning. A cold wind was blowing down from the mountains, where snow fell last night, and Manager Burs forbade the players going tou to the new-made aldaki ball field. Instead, the men, in uniforms topped off by sombreros, gathered on the open plain in front of the Casa del Consuelo and began limbering up.
To watch the form of the men, the practice was similar to the preliminary before a mid-season game. Despite the raw wind the whole crowd worked fast and made much noise, while cowboys sat in their saddles and wondered at such a scene in the middle of the desert. . . .
The event of the day, however, was Bill Lange breaking a bucking broncho. Bill was armed with great wheel spurs and the whole crowd gathered on the porch of the Casa to watch the event. The animal was led around. Two cowboys held the broncho and Lange swun swung into the saddle. There was a moment of peace, while the animal made up its mind, then it shut up like a jackknife, straightened out again, and kicked. Bill held his seat and again and again the animal tried new movements, but in the end Bill’s 202 pounds weighed on the beast’s conscience and it stopped still. . . .
The whoe team has fallen in love with Hudson and a better feeling lot of men would be hard to find. The men eat at every meal as if famished and the outdoor life makes them look and feel better than any ball-playing could.
Chicago Tribune, March 19, 1899, page 6.
There will be another ball game, and the miners, cowboys, and ranchmen for miles around will be here. It promises to be a day of great excitement, and the game may be interesting, as the Silver City mine is considerably strengthened, as there are several professionals living in the vicinity who play in the Western and Texas leagues.
Next Thursday there is to be a steer-roping contest for the edification of the Chicagos, and Donohue threatens to participate.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 26, 1899, page 10.
Bill Lange was rapidly learning the tricks of the cowmen. Mounted on a huge sorrel Lange was riding with the best when pride took a fall. The big center fielder came down across the desert, his horse at full gallop, in frantic pursuit of a bunch of wild burros. Lange was standing in the stirrups with the lariat whistling around his head as at every jump the sorrel gained on the burros. Finally the big fellow threw, the noose floated out in the air, missed the burro, and settled neatly over a fence post. There was a shock and Lange and his sorrel rolled uninjured on the prairie while the crowd, cowboys, ball palyers, and guests at the Casa del Consuelo yelled with joy.
There was practice in the morning, but as soon as the riders began to arrive in acceptance of the invitation of Mr Graham, proprietor of the House of Comfort[v], ball playing was forgotten. Pat Munn, Bill Brahm, Jack Perkins, and half a dozen other cow punchers tried to play ball in spurs and high-heeled Spanish boots, but they made a worse failure at ball playing than Lange did at lariat throwing and soon abandoned the game.
Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1899, page 4.
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Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 2, 1899, page 11. |
The players did not play much real baseball during their stay, but they got into great shape, and were in good spirits, an improvement over Waycross, Georgia in 1898, where the lack of good food and poor living conditions inspired them to nickname themselves the “Cannibals” (their teammates were the only good thing to eat) or the “Reconcentrados” (a Spanish word for concentration camp inmates in Cuba, which were in the news at the time, during the run-up to the Spanish-American War).[vi] Things were much better in New Mexico, despite the lack of real practice.
The stay at Hudson Hot Springs has given little chance to see the men in baseball or show their form. The few games played offered but little chance for real work, yet the physical condition of these players is well nigh perfect. The free, out-of-door life, broncho riding, mountain climbing, and long hunting trips, have made them hard as rocks. The baths in the waters from the hot spring has driven away all soreness, and the good, plain food of the Casa del Consuelo has kept the men in a state of happy contentment. The Hudson Hot Springs as a resort has drawbacks for real ball playing, but the club has not yet found so good a place for men to get into condition. . . .
There was a typical frontier ball at the Casa del Consuelo Thursday night given by Mr. Graham, the proprietor, for the club. From ranches, towns, and mines the inhabitants poured down to the “House of Comfort” – cowpunchers from distant ranches far up the Mimbres River galloped in across the plain and, obeying the legend, “Please remove your spurs before entereing the ballroom,” stripped off their great Mexican spurs, hung up their sombreros, and entered the room, their high-heeled boots cracking on the polished floor.
The belles of Silver City and Deming came twenty-five miles over mountains and across deserts to lend grace to the function, and swung over the polished floors in the arms of sweater-clad ball players and flannel-swathed cowboys. Men from the diggings – the silver and lead mines on Cook’s Peak, the mines of the Burro and Black Mountains – threw aside the overalls and candle grease of the mines and returned to the civilization they had deserted for the delving for riches. Old Indian fighters, rough riders who served with Roosevelt, bear hunters, cowpunchers, ball players, and citizens and merchants of the towns danced with more spirit than grace.
Chicago Tribune, April 3, 1899, page 6.
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| From left to right: Everitt, De Mont, Chance, Burns, Green, Ryan, Katoll and Connor. Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 2, 1899, page 11. |
After leaving Hudson Hot Springs, the team rode off to Kansas City for a series of real baseball games against the Kansas City Blues of the Western League. Coincidentally, the Kansas City Blues were regularly referred to by the alternate nickname, the “Cowboys.”
Chicago newspapers started using the new names for the Orphans even before the regular season started.
RETURN OF BURNS’ ROUGH RIDERS.
The Chicago baseball team reaches Kansas City today after a month’s training among the cowboys of New Mexico.”
Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1899, page 4.
Newspapers started using the new names even before the regular season began.
Tom Burns’ rough riders, fresh from the plains of New Mexico, may not have had much practice at stick work, but it would be hard to convince the 3,000 spectators who were at the Exposition park today of this fact. The Chicago players hit the ball as readily as if it had been twice the regulation size, making a total of twenty-five hits, of which one was a home run, and eleven were two-baggers.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, April 10, 1899, page 7.
A trend that continued in the regular season, even while mixing in their more familiar name, the “Orphans.”
The Cowboys batted Powell in the third, but after Everitt and Demont had hit safe Burkett again broke through the crowd and caught Chance’s fly.
The Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1899, page 4.
The new name was suited to some double-meaning word-play when the Cowboys faced the Phillies.
The Cowboys continued their triumphal tour of the East today, and for the amusement of a thousand cranks roped and branded the Fillies – branded them with the score 6 to 1.
Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1899, page 4.
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Logansport Pharos-Tribune, May 2, 1899, page 4. |
The new names lasted late into the season.
Cowboys
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Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1899, page 9. |
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Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1899, page 4. |
Rough Riders
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Chicago Inter Ocean, September 5, 1899, page 8. |
Rancheros
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Logansport Pharos-Tribune, July 7, 1899, page 8. |
The Exiles were to have given the Rancheros a double boost at Chicago yesterday, but rain prevented the first game. The Rancheros, however, did their duty in the second game, and shut the Exiles out, and by reason of the Pirates performing the same service for the Spiders in the Smoky City, the Chicagos once more find themselves in fifth place, but only by the narrow margin of two little points. The Spiders, also, were to have played two games with Pirates, but rain put a stop to the second, for which the Rancheros probably have cause to feel thankful.
Logansport Pharos-Tribune, August 6, 1899, page 3.[vii]
Cleveland donated a couple of games to the Quakers while Chicago and New York divided the honors of the day evenly, the Rancheros taking the first game and the Giants the second.
Logansport Pharos-Tribune, September 13, 1899, page 16.
In 1900, the Orphans had a new manager, Tom Loftus, and a new spring training destination, Selma, Alabama. The Chicago Inter-Ocean referred to the team as the “Rough Riders” shortly after they arrived.
Chicago Inter-Ocean, March 26, 1900, page 4.
In their first intra-squad exhibition game in Selma, the two teams were designated the “Colts” and the “Rough Riders,” in what appears to have been the last gasp of the “Rough Riders,” “Cowboys” or “Rancheros” era. All three nicknames quickly vanished before the end of spring training, almost as quickly they had appeared a year earlier.
So if the Cubs ever need a new team nickname for any reason, they need look no further than “Rough Riders,” “Cowboys” or “Rancheros.” Of the three, “Rancheros” seems the best option.
Although the original “Rough Riders” may have freed Cuba from Spanish oppression, some might argue that they merely swapped out one form of oppression for another. The “Cowboys” name is perhaps too closely associated with another city (Dallas) and another sport (football) to find a home in baseball.
“Rancheros,” on the other hand, would make a fine throwback name, and would also be appropriate for Hispanic Heritage Month, in place of the more conventional “Los Cubs” jersey or the like.
“Reconcentrados” and “Cannibals” are more problematic as team names, throwback or otherwise.
[i] Early Sports ‘n’ Pop-Culture History Blog,
“Anson and McNeill – Why the Chicago Cubs were “Orphans”. https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2021/01/anson-and-mcneill-why-chicago-cubs-were.html
[iii] “Faywood Hot Springs, a rustic natural geothermal resort in southwestern New Mexico, has many outdoor public and private soaking pools for those who wish to partake of its healthful and rejuvenating mineral water baths. There are separate clothing-required, clothing-optional (naturist)pools and private and group bathing areas. There are tent sites for camping, pull through RV (recreational vehicle) sites with full hook ups, and private cabins for overnight lodging accommodations.” https://faywoodhotsprings.com/ . Die-hard Cubs fans can book a stay to relive some Chicago baseball history.
[iv] El Paso Herald, January 31, 1899, page 4.
[v] Note: “House of Comfort” is the English translation of the name of the hotel, “Casa del Consuelo.” It is not some euphemism for another sort of business frequently associated with the old West.
[vi] Early Sports ‘n’ Pop-Culture History Blog,
“Anson and McNeill – Why the Chicago Cubs were “Orphans”. https://esnpc.blogspot.com/2021/01/anson-and-mcneill-why-chicago-cubs-were.html
[vii] Note, the “Exiles” here refers to the Cleveland Spiders, who in 1899 set a record for futility that still stands today. Before the season began, St. Louis and Cleveland exchanged virtually all of their players, sending St. Louis’ bad team to Cleveland and Cleveland’s good team to St. Louis. Late in the season, Cleveland stopped playing home games and played all of their games on the road, making them, in effect, “Exiles.” After a 7-0 start in their new home in St. Louis, the old Spiders became known as the Perfectos; one season later, they became the “Cardinals,” named for their deep red uniform color, a color they brought with them from Cleveland.
