The Last of their Tribe

 
Here are the last two active players for each team that moved
in the 20th century:
 
Team  Moved  Last                      Last
      After  Year  Last Player         Year  Next to Last Player
MIL A  1901  1920  George McBride      1915  Davy Jones
BAL A  1902  1915  Roger Bresnahan     1914  Mike Donlin
BOS N  1952  1968  Eddie Mathews       1967  Lew Burdette
STL A  1953  1967  Don Larsen          1965  Roy Sievers
                                             Satchel Paige
PHI A  1954  1965  Vic Power           1965  Nellie Fox
BRO N  1957  1971  Bob Aspromonte      1970  John Roseboro
NY  N  1957  1973  Willie Mays         1972  Hoyt Wilhelm
WAS A  1960  1983  Jim Kaat            1975  Harmon Killebrew
MIL N  1965  1987  Phil Niekro         1979  Rico Carty
KC  A  1967  1987  Reggie Jackson      1984  Rick Monday
SEA A  1969  1982  Fred Stanley        1981  Mike Marshall
WAS A  1971  1986  Toby Harrah         1985  Jeff Burroughs
 
"Last Year" is the last season a member of the team appeared in a
major league game.
 
Within eleven years, every member of the 1954 Athletics were out of the
majors for good.  How does this compare to ALL teams, not just the ones
in the process of packing up and leaving town.

    Well, I checked it out and in doing so discovered the 1890 Brooklyn
Gladiators of the American Association.  This is a team that went 26-72
in their only year of existence before disbanding on August 25th.
They might not have accomplished much that year, but they did far and
away set the record for the quickest collective exit by a single team.
Only three players on that squad would ever play major league ball again
after that season.  And those three, Ed Daily, Jumbo Davis and Joe
Gerhardt would play a combined 57 games over the rest of their careers
and would all be gone before the end of the next season.

    The quickest exits:
 
                 Last                   Last
    Team   Year  Year      Team   Year  Year
    BRO a  1890  1891      BAL a  1883  1890
    CHI n  1871  1876      WAS a  1884  1891
    NY  a  1885  1890      MIL U  1884  1891
    BRO F  1915  1920      WAS A  1903  1910
    BUF F  1914  1920      BOS N  1908  1915
 
Since 1940, the quickest exit has been 9 years:
 
                 Last
    Team   Year  Year
    NY  N  1944  1953
    PIT N  1945  1954
    PIT N  1946  1955
 
A number of modern teams had left after 10 years.  The most recent:
 
                 Last
    Team   Year  Year
    BOS A  1960  1970
    DET A  1976  1986
    MIN A  1978  1988
    MIN A  1980  1990
    HOU N  1985  1995
 
The median time to extinction was 16 years.  You'd expect teams that
vanished quickly to be bad ones (like the 1890 Brooklyn Gladiators) but
what were the quickest departing good teams?  Here are the five fastest
exits by teams with winning records:
 
                 Last
    Team   Year  Year    W    L  WPCT Place
    CHI n  1871  1876   19    9  .679     2
    BUF F  1914  1920   80   71  .530     4
    MIL U  1884  1891    8    4  .667
    BAL U  1884  1892   58   47  .552     4
    BOS A  1904  1912   95   59  .617     1
 
There was one great 19th century team that just missed the cutoff:
 
    NY  a  1884  1893   75   32  .701     1
 
The postwar teams at the top of the list:
 
                 Last
    Team   Year  Year    W    L  WPCT Place
    NY  N  1950  1960   86   68  .558     3
    BOS A  1957  1967   82   72  .532     3
    BOS A  1958  1968   79   75  .513     3
    NY  A  1958  1968   92   62  .597     1
    HOU N  1985  1995   83   79  .512     3
 
Other postwar pennant/division winners that were gone within 11 years:
 
                 Last
    Team   Year  Year    W    L  WPCT Place
    CLE A  1954  1965  111   43  .721     1
    STL N  1981  1992   59   43  .578     1
    CAL A  1982  1993   93   69  .574     1
 
I guess St. Louis didn't technically win their division in 1981.  My
program made the silly assumption that the team with the best record
in the division would've ended up in first place.
 
Finally, here are the last two active players for each defunct league:
 
League Last  Last                      Last
       Seen  Year  Last Player         Year  Next to Last Player
NA     1875  1904  Jim O'Rourke        1897  Cap Anson
U      1884  1902  Frank Foreman       1901  Al Maul
                                             Joe Quinn
P      1890  1909  Arlie Latham        1907  Jack Beckley
                                             Tommy Corcoran
                                             Lave Cross
                                             Jimmy McAleer
AA     1891  1918  Hughie Jennings     1914  Clark Griffith
F      1915  1934  Grover Hartley      1933  Jack Quinn
 
A complete list (for each team) of the last year a member of that team 
was active in the major leagues.

Tom Ruane
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