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The St. Louis Maroons were a professional baseball club based in St. Louis, Missouri, from 1884-1886. The club, established by Henry Lucas, were the one near-major league quality entry in the Union Association, a league that lasted only one season, due in large part to the dominance of the Maroons. When the UA folded after playing just one season, the Maroons joined the National League. In 1887 the Maroons relocated to Indianapolis and became the Indianapolis Hoosiers, playing three more seasons before folding. ==St. Louis Maroons== The St. Louis Maroons debuted on April 20, 1884, at the Union Base Ball Park, defeating the UA Chicago club, 7-2. Henry Lucas, the founder of the Union Association and owner of the Maroons, stocked his team with most of the league's best talent. The Maroons went 94-19 in that season; for comparison, the Maroons' record would project to 135-27 under the modern schedule of 162 games, while Pythagorean expectation based on the Maroons' results (887 runs scored, 452 runs allowed) and a 162-game schedule would translate to a record of 129-33, but these results are of questionable merit, and their closest rivals, the Cincinnati Outlaw Reds, finished 21 games behind. Those figures indicate something of the quality of the remainder of the organization, which many derided as the "Onion League". One of the Maroons' major stars was pitcher Charlie Sweeney, best known today as the pitcher who left Old Hoss Radbourn to shoulder the pitching burden alone with the Providence Grays of the National League. Radbourn went on to pitch most of the rest of the Providence club's games, winning a total of 60. Sweeney won 24 with the Maroons after having already won 17 with the Grays, so he had a fair year as well. After the Union Association collapsed, the National League was persuaded to bring the St. Louis Union entry into the established league, to try to provide some competition for the St. Louis Browns of the American Association. Unfortunately for the Maroons, the Browns were at the peak of their game, winning pennants four straight years (1885-1888). Meanwhile the Maroons, facing much better competition in the National League, finished well off the National League pace in 1885 and 1886. Fred Dunlap hit for the cycle for the Maroons on May 24, 1886. Following the 1886 season, the team was sold to the league, which in turn sold it to John T. Brush. He moved the team to Indianapolis, where they were renamed the Hoosiers.〔Cash, John David. ''Before They Were Cardinals: Major League Baseball in Nineteenth-Century St. Louis''. University of Missouri Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8262-1401-0, ISBN 978-0-8262-1401-0, p. 107〕 Brush owned the stadium in Indianapolis, which had been previously used by the previous Hoosier team. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「St. Louis Maroons / Indianapolis Hoosiers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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