Aided by an ownership structure most kindly described as corrupt, the Spiders are easily the worst team in major league history. Most of their players, and all of their good ones, were shipped to St. Louis, which was largely owned by the same gang of characters.

A disgrace.

Probably the worst team of all-time, worse than the 62 Mets, the '03 Tigers, and any other squad you can think of. The best player on this team was probably Joe Quinn, a workmanlike second baseman, born in Australia, who had a fairly long, and fairly good career. Virtually everybody else on the team was at best a very marginal major leaguer or a simply non-descript below average player. The team folded after this season, as the National League pared away 4 of the worst teams in it's clunky 12 team league. Cleveland actually had a solid contender before this season, but the owners of that time sometimes held interests in more than one club- also called syndicate baseball- which of course would be illegal today. St. Louis, who Cleveland's owners also ran, was one of the worst teams, but the owners must have felt that having a good team there would be more profitable. Therefore, they shipped all of Cleveland's stars, like Cy Young, star shortstop Bobby Wallace, and HOF outfielder Jesse Burkett there, and Cleveland was left with a truly horrid team. There was no team in 1900, but the following year the A.L. put a team there which still exists today...20 wins and 134 losses, certainly the worst team ever.

In 1899. The Spiders were effectively the lead farm club for the St. Louis Perfectos. If a Spider started playing too good, he was sent to the Perfectos. They were a minor league caliber team playing a major league schedule. The worst big league team ever!

If Jay Mariotti were a sportswriter for the Cleveland Spiders, he would throw his hands up in despair and walk out within the first week. Just a horrible organization and even more horrible owners, who traded away great players like Cy Young for no names. They didn't play a third of their games at home because their own family was so ashamed with the way they played. They were last in just about every offensive category and lost 39 of their last 40 to top it off.