Cleveland Spiders – 1909-1932, 1955-1972
Craig Shifflett, GM
Franchise #9
History
Brief: Franchise #20 was an
original franchise in Boston led by The Founder, Jim Lafargue. The team struggled
on the field and, consequently, with poor attendance during its first five
seasons, Lafargue was forced to sell out for pennies on the dollar to
Western Industries in 1908. That experiment failed as well, and Franchise
#20 was disbanded. It would be 70 years before the Franchise #20 would be
reactivated, by Jim Lafargue in 1978 in the Meadowlands.
In 1909, to fill the void,
the league would create a new Franchise, #9, awarding control to Craig
Shifflett, who would move the team from the Western marshes to Cleveland,
where the club would play before large crowds until the middle of the 1933
season, when he sold the team to a Baltimore investment group headed by
Walter MacEachern.
After a 22-year absence,
Shifty reacquired the team from MacEachern near the end of the 1955 season.
The team returned to Cleveland, where it stayed until 1972, when Houston
high-roller Scott Brown added the franchise to his portfolio. In 1996,
Shifflett would return once again, this time to purchase Franchise #4,
which had been lost in Binghamton for several seasons. Craig would move the
club to Allegheny, where it stayed for more
than a decade. He sold his franchise following the 2010 TCBA season and
retired from active league participation.
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