1899 St. Louis Perfectos season

The 1899 St. Louis Perfectos season was the team's 18th season in St. Louis, Missouri and their eighth season in the National League. The Perfectos went 84–67 during the season and finished fifth in the National League.^[1]

This was the team's only season in which they were named the Perfectos. The Robison brothers, who had just bought the team from original owner Chris von der Ahe, changed the colors to red, the name of the team to Perfectos, and the name of the ballpark to League Park. The red color proved so popular that fans and sportswriters began referring to the team by the shade of red, cardinal. The next season, the team officially became the Cardinals.

The team benefited from many players who were transferred to the team from the Cleveland Spiders, which were also owned by the Robison brothers. This led to the Spiders compiling the worst season in MLB history, losing 134 games. However, the Perfectos wound up finishing only fifth. The pennant-winning Brooklyn Superbas, who finished 18½ games ahead of St. Louis, benefited from a similar arrangement, as Brooklyn's owners also owned the Baltimore Orioles, allowing them to also transfer their better players to one team. After the 1899 season, such arrangements were outlawed in the National League, and both the Spiders and Orioles were among four teams eliminated from the league.

NOTE: The "Perfectos" nickname was never official and it certainly didn't originate with the ownership (Robison brothers). Contemporary sources confirm the name was sarcastic and bestowed by the local cadre of base ball writers as a pejorative reference to their preseason over-optimism and the fact that so many new players came to St. Louis from the 1898 Cleveland Spiders, which was a historically poor-performing team also owned by the Robison Brothers. Naturally, the team finished 5th, albeit with a winning record. Credit for the accuracy on the etymology of the team nickname goes to Jerry Vickery, who was the original curator of the Cardinals Museum and Hall of Fame. Jerry had a deep friendship with legendary Hall of Fame sportswriter Bob Broeg. Broeg carried the story forward from his relationship with another Hall of Fame base ball writer from St. Louis, J. Roy Stockton, who covered the Cardinals from 1915 to 1958. Stockton also wrote for The Sporting News (based in StL) and had a relationship with the Spink Brothers, who covered the 1899 St. Louis National League team.