Looking at the American sports teams of yesteryear, I have found two that may be tied for “worst team in history.”
Seattle Pilots (MLB, 1969-1969): Where can I start? They had to play in a ballpark with the unfortunate name of Sick’s Stadium. Nobody came to see them, since their ticket prices were $6 (high at that time) and Sick’s Stadium was so poorly prepared, seats were being built on opening day and the toilets wouldn’t work if too many people were there. They ended up with the worst record in 1969 baseball. The Pilots planned to turn themselves around in 1970, but by that time, they had moved to Milwaukee. They seem to have only two lasting legacies: pitcher Jim Bouton’s infamous book Ball Four and their catchy theme song, Go, Go You Pilots!, a stick-in-your head tune that lists all the teams in the AL and promises “Go, go you Pilots! You’re going to be the best!” Yeah right.
California Seals/Oakland Seals/California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons/ah, forget it (NHL, 1967-1978): So they lasted longer than the Pilots. That’s probably because they had more people going to see them. They had a nice Southern California home and later, a cool mascot drawn by Sparky Schulz, but that doesn’t mean they were any good. They had many owners who were always trying to move them, and they seemed to change their name every other year. They also have the dubious honor of being one of two teams which played in the only NHL game in which a player was killed on the ice. They always lost more games than they won every season. They moved to Cleveland, but eventually merged with the North Stars.
Any other teams that you think are as bad or worse than these two?
The Kansas City Athletics never had a winning season and they were there quite a while (1955-1967) . And until Charles Finley bought the team, the Athletics’ principal function seemed to be helping out the Yankees by serving as a de facto farm team.
Hard to imagine a franchise worse than the Vancouver Grizzlies. They had incompetent owners, managers and coaches, and insanely incompetent overpaid players (ie: Sleep Country Reeves). Their marketing team was useless - in the last year of the team’s existence they announced that they needed to focus on marketing the team to Vancouver’s sizeable Asian population. No shit. It took them 5 years to realize they needed to market the team to a near majority of the city’s population?
They beat every NBA record for futility that they could think of, and for good measure beat those records repeatedly.
We have the classic examples of the St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators. In more than 50 years, the Browns only won a single pennant and were immortalized by the saying “St. Louis, first in booze, first in shoes and last in the American League.”
The Senators weren’t a lot better, except for having Walter Johnson.
For single-season futility, you have to give the award to the 1962 New York Mets, who lost 120 games, including something like 22 in a row. And I believe there were a couple of NFL expansion teams (New Orleans and Tampa Bay) that didn’t win a single game during their first season or two.
Actually, between 1924 and 1933, the Senators had a pretty good team – in the first division every year but once, finishing first three times, second once, and third three times. Then they traded Joe Cronin and went to hell.
Worst single year? Several candidates:
1962 New York Mets. Actually, their hitting was fair to middling, but their pitching was absolutely horrible. Their 40-120 record is the worst in the 20th century.
1899 Cleveland Spiders. 20 wins, 134 losses. Fired their manager after he went 8 and 30; the new manager, Joe Quinn, went 12 and 104, probably the worst managerial record in history. Their ace pitcher was 4 and 30.
1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A perfect record – 0-14. The also lost several game in a row at the beginning of 1977 before finishing an inspiring 2-12. Tampa has also been pretty bad in the long run.
1995-97 Philadelphia 76ers – 18 wins, 64 losses.
Long-term worst in baseball are the Browns. One pennant in over half a century; and their only really good team (1922) missed the pennant by one game.
A second vote for the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. They were amazingly awful. they played nearly all their games on the road to punish the city for forbidding them from playing on Sunday. All their best players were shipped off to the St. louis Cardinals - who were owned by the same person.
They were also the last Major League team to be contracted, unless Selig gets his way.
[nitpick]
The Spiders were one of four teams that was contracted by the NL after the 1899 season.
Washington, Louisville, and Baltimore were also given the heave ho as the NL shrunk from 12 to 8
[/nitpick]
I cast a further vote on the Cleveland Spiders as the biggest single-season debacle. For further information on the Spiders, look in the Ken Burns book “Baseball.” According to an anecdote therein, they even tried to hire their hotel tobacconist to pitch one game. They were so bad, the book says, nobody bothered to take their team picture.
Some teams mentioned, and I’m sure some one will sort me out on these stats, I really dont have time to look them up:
ARIZONA CARDINALS- One playoff appearance ion something like 30 or 40 years?
WINNEPEG JETS and the WASHINGTON CAPITOLS both had really, really horrible NHL seasons, I think the Jets was 1981 and the Craps their debut season in 1974, IIRC less than 10 wins each?
PHILADELPHIA 76ERS one season in the early 70s won 7-9 games.
PHILADELPHIA FEVER of the MISL were really horrible one season, winning less than 10 games and losing to Pittsburgh 11-0 one game (and I watched the entire thing, I mean, it was maybe the worst sports performance I had ever seen), before they folded.
LA CLIPPERS need to be included for pure futility, one playoff appearance in around 20 or more years.
If you are looking or the worst COLLECTION of sports franchises, look no further than the WORLD FOOTBALL LEAGUE!! After their only championship game in 1974, a creditor showed up to collect their uniforms! On another team, the coach had to lend players money.
Even worse than the Spiders was the team fielded by the Detroit Tigers on May 18, 1912. Ty Cobb has been suspended for attacking a fan*, and the entire Detroit team went out on strike. To avoid a forfeit, Detroit hired nine sandlotters and sent them out against the Philadelphia Athletics.
The result wasn’t pretty: a 24-2 rout by the Athletics, despite the fact that reportedly the Athletics started bunting every time up. Pitcher Al Travers went the distance for the Tigers, giving up 26 hits. Luckily unearned runs brought his ERA for the game (and his career) down to 15.75. Ed Irvin was the Tiger’s hitting stars – 2 for 3 with two triples, one of only three players in MLB history to hit two triples in his first game.
The Tiger players realized their folly and (partially on the urging of Cobb) came back to play. But the replacement team looked like it would have been unable to win a single game at the major league level.
*The fan was crippled, which didn’t help Cobb’s image. However, the reason why the Detroit team was behind Cobb was that they felt he was justified. It seems likely the fan had shouted something about Cobb being half-black. Cobb, being a rabid southerner (and something of a racist) blew up, partially because of what it implied about his mother, who he idolized.
They lost their first 26 regular season games, 11 by shutout.
Can you imagine another Pro team going through a season and two thirds without a win?
Because they play at least 4X as many games in a season, it is comparing apples and oranges to say that no MLB, NHL or NBA Team ever went winless so long.
Having said that, I think the Tampa Bay Bucs 1976-1977 were the worst NFL team ever. I think the case can be made, with which reasonable people may disagree, that it was truly the worst pro sports team put in the field in modern times. (in a big 4 league in the U.S.)
