Helena Senators
The Helena Senators, based in Helena, Montana, played across six different leagues between 1892 and 1914, more than any other club in the state. Helena appeared in the Montana State League in 1892, 1900 and 1905, the Pacific Northwest League in 1902, the Pacific National League in 1903, the Inter-Mountain League in 1909 and the Union Association from 1911 through 1914.
The name was borrowed rather than invented. Helena papers proposed Senators in the spring of 1900, taking it from the old Washington club, and the Anaconda Standard responded by calling the choice unoriginal and suggesting the city display some imagination instead. The Standard's counterproposal was Crackers, in honor of Helena's cracker factory, followed by two jabs at the capital's political reputation: Boodlers, or Vindicators if the Helena Independent preferred, in which case Anaconda would take up Conspirators and fight it out on that line. Helena kept Senators.
Helena had the best record in Montana's first professional league and did not get to keep the title. The club went 29-21 across the split 1892 season, better than any of the six charter members, and led the four-team second half at 15-11. Some of that was bought. The league capped salaries at $200 per club per month and Helena was reported to be paying between $500 and $700, one of three clubs at roughly triple the limit.
Helena met first-half winner Butte in a five-game championship series and the clubs split the first four. The fifth game was never played. Helena's share of the gate from the two games in Butte came to $176, and Butte would not hand it over. Butte first claimed it was holding back roughly $59 that Helena owed the state association, an organization Butte itself owed more than three times as much. Manager William Muth said he would settle Helena's share himself. Butte then said it feared Helena would not appear for the deciding game if paid, so Muth offered a $1,000 bond guaranteeing his team would show. Butte preferred to keep the $176. At the appointed hour Butte offered to pay on the condition that the money be returned if rain or anything else stopped the game. Muth refused, Helena went home, and Butte took the championship by default.
The fullest account is Helena's own Independent-Record and reads like it, but its details are specific and checkable. The paper noted that Butte had withheld about $400 from Philipsburg the same season, and it went out of its way to record that the umpire was not the issue, only that Helena had been made to play the two games with cheap substitute balls. Muth announced he would sue for the money.
Hall of Fame shortstop Joe Tinker played for the 1900 Helena Senators, four years before he became the first name in the Chicago Cubs infield combination that Franklin Pierce Adams made famous in verse. Helena finished that season 39-33 and second in a four-team field behind Great Falls.
The club won a league championship in 1909 in the Inter-Mountain League, a Class D circuit that disbanded in the middle of that same season. Helena then became a charter member of the Union Association in 1911 and stayed through 1914, the league's final year.
The Montana State League ran in scattered seasons between 1892 and 1925 and consisted entirely of Montana clubs in every year but 1909. In the 1800s and first half of the 1900s, teams existed in thousands of small towns across the United States, as Americans looked for recreational activities and entertainment in the era before TV.
