Providence Rubes

The Providence Rubes of Providence, Rhode Island, played exactly one season, 1926, and won the pennant doing it, going 97-55 and finishing first in the Class A circuit that covered New England and the mid-Atlantic. The club was the Boston Braves' farm team that year, which is how it came to be managed by the Braves' recently retired lefthander, Rube Marquard.

Marquard had won 201 big-league games, including a 19-decision winning streak for the 1912 New York Giants that stood as a record for decades, and he would be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1971. He had thrown his last major league pitch for Boston in 1925. The Providence club was, by every reference account, named for him, making it one of the few teams in baseball history to carry its own manager's nickname; period papers would settle whether the name was the front office's idea or a sportswriter's joke that stuck. Marquard also put himself on the mound seven times, going 3-1 with a 3.71 ERA at age 39.

The pennant was won by the rest of the staff. Foster Edwards went 25-8 and Bill Anderson 20-11, each with an ERA under three, and Hal Goldsmith added a 2.41 mark in spot duty. Herb Thomas led the regulars at .326 and Dave Harris hit 15 home runs. Home games were played at Kinsley Park.

The name lasted one winter. For 1927 the club went back to Providence's traditional 19th-century nickname and played four more seasons under it before folding after 1930, which leaves the Rubes as a single-season champion with a Hall of Famer in the dugout and nothing to follow.