by John Osbron

Created on: July 27, 2008

There have been some pretty awful teams over the years. There is the famous New York Mets of 1962 who in their inaugural season finished a pathetic 40-120 with the worst winning percentage in the modern era of .250. However, there have been worse teams than that even at the professional level. There have been teams in past baseball history, in the pre-modern era or the old National Association that would have been happy to have scored 40 wins, or even have a winning percentage that reached the .200's.

In the pre-modern era of the Natioanl League there was a team by the name of the Cleveland Spiders who finished the year an absolutely dismal 20-134 with a .135 winning percentage. This was mostly due to the owner of the Spiders also owning the St. Louis Brown Stockings and he moved all of his best players to the Brown Stockings and left the scrubs with the Spiders. This was the beginnings of the idea of a farm system.

However, there was one team that was worse than them all, one team that really took futility to a whole new level. In the 1860's there was an amateur baseball team known as the Washington Nationals. The Washington Nationals were a powerhouse of the amateur baseball circuit and were declared national champions numerous times in the 1860's. They did not join the National Association in 1871 because they had enjoyed so much success as an amateur club, but in 1872 they joined the National Association and were in for the shock of their lives. They finished their season 0-11 and did not even finish all of their season as they were forced to fold after being so pathetic of a team that no one would come to watch them play and they were losing money.

They are the only team in professional baseball history to play more than 10 games and never win a game, there was another team known as Baltimore of Maryland who went 0-6 but went out of business after 6 games and was unable to keep their business going. The Nationals regrouped and played again in 1873 but finished 8-31. They sat out the 1874 season but came back in 1875 in the National Association's final year but finished the year a horrible 5-23. The team had a franchise record all-time of 13-65 a franchise winning percentage of .167. Never has a team before in professional history shown such futility. Perhaps it has something to do with the recent futility of the former Montreal Expos currently known as the Washington Nationals.

Learn more about this author, John Osbron.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.