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Long suffering baseball fans can recount horrible seasons their teams have put them through. The 1962 New York Mets are often singled out as the worst team in history. Their record of 40-120 is an easy target. The Philadelphia Phillies recently lost their 10,000th game in franchise history and their teams from the 1920's through the 1940's are littered with disastrous records. The Pittsburgh Pirates of 1952 went a miserable 42-112. Even the mighty Boston Red Sox had an embarrassing season in their past, going 43-111 in 1932.

More recently the 2003 Detroit Tigers went 43-119, just 3 seasons before making it to the World Series. And despite being known worldwide as "lovable losers," the Chicago Cubs do not make one appearance in the list of the 20 worst single season won-loss records for a full season. The 1981 Cubs were 38-65 during the strike season, but even with that horrendous record the Cubs still won almost twice as many games as the true titleholder of The Worst Baseball Team In History.

That team is the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. The Spiders played in the National League and their record that season was 20-134, an embarrassing .130 winning percentage. The Spiders team was so bad it was folded by Major League Baseball after the season. The Spiders had been a good team for the previous decade, holding a winning percentage over .500 seven straight years before the 1899 season. In 1892 they appeared in the World's Championship Series. In 1895 the Spiders won the postseason Temple Cup, an early predecessor to the World Series, making them World Champions before the title formally existed. Six players who played for Cleveland in the 1890's went on to the hall of fame, including one fellow named Cy Young. In fact the team went 81-68 the year before they would win only 20 games. So how does a team go from 81 wins to 20 the next season? Extenuating circumstances, for one.

In 1897 playing baseball games on Sunday was still controversial. In fact, the Spiders and Washington teams were arrested and jailed for playing a game on a Sunday. Upset at the situation in Cleveland, in 1898 Frank Robison, the Spiders owner, moved many Sunday games to other cities where they could draw larger crowds. The move was such a success the Spiders played all of their "home" games during the second half of the season on the road.

Before the 1899 season began, Robison purchased the St. Louis Browns and changed the team name to the Perfectos. The franchise would later become the St. Louis Cardinals.

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