I have numerous posts floating around my head in for this blog, so I will start with the team with the most history currently in the World Series.
Having won game one of the 2008 World Series, the Philadelphia Quakers, rather the Philadelphia Phillies look for their second championship in their 126 year old history.
The Philadelphia Phillies as you may have guessed it started off as the Philadelphia Quakers. They started as the Quakers in 1883, only ten years after the Toronto Argonauts formed in 1873. The Argonauts being known as one of the longest sports teams still in existence today. Therefore the Phillies are up there as well. And according to the history on mlb.com,
Now, as the 21st century begins, the Phillies are the oldest, continuous, one-name, one-city franchise in all of professional sports.
Despite having started out as the Quakers, they were never officially regarded as the Quakers. They also were known as the Philadelphias briefly, before being shortened to Phillies which was official in 1890. So essentially they were known as the Quakers, Philadelphias, and Phillies until being officially the Phillies in 1890. Quakers being the most used during that time.
While on the topic of nicknames, they were also known as the Blue Jays, although never officially, from 1943 until 1949.
A few other Philadelphia sports teams used the name Quakers. The Quakers from the Players League that replaced the Philadelphia Athletics (no relation to the team that would eventually become the Oakland Athletics) of the American Association after they were expelled. They then took over the Athletics nickname. The Quakers/Athletics only lasted two seasons.
The above Athletics (prior to being the Quakers) were formed in 1882 along with the American Association as a rival league to the National League. The Philadelphia Athletics that would later become the (Kansas City Athletics 1955 - 1967) Oakland Athletics or A's date back to 1901, while the original Philadelphia Athletics (and here) were around from 1860 - 1876. Playing professionally from 1871 - 1876. 1871 - 1875 in the National Association, and 1876 in the National League.
Whew! The Athletics obviously can be an entirely different post of it is own, I just added the others for clarification purposes (or confusion purposes perhaps!).
So, the other teams from Philadelphia to use the name Quakers were an American football team that played in the AFL only in 1926, and a hockey team that played in the NHL for one season as well, 1930, 31.
Top image:
"Charlie Ferguson and Tommy McCarthy, Philadelphia Quakers". From the NYPL Digital Gallery. Located at http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?56679.
NYPL provides free and open access to its Digital Gallery and images may be freely downloaded for personal, research and study purposes only.
Philadelphia Phillies uniform from 1900. From the Uniform Database at the Dressed to the Nines online exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame website.
More Philadelphia Phillies history
at MLB
at Baseball Almanac
at Baseball-Reference and
at Wikipedia.
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