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Brooklyn Tip-Tops

baseball team in Brooklyn, New York

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ11334837
Source-derived summary

The Brooklyn Tip-Tops were a team in the short-lived Federal League of professional baseball from 1914 to 1915. The team's name came from Tip Top Bread, a product of Ward Baking Company, which was also owned by team owner Robert Ward. They were sometimes informally called the Brooklyn Feds or BrookFeds due to being the Brooklyn team of the Federal League. They played in Washington Park, which the Brooklyn Dodgers had abandoned after the 1912 season to move to Ebbets Field.

History

The team finished a disappointing 4th in 1914. Federal League officials believed it was important to have a successful franchise in the New York City area and when the Indianapolis Hoosiers were transitioned to Newark, New Jersey, the "Federal League Ty Cobb", as 1914 FL batting champ Benny Kauff was known, was placed on the Brooklyn roster. In 1915, Kauff led the league with a .342 batting average and 55 stolen bases, but the Tip-Tops still finished in seventh place. The Newark and Brooklyn FL teams played three holiday doubleheaders during the 1915 season where one game was in Newark and the second was in Brooklyn.

On September 19, 1914, Tip-Top Ed Lafitte threw the only no-hitter in Federal League history, beating the Kansas City Packers 6–2.

Had the Federal League (FL) lasted just one more season, night baseball might have been introduced two decades earlier.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Brooklyn Tip-Tops” as baseball team in Brooklyn, New York. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1914, 1915, 1912—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1914-01-01. The account is most persuasive where Brooklyn, Tip-Tops and baseball can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as baseball team in Brooklyn, New York. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11334837. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 1915 and 1912.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Brooklyn Tip-Tops”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Brooklyn Tip-Tops primary sources, Brooklyn Tip-Tops archive and Brooklyn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Brooklyn Tip-Tops”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Brooklyn Tip-Tops” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.