Frank Robison
American baseball executive
Frank DeHass Robison (1852 – September 25, 1908) was an American businessman, best known as a baseball executive. He was the organizer of the Cleveland Spiders franchise, and owned or part-owned the club throughout its existence, from its founding in 1887 as the Cleveland Blues until 1899. Along with his brother, Stanley Robison, he was also co-owner of the St. Louis Perfectos/Cardinals baseball team of the National League from 1899 until his death in 1908.
After briefly attending Delaware College (now University of Delaware), Robison went into business with his father-in-law, Charles Hathaway, operating streetcars in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1887, he used funds from this business to start up a baseball team, the Cleveland Blues (called the Forest Citys in some sources). He continued to operate in both areas for the next two decades, including financing the construction of League Park in 1889, and the formation of the Cleveland City Railway Company in 1893.
In 1899, the Robison brothers were responsible for the worst Major League Baseball team in history, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders. Before the season, the Robisons purchased the bankrupt St. Louis Browns from Chris von der Ahe and renamed them the Perfectos.
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This entry incorporates text from “Frank Robison” 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.