By Drew V.
Founded by the Philadelphia twins and businessmen Karl and Walther Boeselager, the Philadelphia Brewers are a founding LBL powerhouse currently dominating the Liberty Division.
Originally a supplier of the 1883 Philadelphia Athletics, the pair owned a large brewery operation in Philadelphia, founded by their father, Wilhelm.
The Boeselagers lost the original bid for the Philadelphia LBL franchise to another powerful businessman, Timothy McCabe. However, McCabe soon grew uncomfortable with the investment, and offered full ownership to the Boeselagers in exchange for their brewery operation. The brothers built a magnificent stadium on the corner of Germantown Avenue at the eastern edge of Philadelphia, across the street from Fairhill Cemetery. McCabe Beer was famously banned from the stadium.
Only a year later, the Boeselager Brothers sold the majority of the team’s shares to eccentric English nobleman and entrepreneur Sir Patrick William Downing, the second son of the Earl of Downing.
Downing, who was visiting the United States in 1896 on a grand tour of the Americas, bought the club on a whim from the Boeselagers after hearing how popular the sport had become in the Eastern United States. He purchased the team when he was only 23 years old. The Boeslagers retained their distribution rights to the stadium, along with a 15% share of team ownership.
While the investment did become quite profitable for Downing, urban legends claim that the enormously wealthy Englishman bought the club from the Boeselager brothers solely as an act of flippantry to the United States–a landed Englishman owning the nation’s Philadelphia team.
As a requirement for funding, the Brewers band plays “God Save the Queen” after the National Anthem–which was originally recieved with overwhelming jeers and boos, but local fans grew to make their own words to the song until it became part of the Brewers legacy.
Known for LBL fan favorites like LF Leo McKenzie and CF Rusty Hall, the Brewers have quickly become the face and name of Legacy League Baseball in the late 1800s.
A hard-hitting, aggressive, and fun-loving baseball club, the Brewers are unmistakably the crown champions of early LBL baseball.