Yet Washington, the laughingstock of baseball for literally 5-6 decades, turned around and named another team the Senators the NEXT SEASON after the original Senators left. The Cleveland Browns, a team with a legacy of sucking and/or heartbreak left after some really sleazy owner behavior and yet the city named the next team the Browns, too.The Ford Motor Company built a model named Edsel. It didn't go over well, and became a laughingstock name - sort of a "name brand" for the worst product of its kind (even if it really wasn't).
Well, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders were kind of the name brand Bad Baseball Team. Or, should be. When people in 1962 made jokes about how historically bad the brand-new Mets were, at 40-120, knowledgeable old-timers could smile and say, "that's because you're ignoring the '99 Spiders".
They went 20-134 for a .130 winning percentage. The only teams before them who did worse than that were in abbreviated seasons where they would fold and simply not show up for scheduled games after 20 games or so. No team since them has come within .100 points of that "winning" percentage.
These poor guys (or a parade of them) slogged through a full season. They finished in 12th place out of 12 teams, 35 games behind.... the 11th place team. 84 games out of first. They drew 6,088 fans... for the season. (Pennant winner Brooklyn drew 269K.) They finished their season as basically a road team, since other teams in the league would no longer travel to League Park and find their expenses not covered.
There were scoundrels in league ownership back then, point well taken, but as with our discussion about Landis, you would still find wide variations within any given era. Stanley and Frank Robison were outliers - they didn't bother to hide their intentions when they bought a second team and termed their Cleveland franchise a sideshow.
After that season, the Cleveland franchise was folded - the National League itself contracted to 8 teams, and the Spiders had no continuation. Cleveland started fresh with the American League instead. So the Spiders' reasonably lengthy run ended in ignominy, with no opportunity for quick redemption.
That's what's so bad.
You wouldn't introduce a new line of cars called "The New and Improved Edsel." You wouldn't name a baseball team you cared about the Spiders. It would feel like you had doomed it.
I think you’re putting way too much stock into events that happened 121 years ago. Does anyone honestly care about what the 1899 Spiders did? The only connection would be the city, name, and logo. I think it’s a little silly to think too hard about ownership legacy on a franchise that dissolved in the 19th century before the American League even formed.