Who Were the Webb City Golden Bugs?

How is a baseball team name, not a name? Especially one that existed well over a century ago. It’s a series of inaccuracies made by sports historians over the past twelve decades. After examining a lesser-known minor-league ball club, we need to reconsider its history. However, ask anyone and they will tell you that the Webb City Gold Bugs was the name of a baseball team in the early 20th century in the Western Association.

The franchise operated in 1903, returned in 1905, and played until 1909. It started in the Class D Missouri Valley League and later joined the Class C Western Association.  Modern databases show several names for this club and identify it as the Gold Bugs for all six seasons. However, digging into newspaper accounts from this time tells a different story.

First, a gold bug is not a species of insect. The term is for someone who favors gold as an investment or a standard for measuring wealth. William McKinley's 1896 presidential campaign included many items with a golden bug. It led to his supporters being referred to as gold bugs. Supporters of his opponent, William Jennings Bryan, were “silver bugs” due to their free silver movement.

The term "gold bug" has a connection with the U.S. presidential election of 1896.

The story begins with the Nevada Lunatics of the Missouri State League. The team was in its third year of existence but was suffering from low attendance and had missed its last payroll. Magnates from Webb City raised $1,200 to purchase the club's assets and moved it on July 11, 1903 (modern data basis lists the day of relocation as July 16).

The club never reached Webb City because its ballpark wasn’t ready. Instead, they played a three-game series against Pittsburg at Cycle Park in Joplin, Missouri, with around 200 supporters making the trip. The team was swept in their first series and then dropped their final game at Springfield. In its four games, the club was outscored 50-14. The league consolidated Webb City and Leavenworth from the loop and continued the season as a six-team circuit.

However, no newspaper reports from the team’s 4-day existence referred to it as the Goldbugs. Only once did a paper refer to them by a nickname; the Galena (Kansas) Evening Times called them the Webb City Outcasts and the Nevada Refugees in jest. The franchise was caught between its old city and its new one, but never referred to as Goldbugs or Gold Bugs.

After a one-year hiatus, the following year, baseball returned to the league in 1905. Management raffled off a $1,000 new automobile to help raise funds to build a ballpark. However, the team that took the field that warm May day in front of 1,921 fans did not have an official name. That did not stop local newspapers from giving them a nickname; a Kansas newspaper referred to them as the Mud Hens. That name, along with Gold Bugs, was never used in the local Joplin newspapers. The ball club played one season, relocated to Iola, Kansas, and entered the Kansas State League.

The 1907 Webb City Ball Club was known mostly as the Ducklings, or by the Webbfeet, by away newspapers.

Webb City would get a new team in the Western Association when the Sedalia Gold Bugs relocated to town in 1906. They were the original Gold Bugs franchise, first used in 1902, and this would be the closest the franchise came to being called by this moniker. The new club donned the same loud uniforms that gleamed with “lurid brilliancy” that season; shockingly, the ball club had more than one nickname.

Some papers called them the Gold Bugs. Yet, local dailies referred to them as the Jiggers. This name comes from a parasitic insect that burrows into the skin; its scientific name is tunga penetrans. This name was the most popular choice in the Webb City Sentinel and Joplin Globe before the start of the season. Today, the name is more familiar for an hourglass-shaped measuring device with uneven cones at each end for portioning out spirits.

The Gold Bugs name would appear in local newspapers in May and was used a few times in Joplin print, but more often in the Springfield newspapers. Around this time, a popular article appeared in newspapers across the nation. It listed the nicknames of all professional baseball teams for that season and referred to the team name as the Gold Bugs. This article likely helped disseminate information to future historians.

Depending on the newspaper, you might see a different name for the Webb City Ball Club

Two other names were used for newspapers in league cities in Kansas and Oklahoma. The Hutchinson News called the club the Ducklings. Meanwhile, papers from Topeka and Wichita referred to the team as the Webbfeet, without the city indicator. Depending on what state, city, or newspaper you had in your hand, the name of the Webb City team was significantly diverse. 

In 1907, the Gold Bugs name was not mentioned in any team-related print. However, home newspapers began using the names Webbfeet or Ducklings to identify the club. These names showed up in both the Joplin and Webb City papers. The old team name from the year before appeared much less frequently in local print. All these names would gradually fade from memory by the next season.

Webb City used the nickname Triplets in 1908 and 1909 in a majority of press clips. It might have been a nod to the city located within the "Tri-State Mining District," a region known for its extensive lead and zinc mining activity during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, also giving Webb City its nickname “The Zinc City."

The ball club was known as the Triplets by most media accounts in 1908 and 1909.

The Triplets played their final game on July 18, 1909, which included team president D.M. Shively announcing to the crowd that the team was moving to Sapulpa, Oklahoma, after the third inning. Reverend C.F. O’Meara officiated the game behind the plate and gave the club their last rites and funeral services. Webb City dropped their final contest 4-3 to Pittsburg. Minor league baseball returned one last time in 1914 and never returned to the city.

Why do baseball publications refer to the team as the Gold Bugs when they went by numerous names during their stay in the city? It could be due to the team never having an "official" name and leaving it up to local and away newspapers to provide a name. This was quite normal in the early 20th century in baseball, but the club could have easily been referred to as the Jiggers, Triplets, or Webbfeet by future baseball historians. It might be due to a news article printed in many papers during Minor League Baseball’s 50th anniversary in 1951.

Columnist Lawton Carver shared information about minor league history in his “Fair or Foul” column. He named some old teams: the Providence Clam Diggers, Lincoln Treeplanters, Memphis Egyptians, and Webb City Gold Bugs. Lawton found his data from an old source. It was printed in various newspapers across the country during the golden anniversary year.

In 1968, Bill Westwick of the Ottawa Citizen brought up the Gold Bugs again. He was reminiscing about baseball's oddest names, referring to Montreal's expansion franchise. However, the ball club only briefly used the name during the 1906 season after its move from Sedalia.

We know that the Webb City franchise had a series of names during its brief existence, spanning from 1903 to 1908. Newspapers in big cities and small towns printed names in black ink, often naming the clubs themselves. Sometimes, those names stuck. If the team had continued, it could have gone by many other great names from its time.

However, Webb City was never home to the Gold Bugs.

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