A Front-Row Seat To The Worst Team In Pro Baseball

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — If you regret that you never got a chance to see the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the losingest team in MLB history, can I interest you in a trip to Staten Island?

No wait, come back.

Just a few steps away from the ferry terminal, a morbidly curious fan can catch the independent Atlantic League's Staten Island FerryHawks, who have suffered through such a hapless year that they're legitimately challenging the Spiders' historic futility.

With just over two months left in the season, the https://pro.iscorecentral.com/ALPB/standings">FerryHawks are saddled with an 11-57 record.

Their pitchers carry a https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/team.cgi?id=7cbd7dfc">team ERA of 10.03.

Their run differential is -389, which means they're losing their average game by 5.7 runs.

Their best hitter, Joshua Palacios, is now https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/07/pirates-joshua-palacios-agree-to-minor-league-deal.html">on his way to the Pirates' AAA franchise.

Yes, New York, it gets more miserable than https://defector.com/the-mets-have-turned-it-around-360-degrees">the Mets.

Staten Island's ballpark didn't always host indy ball.

Pre-COVID, this was the home of the single-A Staten Island Yankees, who came to the borough in a deal that also brought a Mets minor-league squad to Brooklyn's Coney Island.

The Yankees lasted through the 2019 season, after which they were cut loose as part of MLB's overall downsizing of the minors. (It didn't help that the big-league Yankees were embarrassed by the club's headline-grabbing promotion in which they renamed themselves the Staten Island Pizza Rats.) The FerryHawks played their first Atlantic League campaign in 2022, and even though they've been a sub-.500 team in every season, their current mark is a steep fall from their typical mediocrity.

I got to see the 57th loss live and up close as the FerryHawks fell to the High Point Rockers—as in rocking chairs, since they come from a North Carolina city famous for furniture.

It was unlike any game I'd ever been to before, because my $12 ticket was in practice a general admission pass to the entire hollow park.

The FerryHawks' home has an advertised capacity of 7,171, but I would be surprised if there were more than 100 people in the seats on Wednesday night (plus one seagull who chose to bring his fish dinner into the outfield).

There was only one concession stand open on the concourse, though they did sell surprisingly excellent hot dogs for just $2, owing to the fact that it was Weenie Wednesday.

We were able to walk right down into first-row seats directly next to the home dugout, close enough to see the umpires spit and hear snippets of conversations about the players' girlfriends in the foul-territory bullpen.

One of the coaches ribbed me about keeping my head up when I was looking at my phone between innings.