Hope Springs Eternal, 1905

As Baltimore rebuilt, it turned to sports to take its mind off the daunting task at hand. The city had the Eastern League's Baltimore Orioles, one of many incarnations of franchises that called themselves the Orioles over the decades. Hughie Jennings, a future Hall of Famer and a member of the storied National League Orioles of the 1890s, led that year's club. The squad went 82-47, en route to a second-place finish.

The Baltimore Black Sox didn’t form until 1913, but an independent Black baseball team played in 1905-1906. Pictured above is the 1905 Middle Section Giants. The most famous member of the team was former and future lightweight world champion Joe Gans. Joe, nicknamed "the Old Master," was the world's first African-American world champion.

Many also consider him the greatest lightweight in history.

If the photograph is properly dated to 1905, it was the one year between 1902 and 1908 when Gans didn't hold the crown. He also fought only twice in 1905, compared to 12 times in 1904 and seven times in 1906. Those dozen fights in '04 saw him go 10-0-2 and were a silver lining to a year that went terribly awry for Baltimore.

Sadly, Joe died of tuberculosis just five years later in 1910, at age 35.