edition which covered their first championship season, 1894; notably, the previous year's Guide never used the name at all. The term "Old Oriole" is sometimes used to describe a player whose aggressive style fits the legacy of those 1890s teams. The competitive famous team's fortunes took a downturn in 1899 when many of its stars were transferred to the Brooklyn Superbas/Dodgers, and Baltimore was one of the four teams contracted out of existence in 1900 when the NL reduced from 12 franchises to just 8, an arrangement lasting for over a half century. The newly formed American League of 1901 wanted to compete directly with the National League's New York Giants, but the Giants used their political clout to block the American League from placing a club there. Instead, one of its 8 charter member franchise teams was placed in Baltimore in 1901. Their "Orioles" nickname was acknowledged in an unusual way that year, with an orange letter "O" on their uniform shirts, probably the only major league team ever to sport a symbol that looked like a "zero". The 1902 shirts substituted a more conventional block letter B. In 1903, after the American and National leagues settled their 2 year old "baseball war" dispute with a "peace pact", the National League allowed the American league to have a competing New York club in the nation's largest city and the Baltimore club, which was originally meant to have been located in New York from the beginning was bought by former player/manager, the legendary John McGraw and transferred to New York City abandoning the Orioles name and, since 1913, known as the New York Yankees. A top-level minor league version of the Baltimore Orioles replaced the departed major league club, and it would be a force to be reckoned with in the "Triple AAA" high minors for 50 years, winning a number of International League championships and also providing a famed local boy, George Herman "Babe" Ruth to the major leagues in 1914. Another Baltimore team was the rival third-party Federal League entry of 1914–1915, which called itself the Baltimore Terrapins, after the diamondback terrapin, the state reptile of Maryland now primarily associated with the University of Maryland, College Park Maryland Terrapins sports teams. The Federal League Terrapins opened Terrapin Park across the street from the IL minor league and previous AL club's own ballpark, which was acquired by the Orioles