Saturday, February 20, 2010

A Close Examination Of League Rules

Strange as it may seem, a close examination of the League rules will disclose the fact that there is no provision or penalty in them for a set of players who try to play a purposely bad batting or fielding game of ball.-[Courier-Journal.]

Nor for enticing players away from non-League clubs.
-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 7, 1876


Since I haven't bothered checking the League constitution, I have no idea if any of this is true or not. I'm just passing it along because it made me chuckle. That and I haven't gotten around yet to writing up the Brown Stockings/Louisville series. Hopefully by Sunday, I'll be back in the swing of things and I'll cover the Louisville series and two series against the Chicagos.




2 comments:

Richard Hershberger said...

Both assertions are true.

The NL constitution provided for the League to rule on an appeal by a player of his expulsion from his club. The reasons why a club might do this are not addressed.

As for enticing players from outside clubs, that was standard practice (and had been in the latter part of the NA era). For all the moralizing that went on, contract enforcement followed the law of the jungle.

Jeffrey Kittel said...

I figured they were but I'm learning never to assume anything with 19th century baseball.

The point of the post (besides it being quick to type up) was that I thought it was an amusing comment on the Collins thing. It was this quick little throwaway line but it expressed a great deal of bitterness on the part of William Spink about the way the League did business.

I was amused by it and I think it gives you an idea about the personality of Spink.