Now That We Have That Cleared Up

Contrary to the general impression the Lucas-Wainwright Base Ball Club will not be a member of the Union League of base ball clubs, but of the Union Association. The Union League and Union Association have generally been confounded with one another, while they are two distinct organizations, having no interest in common and pursuing entirely different courses in endeavoring to place nines in the field and make a bid for public patronage. The Union Association is an independent concern, which has gone into base ball on business principles, asking no favors of old associations, respecting no arbitrary rules that abridge the liberty of a ball-player as to where he shall or shall not play, or subject his compensation to the selfish judgment of a manager, but observing a proper regard for all contracts, is bidding for base ball talent and offering to pay each desirable player seeking engagement all that his services can command in an open market. Not so with the Union League, which expected to be propped up. Its inception and organization are due to an understanding that it would be recognized by the National League, and thereby obtain a standing along with that body, the American Association and the Northwestern League. But this understanding was dissipated by the fiction of the Arbitration Committee of those organizations, which at the recent meeting in New York resolved that no member of either the League, American Association or Northwestern League should play any kind of a game with any club organized in a city in which there already existed a club belonging to either association. That knocked the supports from under the Union League, for the reason that it was organizing clubs in cities where the old fraternity had branches, the protection of which was the special object of the resolution passed. Not possessing enterprise sufficiently active or resources sufficiently strong to enable it to operate without assistance, it will very likely pass out of existence. Such is the difference between the Union Association and the Union League.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 23, 1883