Rage, Rage

I don't even know where to start with this or if I should even bother.  But...

Today, at Grantland (and, honestly, here's the first problem: I actually check Grantland everyday; all I really want is a Bill Simmons mailbag or a short piece from Jonah Keri and you have to wade through a lot of other stuff to find that), they put up a short film about the Honus Wagner card.  Now, I have some interest in 19th century baseball cards and know a bit about the history of the Wagner card, so I figured the short would be an interesting thing to watch.

I got one minute and eight seconds into it when I turned it off.  At one minute and eight seconds into the film, they introduce Keith Olbermann as a "Baseball Historian."  Now, I'm not a big fan of Olbermann's but I have nothing against the man.  I've gotten too old to get worked up over celebrities or what a tv talking head says.  It's just business.  It's just entertainment.  It has no real impact on my existence.  But as a baseball researcher and historian who has devoted a good chunk of his life exploring the world of 19th century baseball and the origins and evolution of the early game, I was actually stunned to see Olbermann described as a baseball historian and presented as an expert on the early game.

But, in and of itself, it's not a big deal.  You want to present Olbermann as a baseball historian and expert that's your business.  I immediately know what that means as far as the credibility of any historical claims that you'll present in your film.  It tells me what kind of film I'm watching and that it's not the kind of film I want to waste my time on.  So I turned it off.  Or, rather, I went to close the browser tab.

As I was going to close the tab, I heard Olbermann, speaking about baseball in the decade prior to 1909, say this: "...baseball had only been as popular as indoor soccer..."  My jaw dropped as I closed the tab and I said, out loud, "What the fuck did he just say?"  I had to go into my history, find the film again and re-open it.  I had to make sure that I heard what I thought I heard.

Sure enough, this expert on baseball history compared the popularity of the game in the late 19th and early 20th century to the modern popularity of indoor soccer.  And I have nothing against indoor soccer.  I like soccer in general and have been to professional indoor soccer games.  It's a good game.  But the idea that baseball, around 1900, was some kind of niche sport with a limited popularity is ridiculous.  It's stupid.  Making a statement like that only shows that you have no understanding of the history of the game.  Do I even need to say that baseball, at that time, was insanely popular?  That it was a national, modern sport played in the country's largest cities before huge crowds?  The New York game, in the early 1850s, was a niche sport with limited popularity.  The game, by the turn of the century, was a huge business with national appeal.  Olbermann's statement is wrong and shows, at best, a superficial understanding of the nature of late 19th century baseball.

Is it too much to ask that someone identified as a baseball historian, making statements about the 19th century game, actually be a baseball historian who knows something about 19th century baseball?  Do we need pseudo-celebrities being presented as experts in a field they know little or nothing about?  Do we need Doris Kearns Goodwin on MLB's official committee investigating the origins of the game?  Do we need George Will on that committee?  Do we have to have Keith Olbermann on ESPN making erroneous statements about 19th century baseball?

I'm a nobody.  I'm just a guy with a website.  I'm not on TV.  I'm not famous.  I'm just a guy.  Sure, I've had some of my work published in a few books.  Maybe my knowledge of the early game is respected by a few others who also know something about the subject.  Maybe.  But is it too much to ask that, when the subject of 19th century baseball comes up, we consult people who know something about the subject?  And I'm not talking about myself.  I could give you a list of twenty respected baseball historians with published works on the subject who could have been consulted for this little short on Wagner.  Call John Thorn.  Call Peter Morris.  Call any number of people who know something about the subject.  Do your homework.

In the end, this isn't a big deal except for the fact that there is so much erroneous information floating around about the 19th century game in books, articles and online and I've spent a lot of time fighting back against the ignorance and myths that surrounds the early game.  My goal is to get the story correct and present, to whatever small audience I can gather, the truth about 19th century baseball.  Olbermann, Grantland and ESPN just made that task a little harder.  It should go without saying that they reach a substantially larger audience than I do and the error they are perpetrating (however innocently) has probably already been seen by more people than have ever visited this website in it's five or six year existence.

There have been numerous times when I have made the decision to shut down the website and focus on other projects.  But I've never done it.  I always keep plugging away, presenting new information and, from time to time, finding myself with something new and interesting to say about 19th century baseball.  How do you quit in the face of such willful ignorance?  How can I quit when the extraordinary work done by fantastic, knowledgeable and hard-working historians such as David Block and Larry McCray and William Ryczek and David Nemec and Ed Achorn and William Goldstein and Melvin Adleman and George Kirsch and Morris and Thorn and countless others has yet to seep into the public consciousness?  I can't.  There's still work to do.

I guess that makes me the Worst Person In The World.         

Anglish

English?

 
I'm not certain that I can write English well and I know that I often struggle to speak it.  But, being from a generation that was actually educated in the language, I know that I can speak it, write it and read it better than those who have had the misfortune of having attended school in the last twenty years.  This interests me because, as someone who works in a written medium, I'm trying to communicate ideas in language and it's possible that, regardless of my level of mastery of English, the number of people who can comprehend what I'm doing is dwindling rapidly.

Some of you may know that I work in the restaurant industry.  I've been in the business for a long time and I'm used to working with young people.  It's fun to work with young kids and I enjoy it, for the most part.  Most of the people who I work with are teenagers and kids in their early twenties who are going to school or working their first real job.  And while I hate to sound like a cranky old man, these kids are, for the most part, morons.  Very few of them have any understanding of history, literature, philosophy, economics, politics or anything you need to understand in order to live well.  They certainly have no understanding of English, grammar or spelling.  I've threatened, on more than one occasion, to buy everyone I work with a dictionary and an English grammar for Christmas.  I've also accused them of speaking Dolphin, which is some kind of high-pitched squeal that I've yet to master, and Gibberish.  I often quote Jules Winnfield. And then I yell at them in German. 

The point of all of this, besides insulting young people, is that I was reading an article about how English has devolved over the last twenty or twenty-five years.  The author talked about how we're failing to teach the language and how that resonates across all areas of society.  It was a relatively interesting and familiar argument but it made me think of George Orwell and "Politics and the English Language".  So I looked the essay up online and reread it for the first time in many years.

I first read Orwell's essay, like many others, as a college freshman.  At the University of Illinois, all freshmen had to take an introductory rhetoric course, which was the equivalent, I suppose, of English 101.  We read Orwell and The Elements of Style and learned how to construct sentences, paragraphs and essays.  We learned how to write and, more importantly, how to think critically.  To this day, I still believe it was the most important class I ever took and my rhetoric professor was one of the two best teachers I ever had.

Rereading Orwell, it amazed me how much the lessons of that essay has stayed with me.  When writing in a more formal style than I apply in a blog post, where I tend to ramble and I'm usually pressed for time, Orwell's rules still influence me.  I use his rules all the time and had forgotten where I had picked them up.

For fun, I'll give Orwell's six rules from "Politics and the English Language":

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Rules two, three and a casual combination of one and five have always been in my mind when writing anything over the last twenty-five years.  Always, even after I had forgotten where I first read these rules, Orwell has probably had more of an influence on my writing than anyone.

I'm now thinking that, along with dictionaries and grammar books, everyone will also be getting a copy of this essay for Christmas.

Note as to the title of this post:  I actually thought I invented the term Anglish, although I like to call it Angle-ish.  I figured that the word "English" must have derived from something like the word "Anglish" and that's the word I often use, along with Dolphin and Gibberish, to describe the devolved form of English.  But, it appears, as happens often, that I'm wrong and I did not invent the word.

Another random note:  I just wanted to point out that I went to a public high school.  My family wasn't rich and I didn't get a fancy, private school education.  But we read Shakespeare when we were high school freshmen.  We read Milton when we were sophomores.  We read Faulkner when we were juniors.  We read Kafka when we were seniors.  You can't write well if you don't read well.                     

He Will Not Be Missed

We interrupt our countdown of the top twenty games in the history of 19th century St. Louis baseball to note the passing of Eric Hobsbawm.  He was a terrible historian, a horrible writer and a worse human being.

His death puts me in mind of Hunter Thompson's obituary of Richard Nixon, wherein the good doctor wrote  that Nixon was "a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe...[He] was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning...He was scum."  And so too was Hobsbawm.

It may be uncharitable to say but he will not be missed.  Good riddance.

Achievement Unlocked: 2000 Posts

So...yeah. 

Five years and two thousand posts.  I should get a prize or something.  Maybe a cake.  Yeah, I should absolutely get a cake, or at least a pie, for banging out this blog everyday for as long as I have.

Mmmm...sweet, sweet cake

Anyway, hurray for me and, to celebrate the fact that I haven't quit or that the all-powerful state hasn't shut down the website, I'm going to count down the top 20 games in the history of 19th century baseball, starting tomorrow.  So we have that to look forward to.

And about this list of games...I just want it on the record that I've put all of fifteen minutes thought into it and it should not be considered a definitive statement on the subject.  These things are relative, of course, and my list might not be the same as your list.  It's just a bit of fun, designed to create content and keep me from posting about the 1884 Maroons.  So take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Since we're starting with number 20 tomorrow, I should give you a list of games that didn't make the cut but that's kind of boring.  I will say that I don't have any Black Stockings games on the list and that bothers me a bit.  The one game that I most regret not including in the top twenty is the October 13, 1875 game between the Blue Stockings and the Uniques and it's absolutely number 21 on my list.  I also left out the games that the 1869 Red Stockings of Cincinnati played in St. Louis.  So I guess I did put a little thought into the list.  Not much, but a little. 

Come back tomorrow and we'll get this thing started.         

Known Unknowns

John W. O'Connell...and J.D. Fitzgibbon...say the game was brought here by men who had played baseball in the East, but that the first game ever played here took place in what was then Northwest St. Louis and on the ground now occupied by Carr Square Park.

-The National Game



I can't tell you how many times I've read the above sentence but last night, as I looked at it again, it held new meaning for me.

With the discovery of new primary source material from the Missouri Republican, I've begun to re-evaluate some of the things I believe about the origins of the game in St. Louis and how the game developed in the city from 1859 to 1865.  I've found evidence that conflicts with some of the more important secondary sources and evidence that conflicts with some of the conclusions I've reach after years of research.  I think it's important for me to remember that there are a lot of things that I don't know with any degree of certainty about baseball in St. Louis in the antebellum and Civil War eras.  All I can do is gather all the evidence that I can, weigh that evidence and try to reach logical conclusions.

One of the things that I believed, up until the last week or so, was that the first baseball game was played by the Cyclone Club at Lafayette Park sometime during the summer of 1859.  The weight of the evidence that I had seen supported that idea.  Now, after looking through the Republican, I can say that there is evidence to suggest that the first game wasn't played at Lafayette Park.  O'Connell and Fitzgibbons, two pioneer era players, stated to Al Spink that the first game was played at Carr Park and that testimony is very important.  Why did I dismiss it?

Carr Park was the playing grounds of the Morning Star Club, who we believe were playing town ball at the park as early as 1857.  Richard Perry, a member of the Morning Stars, stated in 1887 that his club was the first to play baseball in St. Louis.  Interestingly, the earliest reference I have to a St. Louis baseball club comes from the St. Louis Daily Bulletin of June 6, 1860, and mentions the organization of the Morning Stars.  The Protoball Chronology has a reference to an unnamed club in September of 1859, that is neither the Cyclones nor the Morning Stars.  I have some problems with the sourcing of that reference but it comes from Craig Waff and therefore should be taken seriously.

My point is that if we just relied on the primary source material, we'd have to argue that either the Morning Stars or Waff's unnamed club was the first baseball team in St. Louis, rather than the Cyclones.  I've yet to find a reference to the Cyclone Club prior to August 1860 and believe me when I tell you that I've looked.  That doesn't mean that the evidence to support my conclusions doesn't exist or that I've exhausted every source but it does mean that I don't have a lot of evidence to support my conclusions other than some secondary sources and logic.  And now I'm finding primary source evidence that is poking holes in my logic.

Another thing: I believe that town ball was played in St. Louis in the 1840s, at the latest.  I have absolutely no primary source evidence of that.  The earliest town ball reference I have for St. Louis comes from 1860.  There are insinuations in the contemporary press and exertions in the secondary sources that support or imply that town ball was played much earlier.  Also, I have plenty of evidence to support the idea that town ball was played in the region as early as the 1820s, so it's not a great leap to believe that it was played in St. Louis at the same time.  But I can't prove it.

And there, as they say, is the rub.  There's a lot of stuff that I believe about the origins and development of the game in St. Louis that I can't prove.  I can argue for a certain conclusion and show you all the evidence that I have that leads me to reach such a conclusion but argument is not proof.  I can argue that O'Connell and Fitzgibbons, when they said baseball was first played at Carr Park, were talking about town ball and the Morning Star Club but I can't prove that.  Somebody else can look at their statement and conclude that they were talking about the New York game.  That argument would be just as valid as mine.  

What I have to accept is the fact that this is a process.  I can sit down right now and write a three volume history of 19th century baseball in St. Louis but the first volume would be out of date by the time I finished writing it.  The research is ongoing and continuing to bear fruit.  It doesn't matter to me that new evidence changes what I believe because my goal is to find the truth.  I will change my beliefs and conclusions to fit the facts that I discover, regardless of whether or not those changes conflict with previously held beliefs and conclusions.  My commitment is to the truth rather than to my own ego or to any historical school of thought.

Our understanding of what was happening in St. Louis during the pioneer era is much, much greater than it was just two years ago.  I've discovered all kinds of primary source evidence over the last few years that have really shed light on the subject and have enabled us to work with facts rather than supposition.  If I was writing the St. Louis chapter of the Base Ball Pioneer book today, it would be a bit different than the one I submitted two years ago.  And I think it would be different again if I was writing it two years from now.  The research is ongoing and my shifting of the evidence never stops.

In the end, I have to continuously remember what I know and what I know I don't know.  I have to remember that there is fact and there is supposition.  At the moment fact and truth are destroying some of my suppositions and assumptions.  And that is a good thing.  Does it mean that I have to go back and rewrite a bunch of stuff that I thought I was finished with?  Yes, it does.  But that's okay because I'm just trying to get the thing right.        

I Hate My Hockey Team

I apologize for the language in advance.

I have put up with this bullsh*t for over 30 years.  I don't know how much more I can take.  I have been living and dying with this team since the 1980-81 season and my father was taking me to games even before that.  Is it too much to ask that once, before I die, I see my hockey team win the Stanley Cup?  Just f*cking once.  Is that too much to ask?

F*ck you, Halak.  One more game, f*cker.  One more game like this and I'm putting all me tickets up on StubHub.

Res ipsa loquitur.      

An Astrological View Of The Game

I just had to pass this along:

There is one man in the Government Hospital for the Insane, near Washington, who is perfectly sane on every subject except base ball.  He knows more about base ball than any other man in America.  The authorities have humored him so that he has been able to cover the walls of his large room with intricate schedules of the games played since base ball began its career.  He has the record of every important club and the individual record of every important player.  He takes an astrological view of the game.  He explains every defeat and every success on astrological principles.  It is because a man was born in this month or under this star or that.  He has figured it all out.  His sense has gone with it.  He is the typical base ball crank.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 20, 1884


I was going to make some kind of snarky comment about the BBWAA but that's too easy.  Instead, I'll just say that it's a shame that we don't have access to all the information that this poor soul had written on his walls.  

The Herrs: The Error That Went Viral

I got an email from friend of the blog Cliff Blau two months ago pointing out a discrepancy and some confusion regarding Joe Herr and Ed Herr.  I've been meaning to write something up about this ever since and never got around to it until now.  This is a convoluted story, so bear with me.

Over three years ago, I wrote a series of posts about the 1888 St. Louis Whites, a club that David Nemec, in The Beer & Whiskey League, called "a kind of farm team."  The club was owned by Chris Von der Ahe and played in the Western Association.  Essentially, I was looking for evidence of a relationship between Von der Ahe's Browns and his WA club in order to prove or disprove David's statement about the nature of the Whites, an opinion that Peter Morris also supported.  While I was initially sceptical, I think that I was able to prove that the Whites were essentially a proto-farm team for the Browns and that David and Peter were correct.

Now in the course of writing up the series on the Whites, I identified on of the players on the club as Ed Herr.  If you look at the tags in the right-side column of the blog, you'll notice a tag for Ed Herr that leads you to all of the posts I've written that mentions him.  I wrote the following brief sketch of Herr:

Ed Herr: shortstop; played three seasons in the majors between 1887 and 1890; played with the Browns after the breakup of the Whites (and again in 1890); after he was finished with baseball, Herr worked as a carpenter in St. Louis; he died in 1933, drowning in the Mississippi.

The problem here has multiple parts.  First, there was a 19th century baseball player by the name of Ed Herr but he never played for the Whites or the Browns.  Second, the player who did play with the Whites was named Joe Herr but Ed Herr's full name was Edward Joseph Herr.  Both Joe Herr, of the Whites, and Ed Herr, not of the Whites, were born in St. Louis, less than a decade apart.  Both Herrs died in St. Louis, exactly a decade apart.

What appears to have happened is that somehow Joe Herr became identified as Ed Herr, essentially confusing the two men.  The error appears in numerous places.  It's on my website.  If you search "Ed Herr" at Baseball-Reference, one of the entries that pop up is Joe Herr.  It's at Deadball Era, where Frank Russo provides an obituary from The New York Times that identifies Ed Herr as having died in 1933, information that matches Joe Herr's date of death at Baseball Reference.  It's at Find A Grave, which has entries for Edward Joseph Herr, Joseph "Joe" Herr and Edward Joseph "Eddie" Herr.  The Beer & Whiskey League identifies the Whites' player as Ed Herr (although David has told me that, like myself and just about everybody else, he made an error).  It's at BR-Bullpen.  It's at Wikipedia.  

This error, which essentially is the misidentification of Joe Herr as Ed Herr, is everywhere you look.  It is an error that went viral.  And I played a part in that, something which I have to take responsibility for.  I made a mistake and the information that I passed along about was wrong.  I take a great deal of pride in this website and I've spent years building my credibility as a historian and researcher.  I make a lot of jokes about how few readers I have but the truth is that there are a lot of people who read this blog and use it as a resource.  The people who visit my site trust me to provide them with accurate information and, in this case, I failed to do so.  Now, I don't want to be all dramatic about this but I did make a mistake and I think I played a role in spreading this error.  So I do feel the need to apologize and take steps to correct the error.

So here's what I know:

The guy who played with the Whites and the Browns in the late 1880s was always referred to as Joe Herr.  The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Sporting Life, Inter-Ocean and various other papers always referred to him as Joe.  I have not seen one reference to this player being called Ed Herr.  Joe Herr played with the Whites in 1888 and with the Browns in 1888 and 1890.

Ed Herr played with various minor league clubs, beginning in the mid 1890s.  In the newspaper sources I've seen, he is always referred to as Ed, Eddie or Edward.  He was never, to the best of my knowledge, referred to as Joe.  Ed Herr never played with the Whites or the Browns.

Now as to their biographical data, I haven't bothered to run that down.  I assume that the data given for Joe Herr at Baseball-Reference and Find A Grave, which states that he was born on March 4, 1865 in St. Louis and died on July 12, 1933 in St. Louis, is correct.  Also, I assume the information for Ed Herr, which states that he was born on May 14, 1873 in St. Louis and died on July 18, 1943, is correct as well.  It does appear that their baseball records, as they appear at Baseball-Reference, are also correct.  But just to be clear, this is Joe Herr and this is Ed Herr.

Again, I apologize for my part in all of this but the best part of working in the media I do is that I can run corrections like this and make it a permanent part of the record.  To that end, I want to note that there is an entry for Joe Herr in Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1 that was written by Peter Morris and David Nemec.  They wrote the following:

A carpenter by trade, Joe Herr grew up near where the St. Louis Maroons' Palace Park was built in 1884 and by 1885 was a member of the famed semi-pro Peach Pies.  He began 1886 with independent Bellville, IL, and then moved to St. Joseph of the Western League.  Signed for 1887 by the new Cleveland AA entry, Herr was released to Lincoln of the Western League in May of that season at his own request after deciding that he could not play his best with such a weak team. 

The following spring Herr was named captain of the Western Association St. Louis Whites...In a WA game on May 1, 1888, he became only the fourth man to hammer a ball over the LF fence in Sportsman's Park...Herr later also became the fifth and sixth man to perform this feat.  The latter blast came in an AA game on June 27 after he had joined the Browns once the Whites folded.  Having established that he had extraordinary power, Herr soon also demonstrated that he lacked the necessary range to play SS...Although Herr remained on the Browns for the remainder of 1888 and participated in the World's Series against the New York Giants, he collected just 172 ABs.  Since RBI were not an official stat then, no one could have realized that his retrospective 43 RBI would be 12 more than any other player in AA history compiled in a season with less than 200 ABs. 

Something appears to have happened to Herr that winter, or perhaps he simply lost motivation after the Browns dropped him the following spring.  Herr began 1899 in the Western Association but was released by Milwaukee after 26 games...He then played in the Central Interstate League with Evansville...Riddled by Players League defections, the Browns rehired him in June 1890 and then released him less than two weeks later to Waco of the Texas League...That July, Herr took an offer from Jamestown of the New York State League but regretted it almost as soon as he arrived in that tiny town and was back in St. Louis in August.  Over the next eighteen months or so he married and began a family, seemingly having wasted a large quantity of baseball potential.  He was an unemployed carpenter living apart from his wife, Marie, in a men's shelter when he drowned in 1933.

Go buy the book so David doesn't yell at me for copying and pasting such a big chunk of it.  And remember, Joseph Herr played for the Whites and the Browns and Edward Joseph Herr, no relation, was a career minor leaguer who never played for a major or minor league St. Louis club.  

                             

Did 19th Century Lawyers Wear Skirts?

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says Lucas will enjoin Mullane and Mike Mansell from playing with Toledo and Allegheny.

-Cleveland Herald, February 14, 1884

If you read yesterday's post, you know how I feel about this. A real man would have challenged Mullane and Mansell to a duel. Only a nancy boy would hide behind his lawyer's skirt.

And, yes, it's a well-known fact that some 19th century lawyers wore skirts. Arabella Mansfield was admitted to the bar in Iowa in 1869 and she wore a skirt. In 1870, Ada Kepley become the first woman in the United States to graduate from a law school. She wore a skirt. Probably a long one. There were probably more skirt-wearing lawyers in the 19th century but I think I've made my point.

Getting back on track here, the Herald also reported (or re-reported) the following rumor that just refused to die even if doused in gasoline and set on fire:

It is understood that the St. Louis Club of the Union Association are about to offer Ward, of the New York Club, $25,000 to play with them for three years.

Maybe it wasn't this specific rumor that refused to die even if doused in gasoline and set on fire but, even in February 1884, the press was still linking every prominent player in the country to the Maroons. At this point they really couldn't be taken too seriously considering the efforts of the League and the AA to keep their players and the fact that the Union was in the process of losing signed players back to the established leagues.

And I'll leave it to you to figure out the significance of the photo at the top of the post. First person to identify the picture gets ten cool points.

Bare-Faced Dishonor (or, A Brief Lamentation On The Decline Of Dueling)

Mike Mansell has jumped his contract with the Lucas club, and has signed with the Allegheny Club. This of course is the result of solicitation by President McKnight, of the American Association, and adds to the shameless record that individual is fast acquiring. Does any one believe that players or managers, who are capable of such bare-faced dishonor, would not barter games if opportunities were available?

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 13, 1884

Those are some rather harsh words from the Globe. Even in the coarse and vulgar society that we live in, to say that someone lacks honor is an insult of the highest order. A 19th century man, I'd assume, wouldn't take those words lightly. Or McKnight, thinking himself the gentleman, wouldn't bother to respond to the scribblings of a lowly baseball writer.

The real problem here, I believe, is that by this time Western society had pretty much done away with dueling. A general threat of physical violence is usually enough to curb one's tongue (or, in this case, pen). If the writer of the above words had believed that by calling McKnight (or, even better, Mansell) shameless and dishonorable he would have found himself one morning facing a pistol at ten paces, he probably would have been more judicial in his use of language. I'm also of the belief that this lesson applies to the modern age as well. I think a lot of people have forgotten that actions have consequences and everyone must be held accountable for the things that they do. Pistols are a fine way of reminding people of these lessons.

A New Abuse

A new abuse has crept into the professional arena within the past year, and that is the open transfer of players from one club to another. We do not refer to cases where a player who has signed a contract with one club an then desires to get a release, and to do this induces the club he wants to change to pay a bonus for his release. What we have reference to is the actual bargin and sale of contracted players from one club to another without the consent of the professionals immediately concerned...This plan of course can be exended to include a whole team of players, who are thereby made to become a mere herd of base-ball cattle, as it were. This phase of the transfer business is simply a gross abuse, in violation of all equity and common justice. If it is not in direct opposition to the rules of the national agreement it should promptly made so. Of course if the player consents to this indiscriminate transfer of his services it ceases to be oppressive. But under the best view of the working of the system it is objectionable, and should not be encouraged.-[New York Clipper.]

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 3, 1884

This isn't really St. Louis related but, as we've been talking a lot about player movement, it seems relevant to consider what the Clipper had to say about all of that.

Things Of An Agnostic Tendency

Notwithstanding the increased interest among college students in base ball, chicken fighting and other things of an agnostic tendency, it seems that they have not entirely lost sight of religious matters. Recent statistics show that of 35,000 students in 170 colleges of the country, 14,000 are church members...

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 2, 1884

Heh. It's not everyday you see baseball and chicken fighting grouped together.

The Rights Of Baseball Players

According to Judge Pershing, the base ball player is not a laborer within the meaning of the statutes giving laboreers a preference over other creditors in the distribution of an insolvent estate. There will be no disposition to find fault with this decision. The salaried base ball player is altogether too much of a professional man to share in the protection which the law extends to the manual laborer and mechanic.

-The North American, January 17, 1884

I thought this was really interesting and somewhat relevant to discussion at hand.

Lucas, when discussing the reserve rule and the decision to ignore it, talked about it in moral terms. He was essentially talking about the rights of man, broadly defined. He was talking about the right of a free man to ingage in free commerce and to sell or buy whatever property they had or were offered.

Just law defends and encourages these rights. While I don't know all the particulars about the case that's being discussed above, it doesn't appear that the law as applied was defending the rights of baseball players or their property. However, this does seem to fit right in with a hundred years of American jurisprudence which also failed to do so.

This Is Wickedly Cynical

I love it:

The idea advanced, some days ago, that the Union Association would leave the players that have joined it in a tight place after the season opened, is being used on all sides. It is true. After the seceders from the old associations have been black-listed, they are settled, so far as those associations are concerned. With no other avenue for their work, the Union Association can do with them as it likes. I predict that next season a more stringent rule than that of reservation and salary limit will be adopted by the Unions, and the seceders cannot again secede, but must stand the grind.

-Cleveland Herald, December 31, 1883

A healthy dose of cynicism is just the tonic I need to wash away the bitterness of that Sullivan nonsense. Of course, a week earlier, the Herald was predicting that the UA wouldn't even make it to the opening of their first season and here they're predicting not only a second season but what kind horrendous results a second season would bring about.

Never let consistency and logic stand in the way of a good argument.

Really? Are We Absolutely Sure About This?

The paragraph that appeared in yesterday morning's Globe Democrat, stating that T.P. Sullivan had not been engaged by the Lucas nine as manager was an error. It should have referred to Tom Sullivan, the well-known catcher. Tom has not signed yet, notwithstanding the statement of a morning paper that he had. T.P. Sullivan, familiarly known as "Ted," has signed as manager of the Lucas nine.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 31, 1883

Frustrating. I've just spent about an hour of my life writing up these last few posts and running down information about "Ted" Sullivan. And it was all an error. Now I'm not going to pretend that I've never confused Ted Sullivan and Tom Sullivan because I do it all the time but this is making me a bit cranky.

And, just to complicate matters a bit more, Thomas Jefferson Sullivan (a.k.a. Tom Sullivan, a.k.a. Sleeper Sullivan, a.k.a. Old Iron Hands) did sign with the Maroons at some point. Unless I'm confusing this Tom Sullivan with another Tom Sullivan or, possibly, Tim Sullivan.

Blogger's Been Down

Blogger's went down yesterday at about 2:30 and it ate the post that was supposed to go up this morning. I was finished with the thing and was going to attach a couple of pictures when the thing went all wonky. We'll return tomorrow with our regular scheduled programing.

Thank you, Google.

Edit (7:45 PM): I just exported my blog to an external hard drive and copied that file to Dropbox so all my stuff, through today's post, is safely backed up. Should do that more often and, after seeing what has happened to some other folks who use Blogger, I plan on doing it on a regular basis.

A Burlesque Of Base Ball

Fourteen females of various ages occupied the floor of Armory Hall yesterday afternoon and executed rather tame feats in running, sliding and screaming for the entertainment of 200 persons who stubbornly refused to say they were entertained. Divided into two squads they constituted two sevens, who furnished diversion in the shape of a burlesque of base ball. The features of the play are not worthy of notice, and it is only necessary to state that the management in appealing to gross tastes for support was signally unsuccessful in extracting funds from the public. The women wore long dresses and jockey caps and acted in a mechanical way that showed they had no love for the game. As there was no object for either team to play no public score was kept and neither players, spectators, nor admirers manifested any interest in the result.

-St. Louis Globe-Democrat, November 20, 1883

Happy Opening Day

This is usually one of my favorite days of the year. You have the start of the baseball season and, in St. Louis, we have the parade of players, the Clydesdales, Stan the Man and all the general festivities. It's like a holiday (and it should be a national holiday; we should all have the day off and watch a tripleheader).

But this year, I"m feeling a little ambivalent about the season. It just kind of snuck up on me this year and I'm not ready for it yet. Plus, it's not warm enough. And to top it all off, I think the Cards are in for a very rough year. They look like a .500 ball club to me-which means, of course, that they can finish anywhere between 75 and 90 wins. But I think the 75 is more likely than the 90.

Regardless, Carp takes the mound at 3:15. It's his sixth opening day start for the good guys. Go Cards.

Edit: It's just about 2:30, the festivities are about to begin and I take back all that nonsense about not being excited about the season starting. I've watched the Yankees/Tigers and Braves/Nationals already on MLB.com and I'm ready for my boys to start the season. Go Cards!

Next

I have a busy weekend planned. While I actually have the entire weekend off of work, I have a wedding to go to and there's this basketball tournament going on that's taking up a lot of my time. So I haven't written the final post on the 1887 player's sale. I'm going to post some random stuff from my notes over the next few days, just to clear that stuff out. Then hopefully, by the middle of next week, I'll write something wrapping up the sale. I'm sure I'll have very little of interest to say.

Anyway, my point here is that I'm pretty sure that I'm going to cover the Maroons' 1884 season next. I'm not certain how far back I'll go. But I guess I have to cover the creation of the Union Association before I get to the games.

I'm a bit tired of the Browns and I'm going to pass on going over the 1888 world's series for now. Maybe I'll come back to it after I finish with the Maroons.

So that's the plan. And now I have to get back to watching some basketball.

I'm Taking The Day Off

Two things:

1. For those who don't know, I work in the restaurant business and we've been stupid busy since before Thanksgiving and I'm tired and worn out. Usually, I'll have a week's worth of posts queued up and ready to go but I've been struggling to keep up with the blogging since Christmas. The holidays just kicked my rear end. I'd say that I think I'm getting old but I know for a fact that I'm getting old. Don't even have to think about it.

2. I have a friend who's leaving our restaurant and taking a job elsewhere so we've been "celebrating" for two days. Let's just say that the celebration involved closing a few bars (and I freely admit that I've closed more than my share of bars over the years; but see above about the whole getting old thing).

So instead of writing about 19th century St. Louis baseball, I've been working too much and staying out too late. And I have a ton of stuff that needs to be written up. Just to give you a little preview (rather than doing anything really productive), I'm going to finish up the 1887 world's series; I'm going to go through the 1887 off-season and the Browns' big sell-off; I'll do the 1888 series; I have a bunch of cool stuff in my email inbox about the Black Stockings that has to be posted; I've been looking into VdA's background and his life before coming to America and that will make for an interesting post; I have some good stuff about the 1875 season and I think I know how Charlie Sweasy ended up in St. Louis; and I'd love to go through the Maroons' 1884 season day by day.

Looking at all of that, I think that's a year's worth of stuff. So stick around, 2011 should be a good year. But I'm taking today off. And probably Sunday, too.