1870.4

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Union Club of Morrisania Disbands

Salience Peripheral
City/State/Country: Bronx, NY, United States
Game Base Ball
Age of Players Adult
Text

"November 1870 -- Morrisania Unions Disband -- players scatter to different clubs. Pabos, Bass and Allison went to Forest City, Cleveland; Gedney, Holdsworth, Shelley, and Martin to Brooklyn to play for the Eckfords, now a professional club; Birdsall will play right field for Boston; Higham to the Mutuals; Simmons and Pinkham to the Chicago White Stockings; Bearman to the Fort Wayne Kekiongas."

(For more on the breakup of the Union Club, see Supplemental Text, below.)

Sources

Gregory Christiano, Baseball in the Bronx, Before the Yankees (PublishAmerica, 2013), page 77.  Original sources to be supplied.

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Query

Can we add any indication of why the club disbanded?

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Submitted by Gregory Christiano
Submission Note Email tp Protoball, 6/12/2014 from Gregory Christiano
Has Supplemental Text Yes



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<comments voting="Plus" />

Supplemental Text

By 1870 the Union Club of Morrisania disbanded because they where hemorrhaging players to the professional clubs. The veterans were leaving to play for high paying professional clubs of the new league...NAPBBP (National Association of Professional Base Ball Players) which was to begin the 1871 season. During the 1868 and 1869 seasons Morrisania flirted with professionalism by paying their players with a share of the gate receipts. But they couldn't maintain the high standards of play they achieved in previous years. So there was less attendance at their enclosed ballpark at Tremont. Thus, the management couldn't afford to stay in their new ballpark in Tremont and returned to the Melrose field in 1869 which was not enclosed and so they slipped back to the amateur status since they couldn't charge admission to pay the players. The players jumped to the salaried clubs.  It was all over for the Union club.