Clipping:A eulogy for the American Association
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| Date | Wednesday, November 20, 1889 |
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| Text | [editorial matter] Base ball history was made rapidly during the past week, and the 14th day of November marked the beginning of a new epoch in professional base ball, for on that day the national League succeeded informing its lines in final array for the battle with that rising power, the National Players' League, and at the same tie dealt its old and hated rival, the American Association, a mortal blow, for that is what the defection of Brooklyn, Cincinnati and the consequent withdrawal of Kansas City virtually amounts to. The American Association may succeed in filling the vacancies and weathering another season, but its position in the front rank of base ball is gone, its prestige destroyed, and it stands shorn of all power for good or evil. With a widely scattered circuit, expensive teams, several semi-bankrupt clubs, but a couple of cities of the first class, and with no financial resources, its chances for more than a precarious existence are decidedly slim, and to all intents and purposes it may now be considered out of the arena as a great factor in the national game. This is a sad fate for this once powerful organization, and for many reasons its downfall is to be regretted. In its time it has done much for the game, alike for some of the reforms it has aided in accomplishing, and for the larger interest in the sport its existence helped to create and maintain; but it contained almost from its inception the seeds of early dissolution, disorganizing forces were uninterruptedly at work, and it was only a question of time when it would go to the wall. Brilliant opportunities to assume the premier position, to consolidate and strengthen itself presented themselves time and again, but all were frittered away through gross incompetence, despicable selfishness and fatuous perversity, and the melancholy result is visible to-day. … ...blunder followed blunder, and the campaign of 1889 marked the beginning of the end. This campaign was one continual series of petty bickerings, scandalous crimination and recrimination and bitter quarrels over a miserable championship which culminated in a factional division and the discreditable combination and outrageous action of the Board of Directors at the Cincinnati special meeting. From that day every thinking friend of the Association must have realized that the end could not be much longer delayed, as the breach was then widened to almost unclosable proportions and unhealable wounds were made. … Vale, American Association! |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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