Clipping:A rumor of players colluding to increase salaries

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Date Sunday, November 27, 1870
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We learned last night, from excellent authority, that an understanding has been entered into during the past season, among the strictly first-class players of the county, the object of which is to raise the market value of ball players. The prime movers in this movement, it is said, are Messrs. George and Harry Wright, late of the Cincinnati Club.

During the various tours our club made through the country the past season, these players, it is said, convened councils of the best and most prominent members of opposing nines.

In these councils they took pains to impress upon the minds of their fellow professionals the great value of their services, and the limited compensation they were receiving for them. They also arranged with these players that they shall not engage for the ensuing season without previously notifying them.

The result of all this maneuvering has been that the players whose services are desirable hold themselves at such enormous figures as to preclude the possibility of an established club engaging them with any hope of meeting expenses from the receipts of games. A club such as the Chicago Club now is, or the proposed Indianapolis and Boston clubs promise to be, may engage these high-priced players during the brief term of their unprofitable existence, but it is hardly to be expected that the stock-holders in these ephemeral concerns will consent for any great length of time to the constant draft upon their private purses for the wherewithal to pay their representative nines.

A club that expects to maintain itself after struggling into existence cannot pay such prices as are demanded without going into debt or passing round the hat for more subscriptions.

Prominent members of the two Forest City Clubs, the Atlantics and the Mutuals, are said to be bound by the arrangement referred to above, and will not enter into negotiations for next season without first consulting their mentors., quoting the Cincinnati Gazette 11/23/1870

Source New York Dispatch
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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