Clipping:Professional and amateur players
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| Date | Sunday, May 17, 1868 |
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| Text | [picked nines of New York vs. Brooklyn players 5/12/1868] The success of the class of contests inaugurated by this series of picked nine games depends entirely upon the way they are managed. The public and the fraternity in general will not object to paying the quarter of a dollar admission-fee, provided the trial of skill is a legitimate one in every respect, and not one “arranged” either to benefit “betting-rings” or to necessitate the playing of a third contest. But once resort to any “Hippodrome tactics”, and the professionals may at once give up their experiment as a failure; in fact, they will kill the goose which lays the golden egg. We notice that quite a fuss has been created by some statements in reference to the alleged participation in the profits of these games by parties who claim to be non-professionals. Now, though we see no objection to any player’s taking part in this class of games, either for the pecuniary profit they yield to individuals, or merely for the advantage of the practice derived from them, we do see an objection to amateur-players dipping their fingers into the professional jam, and yet claiming to play merely as amateurs. It is this shabby-genteel style of thing which is justly complained of, and not the simple fact of taking part in a game played for receipts at the gate. If a man can make–honestly, mind you–more money by his talents as a ballplayer than he can by his skill either as a car-conductor, a marketman, a porter, or a clerk, what earthly objection can there be to his doing it? But if he cannot play ball for money without becoming a knave and the tool of gambling rings, then he had better go and hoe corn or handle a shovel at a dollar a day. The time has arrived for the existence of two classes of ball-players, professionals and amateurs; and the sooner the fraternity recognize the fact the better for the interests of the game. This distinction has not been voluntarily accepted, it has been forced upon the fraternity. The National Association has fought against it until their laws on the subject have become dead letters, and now all they have to do is not to refer to it at all, but to leave it to club-action entirely for regulation. |
| Source | New York Sunday Mercury |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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