Clipping:Ten men on a side in a match game
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| Date | Sunday, November 22, 1868 |
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| Text | [Acme vs. Empire 11/16/1868] The Acmes having challenged the Empires to a series, and it being too late to commence and finish it this season, it was determined to give them a single game, and that one of the last of the season. [The box score shows ten on each side, including a right short.] New York Sunday News November 22, 1868 a manifesto on professionalism The time has arrived in the progress of our national game to maturity, when the fraternity will have to be divided into two classes of players, viz., professionals and amateurs, the former consisting of the class of ball-players who play base-ball for money, or who receive special compensation in any way for their services as ballplayers, and the latter being composed of ballplayers who engage in the game either for mere sport or for recreative exercise alone. Ever since we had a standard code of rules for the game, there has been a statue law against playing ball for money, or for compensation in any way; but, nevertheless, for the past five years at least, but in fact since 1860, this rule has been a mere dead letter. In 1867, too, the rule governing this point was so worded as to class ballplayers who played for “money, place, or emolument”, as professional, and following this came an express rule prohibiting this class from taking part in any match-game. But the rule has been still less observed than it was before. In fact, it is a law which has been easily evaded; and we doubt whether any law could be framed which would prevent a certain class of ball-players from playing for money. But why this opposition to professional ballplaying? is a question many worthy members of the fraternity have asked. The argument against it is, that it will eventually bring the game down to the low level of many of the ordinary sports in vogue. On the other hand, even granting that professional ballplaying is an evil in its way, or in its ultimate results, as it is one we cannot prevent, but one we may regulate and control, is it not rather the part of common sense to try and keep it within legitimate bounds by a proper code of rules governing the system, rather than by dead-letter laws face it with a useless opposition, and thereby aid in promoting the worst evils of the system by making professional ballplaying a discreditable occupation, besides lowering the game in public estimation. If this season’s experience has shown any one thing more than another, it is that professional ballplaying has become an institution in the land. The way this system has come into vogue is as follows:–When, in the good old days of the Knickerbocker and Gotham matches, at Hoboken, the game was played merely for recreative exercise and the excitement incident to the sport, baseball was in its infancy. The game was then played up to that point of excellence only which the limited practice of the game enabled the leading nines of the day to attain. Since then, not only have the rules of the game been yearly improved, but the degree of practical skill evinced on the field has been kept on a par with the advanced position of the game itself. AS baseball, too, has progressed in popularity, and since club-matches have been transferred from free ballfields to inclosed grounds, and thousands of people have been found willing to pay a quarter of a dollar entrance-fee to witness a well-played game, a calss of regular ballplayers, who devote their whole time to ballplaying, have come into existence; and one important result of this new order of things has been the substitution of regularly-trained and practiced experts in the place of the amateur-players of the days of the Knickerbocker and Gotham meetings; and, a sequence, too, we have the game now played up to a point of excellence, as regards fielding and batting skill, never before attained. The question now being discussed by the fraternity at large prior to the meeting of the National Association at Washington is whether this system of professional ballplaying is to be be legalized or repudiated by the National Association. As an example of the opposition the movement for its indorsement is likely to meet with, we have simply to quote the direct instruction from the New Jersey Convention to its delegates to vote “square against professional ballplaying.” On the other hand, four of the eight delegates from the New York Convention are from clubs having professional nines. We think that the majority of the fraternity, at the same time that they are in favor of adopting some regulation likely to prevent the evils of the revolver system and of gambling ring associations, are also in favor of giving professional players some legal status in the game whereby they can take to ballplaying for money as a calling honestly, and not as now by surreptitious means. As nothing the Association can do will prevent professional ballplaying, it is by far the best plan to adopt a code of rules applicable to the nine, than, as at present, have on the statue-book rules which are openly violated each season. New York Sunday Mercury November 29, 1868 |
| Source | New York Sunday News |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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