Chronology Entry Edit: 1870.4

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Year:
Suffix:	unselected = certain of year, c = circa, s = in the decade of
Number:
Headline:
Salience:	None/unknown 1 2 3 4
Tags:	Bans African Americans Antedated Firsts Ball in the Culture Base Ball Stratagems Baseball Professionalism Business of Baseball Championship Games Chapbooks for Juveniles Civil War Club Constitutions/Bylaws College Contemp. "Base Ball" usage Drawing English Base Ball Equipment Famous Females Fiction Gambling Harvard College Hazard Holidays Images Interscholastic Mexican-American War Military Music Newspaper Coverage Player Apparel Plugging Post-Knickerbocker Rule Changes Pre-Knicks NYC Pre-modern Rules Pro Clubs Statistics Stats and Box Scores The Ball Throwback Games US cricket clubs Verse
Location:
Country:	for US use United States
State Code:	for US entries, use 2 letter abbreviation e.g. MA
City:
Modern Address:
Game:
Immediacy of Report:	None/unknown Contemporary Retrospective
Age of Players:	Youth Juvenile Adult Unknown
Holiday:
Notables:
Text:	<p>"<strong>November 1870 -- Morrisania Unions Disband</strong> -- 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."</p> <p>(For more on the breakup of the Union Club, see Supplemental Text, below.)</p>
Sources:	<p>Gregory Christiano, <em>Baseball in the Bronx, Before the Yankees (PublishAmerica, 2013), page 77.  Original sources to be supplied.</em></p>
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Comment:
Query:	<p>Can we add any indication of why the club disbanded?</p>
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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.

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Chronology Entry Edit: 1870.4

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