National League (baseball)

“ The cost of the amalgamation of the four American Association clubs with the National League, together with the financial losses incurred by the revolutionary period of 1890 and 1891—losses, by the way, which the players did not participate in, the clubs alone being the sufferers—left a heavy burden of debt to handicap the reconstructed National League in its efforts to recover the public confidence in professional ball playing lost by the malcontents of 1890 and 1891. ”

“ This year marked the advent of modern professional baseball in New York City. The Eastern Association was formed April 11, with the Metropolitan, New Yorks, Athletics, of Philadelphia; Quick Steps, Atlantics, of Brooklyn, and Nationals, of Washington. The American Association, a formidable rival of the National League, was organized at a meeting held in Cincinnati on November 2, and started the following season with the Athletics, of Philadelphia, and Baltimore in the East; Alleghany, of Pittsburgh; Cincinnati, Eclipse, of Louisville, and St. Louis in the West. ”

“ It is well managed and harmonious teams, not picked nines led by special stars, which win in the long run. Now and then—as there are exceptions in all cases—a picked nine will attain a certain degree of success. But for steady struggles for permanent success in the professional championship arena, team work of the very best, and admirably managed teams will alone achieve steady victory. The old Boston teams under Harry Wright, and the Chicago teams under Anson, are a standing proof of this fact. Let the National League magnates ponder these truths earnestly. ”

“ One factor has ever been potent in its success and that is honesty. The honesty of the game has always been its motto, and though often assailed has still remained intact. This, alone, has gained for baseball a foothold in the hearts of the American people that nothing can dislodge. Americans are known the world over as lovers of fair and honest sport, and to base ball they have given their unswerving allegiance." Here is a merited compliment to the National League from the same able pen: "Our national game was never so firmly established in the hearts of the people as at the present time. ”

“ Two more nations have been conquered by the national game of the United States; a whole race has succumbed to the fascinations of the greatest of all outdoor sports. Both France and Sweden have announced their intention of organizing Base Ball leagues. That of Sweden is well under way. Indeed, they have a club in Stockholm and there are more to follow, while the French, who have gradually been awakening to the joys of athletic pastime in which they have hitherto chosen to participate in other ways, hope to have a new league by the expiration of the present summer. ”

“ Since the reconstructed National League began its new life, blundering management of teams has characterized the running of a majority of its twelve clubs, and it will continue to do so while the system of engaging players for their records merely and not for their ability in doing team work and in playing harmoniously together, is continued. Especially, too, is the plan of engaging players whose daily habits of life are at war with their ability to do first-class work in the field. ”

“ In the first place, the amateur clubs could never have given the game the time and labor required for its evolution which the professional clubs were enabled to do; and, moreover, not one club in a thousand could have spared the money required to fit up and keep in serviceable condition such finely equipped ball grounds as those now owned by the leading professional clubs of the National League. ”

“ When a representative major league team is made up of players who represent every section in the Union, engaged for their skill, it seems as if Base Ball has become nearer an ideal and a national pastime than ever before in the history of the sport. ”

“ With the retirement of Captain Anson baseball loses its most dignified and courageous figure—a man who has striven through a number of years to preserve the national game in all its best phases and a man who has fought for decency and gentlemanly conduct on the field, and by whose efforts the club of which he has been typical for a long time has come to be known as one of the most dignified organizations on the National League diamond. ”

“ Dubuque won the premiership with a roster of players which included Ted Sullivan, Tom Loftus, Charley Comiskey, then a pitcher, and Charley Radbourne, that marvel of twirling skill.
By 1880 the National League had earned its place as the premier baseball organization in the country. Its policy had become settled, and changes in its circuit were less frequent. In that year Worcester replaced Syracuse. The pennant went to Chicago. In the National Association Washington finished first.
Cincinnati retired from the league in 1881, Detroit being admitted. Chicago again won the championship. ”

“ Know when you have a good lead and then never stop until you have hit the dirt.”
It is up to the pitcher as much as the catcher to stop base stealing, for once a club begins running wild on another, the bats might as well be packed up and the game conceded. Pitchers make a study of the individual runners and their styles of getting starts. In my mind, I know just how much of a lead every base runner in the National League can take on me with impunity. ”

“ Realizing that such players were not given a chance to advance in the Base Ball profession, this matter was thoroughly thrashed out and the new ruling under which all of the National Agreement clubs operate was adopted. Now it is possible for a player in any of the smaller leagues to be drafted by a major league club, and when the latter party does not care to retain possession of such a player he is first offered to the Class AA clubs. ”

“ My plan is that the National League shall pass a rule forbidding the sale of a player from a club in the second division, to a club in the first division. I think this would, in a measure, prevent some of the hustling to dispose of a clever man for the sake of the cash that is in the trade. ”

“ The interests of clubs and professional ball players are identical. One cannot succeed without the other. Success means mutual benefit. The moment any suspicion attaches to base ball, public confidence lost or even chilled, the occupation of the ball player is gone. We must all stand or fall together. There is no middle ground. We stand by the fundamental law, our national agreement, which guarantees protection to players as well as to clubs, or we destroy it. One road leads to the perpetuation of the national game, the other to its decline. ”

“ When it is remembered that there are upward of thirty-five other leagues working under the National Agreement, as well as many independent organizations, and that the figures given are for the major leagues alone, it will be seen that baseball in America is a tremendous institution. ”

“ The National League was organized in 1876 as a necessity, to rescue the game from its slough of corruption and disgrace, and take it from the hands of the ball players who had controlled and dominated the "National Association of Professional Base Ball Players." ”

“ The official averages of League players contain the number of bases stolen by each player during the season, but furnish no means of comparison between the clubs in that most important department of the game. A glance, however, shows that the three tail-end clubs possess the three most successful base-runners in the League, in Hoy of the Washingtons, Seery of Indianapolis, and Sunday of Pittsburgh, the latter of whom would probably have finished first had an accident not prevented him from playing during the last two weeks of the season. ”

“ Unlike the history of other sports, professional Base Ball has helped instead of hindered the game of the amateur. Where one State league plays its circuit of six or eight small cities, a hundred amateur nines are springing up to pattern after the organization of the professionals, and with uniforms, managers, and regular schedules, boom the game for the pure fun of it. In Greater New York alone more than two hundred clubs of amateurs and semi-professional players contest regular series of games in private grounds and in the public parks. ”

“ Well, we still need baseball. We know we have many important challenges facing us as a nation as we prepare for the 21st century. We know that we're having important debates in Washington and real differences. But tonight, I just hope Americans will be able to take their minds off all that and their own work for a moment. I hope they'll be able to wonder instead at the arc of a home run, a catch at the wall, the snap of the ball in the back of a mitt. Soon these sights and sounds will become a new part of our shared national memory of baseball. ”

“ Two national associations were formed in 1871, one having jurisdiction over professional clubs and the other over amateurs. In 1876 was formed the National League, of eight clubs under the presidency of Nicholas E. Young, which contained the expert ball-players of the country. There were so many people in the United States who wanted to see professional base-ball that this organization proved too small to furnish the desired number of games, and hence in 1882 the American Association was formed. ”

“ Our "Mugs" McGraw will do his best to play Base Ball and win,
And he'll wear some zephyr coaxers on his broad, determined chin;
And "Robby," too, will say "B'gosh" and chew a wisp of hay
To conceal his strong emotion when a liner gets away.
The Turnpike League will have a pennant made of green goods
⁠bright,
And each team will play to win it with all their strength and might,
So we'll see the game played this year as it was in years before
When the team from Podunk Centre comes to play in Baltimore. ”

“ In the recent past, the rule on the League ball fields—and minor leagues copy all that the major league does—has been that, from the time the umpire takes up his position behind the bat, from the beginning to the end of a game, he finds both the contesting teams regarding him as a common enemy, the losing side invariably blaming him as the primary cause of their losing the game. ”

“ In the evolution of Base Ball, it took many years for those in control of the game to learn the very simple lesson, known well to every man engaged in commerce, that "competition is the life of trade." It needed just such a man as B. B. Johnson, and just such a League as he has established, to provoke the kind of public interest that now attaches to the game of Base Ball. It requires just such competition as is annually presented in the post-season contests to give zest to the sport. ”

“ It is true that prosperity in the cities means a certain amount of Base Ball interest in all the territory which is within the metropolitan influence, but it is also true that there has been a very wonderful and general growth of interest in sections which are remote from the major league circuits, and which are dependent for their professional Base Ball upon the so-called minor league organizations. ”

“ The rules concerning baseballs became more exacting and as a result the baseballs, particularly those used in the National League, and later in the American Association and American League, became more uniform. ”

“ They are mere gate-money organizations, lacking all of the attractive features of sectional and State league pennant races. State leagues also possess the advantage of not interfering with the interests of the sectional leagues which include State clubs. Take any State in which professional base ball flourishes, and in the State there will be found two classes of professional clubs, viz., the one strong class, which exist in the larger cities of the State, and the weaker class which represents the smaller towns. ”

“ Baseball is the national game. It is not only the most popular sport in the United States, but it is national in the sense that it expresses the ingenuity, the energy and the agility of the typical American. Viewed in this light, baseball possesses a dignity of its own and an entertaining and informing piece of literary work about it cannot be trivial. ”

“ Football—Our team continues to win and is at the head of the league table, having played four league games and won them all by scores of 4-0, 1-0, 5-0, and 7-0, and there seems to be nothing to stop us from annexing the league championship.
Baseball—The baseball team has played three league games so far, and won them all, so they too are strongly in the running, being the only unbeaten side so far. ”

“ Had that ancient organization never encountered opposition, the chances are that there would never have developed a national game. And so it needed the American League, with the Boston Americans' victory of 1903, to make the National League managers realize that they had not all the ball players on earth—that there were others. And when the Chicago White Sox in 1906 again took the national pennant from the pioneer League, it served as nothing else could have done to stimulate interest in the sport in every quarter. ”

“ Yes, the game is a great one among the boys, even in the far West. While I was a bit too old to play, I saw plenty of Base Ball there before coming East to Chiclsamauga and Tampa at the beginning of the Spanish War. Our regiment, the Twelfth Infantry, is the acknowledged champion of the Army. I don't believe the Twelfth's team has ever been beaten, and it has met some strong opponents, too, among the Southern League Clubs. When they are practicable, trips to other posts are frequently made, and in an out-of-the-way garrison a rattling good Base Ball game is no ordinary event. ”