Clipping:The difficulty in dealing with revolvers

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Date Sunday, March 19, 1871
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If there is anything in this world that will tax human patience to a degree almost unbearable it is the manage a professional baseball club. Players, almost without exception, entertain a high opinion of the value of their services, and in a manner put themselves up at auction, to be knocked down to the highest bidder. The club manager, after months of worriment and genuine hard work, succeeds, as he imagines, in securing the requisite number of players to constitute a club. This accomplished, and at least a couple of months’ rest is anticipated. Vain delusion! One or more of the engaged men, as the case may be, resort to ‘ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.’ The manager is speedily up to his neck in hot water. The players have the advantage, for it is too late to secure capable men to fill their places. They make the most outrageous demands, and in nine cases out of ten the manager, having no alternative, is obliged to yield. But, presuming that the manager should be so situated as to be safe in refusing to comply with the demands of a rascally player, and at once cause him to be expelled from the club, what is the result? One of the rules adopted by the recent Convention is, in effect, that no club shall play a man who has been expelled from another club. If this rule was strictly adhered to there would be no complications. But more than one first-class club has already violated is as far as engaging players is concerned. And the example set will be followed by others. A ‘rounder’ signs papers to play with a club for the ensuing season. Another club prevails upon him to break his contract and sign new papers. The club that have the right to his serves expel him for dishonorable conduct, and are justified in refusing the play any club that engages the expelled man. Now, supposing it is a first-class club that plays this expelled man. To refuse to meet the club by reason of this action would result in a loss of $5,000, for that amount would, in all probability, be the receipts of a season’s contests between the two nines. What is the manager to do? The less of the services of the man is of itself injurious to the club. It would not be good policy to incur still greater injuries, so the manager is forced to make the best of the matter, and has no redress whatever for the trouble he is put to by the rascality of the ball-player., quoting “a Chicago editor”

Source New York Sunday Mercury
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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