Chronology:Pro Clubs
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1872.8 Cleveland's NA Club Dissolves; League Financial Incentives to Blame?
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Age of Players:
"THE FOREST CITY CLUB -
The Cleveland paper speaks as follows in regard to the Forest City Club of that city: 'The management of the Forest City Club have wound up the concern. The nine is to have paid off today, and the contracts with the players cancelled' . . . . Probably the national game has seen its best days in Cleveland.'"
<See full clip in image below.>
Sources:
Boston Globe, August 12, 1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger's comments in '150 Years Ago'. FB posting of 8/12/2022:
'The Cleveland Forest City Club is dead. Oddly enough, the Forest City team is not quite dead. It is still twitching, but this won't last.
The Forest City Club is not like the other defunct clubs of this season. It wasn't comically under capitalized, nor was it merely a regional semi-pro team with pretensions. It was a legit professional stock company baseball club. The team wasn't actually good, but it was better than its current 6-14 record suggests. Look at the roster and it is a perfectly plausible collection of players. They are playing below their ability, but also look at the complaint that there have been only three first-class games played in Cleveland. It actually was five, but the point stands. They have played the bulk of their games on the road. This can't help their win-loss record, but worse was what it did to their finances. Clubs typically retained two-thirds of the gate while at home, meaning that road games both incurred travel expenses and brought in less revenue.
One way to look at the NA was that its purpose was to force its members to travel. This broke down here for two reasons. First, there was not yet any central schedule. The clubs were to play a fixed number of games against each opponent, but the actual scheduling was left up to them. The second was that Cleveland was the westernmost club, as a secondary effect of the Great Chicago Fire the previous year. Stopping in Cleveland on the way to or from Chicago was one thing. Making an expensive trip just for Cleveland was another. Put these together and the eastern clubs simply didn't schedule games there. Presumably they would have eventually, had the club endured, but they kept putting it off. The result was that the club's finances collapsed, making the question moot.
At least mostly. The players are carrying on as a cooperative team, meaning they split their share of the game among themselves. This strategy rarely worked. Boston, in what looks to me like an act of charity, will shlep out there next week for two games, but these won't bring in enough to make it worth the players' time and the team will give up the ghost."
Query:
Do we know how Cleveland media covered this sad event?
Year
1872
1872.9 Innovator Harry Wright's Custom on Called Strikes
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Location:
Game:
Age of Players:
"Harry Wright went to bat and waited, as is his custom, until the umpire, Mr. Hanna, reminded him of his duty by calling a strike."
Sources:
Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 20, 1872
Comment:
Richard Hershberger, 8/19/2022:
150 years ago today in baseball: "Boston at Cleveland, winning 12-7. This is the last gasp of the Cleveland team, but what interests me is this tidbit about Harry Wright's batting strategy, not swinging until the umpire calls a strike. This will later become a common approach. This is the earliest mention of it I know, making Harry a forward thinker in yet another area of baseball."
For Richard's 2014 summary of the called rules, see
Query:
Wright even passed on meatballs down the middle? Is that smart?
Year
1872