Clipping:A proposal for a single entity league
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| Date | Wednesday, February 27, 1889 |
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| Text | [from the Kansas City correspondent] President Speas proposes that the eight clubs of the American Association form a stock company to be called the American Base ball Association. Let this Association be capitalized for a sum of money sufficient to cover the investments in players and in franchises that the eight members have made. The nine incorporators of the American Base Ball Association would be the presiden6t of the American Association and the presidents of the eight individual clubs. Let the incorporators be the directors for the first year. The officers would be the usual corporation officers:-a president, vice president, secretary and treasurer, and their duties, of course, would be similar to the duties of other corporation officers. The business of the Association would be conducted by the nine directors. There is a plain, simple method of organization, easy of perfection and short of every particle of red tape. The plan in short is to pool the investment in players and franchises of each club and to issue stock in lieu thereof. The valuation of club properties could be arrived at in this way:--Each club should furnish the directors with a statement showing the actual money it has invested in players and releases, that is to say the amount of money actually paid out. For instance, a player, though a valuable one, whose release had cost nothing, would not figure in this list. Then the directors would take up every player owned by a club and put an estimate on him. In this way the club would receive compensation for players whose releases had not cost anything. While, on the other hand, they might suffer some by having the estimated price fall below what another player's release had cost. Each club would receive stock covering, as near as possible, the actual value of its money invested. Then come the matter of franchise. Of course, a franchise in Brooklyn is worth more than a franchise in Kansas City. Brooklyn should therefore receive as much more stock than Kansas City in the American Base Ball Association as its franchise is more valuable than the Kansas City franchise. In other words, a club should be paid in stock for its franchise according to the capacity of that franchise for earning money. If Brooklyn pays interest—earns a dividend on $100,000 of stock—it should have stock in the Association accordingly. If Kansas City's club does not earn money, its franchise has no value outside of its players, and as it has already received stock in payment for its players it would receive nothing else. … If this plan were adopted, the Millennium Plan of equalizing strength would then have to be adopted, in order to make each club pay. Brooklyn would then be as much interested in Louisville's earning money as Louisville itself would be. |
| Source | The Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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