Clipping:A proposal to replace the reserve system with a salary scale
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| Date | Wednesday, January 23, 1884 |
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| Text | The reserve rule has been hammered very heavily since the closing of the season of 1882. There is some reason why it should be. It is not the best rule in the world, but it is the best that could be devised to meet a difficulty that threatened to wreck base ball. It works a wrong upon the player, because it says to one, ‘You shall play here for $1,500,’ and the player can look to a club in another State, where a man is playing the same position as he, and in an inferior way, for $300 more salary. Player are loud in their growls about other wrongs which the reserve rule inflects. In reality they amount to nothing. But in the way stated above a wrong may be done. The reserve rule gives a club opportunity to be unjust. Can that opportunity be taken away? We think it can. It is necessary for the good of the League that all the clubs should be as nearly matched as possible. The clubs should be but healthy branches of the whole, but independent ones and intent on winning the championship. That brings out the late Mr. Hurlbut’s idea fully. No truer friend or worker for base ball ever lived, nor any more sensible or fair-minded man. His idea has been followed. The eleven men reserve is but an enlargement on one of his ideas and is for the purpose of keeping up individual club strength and preventing the best players going to the largest cities. That would form two or three strong clubs and drive the smaller places out, because the latter would be unable to compete with the former. So the reserve rule stands, a representative act of the policy of the greatest good to the greatest number. It is in the one particular stated a harsh rule. At the last meting of the League one of the representatives of the Cleveland Club proposed a plan that will do away with all the injustice of the reserve rule, protect the player better than he can protect himself and generally work to his advantage. The League thought well of the plan, but it was too late to affect the present season, contracts having been made, and was laid aside to take up at the March meeting. The plan is, in short, a system of graded salaries based on immediate work done. It purposes dividing the players of each position into groups, and grading each group into three classes–first, second and third. The League is to fix a maximum salary of each position group for the player of the first class, and two amounts, each a step below the other, shall be fixed as the pay for the second and third class. The men all start even, and are to be paid a liberal sum monthly–say $150–the balance being held by the club, and at the end of the season this extra sum is to be paid to the player upon the merit of his work of the season that has passed. The classing is to be decided by the official averages as interpreted by Secretary N. E. Young. An extra sum is to be given to each player on the score of general good conduct off the field. To make the scorer’s work more simple, rules are to be so changed that a failure on the part of a player to field a ball is to be called an error, even though the player failed to touch the ball, and no error is to be charged to a man for an attempt to stop a ball that it was impossible to handle cleanly. Nothing like ‘playing for a record’ could then exist. The club officers could check the official scorer’s figures and also agree to deposit money in a bank, with Secretary Young, or in the hands of a trustee appointed by the League, so as to guarantee the balance of the salaries at the end of a season’s work. The two latter points are the only weak ones in the plan and are slight and may be guarded against, while the advantages are many. Calls for advance money would be scarce, because each player would have a snug little sum saved at the end of each season; the player would have an extra incentive to work so as to stand in a high class; it would stop what is known as ‘sulky playing,’ because ‘sulks’ would cost money, and in many ways aid the playing and the player. The class remuneration will be made liberal, and all the clubs bound not to pay above the fixed prices, to be the same in every club which will give a first-class pitcher or catcher more salary than an outfielder or first baseman. The plan is given in advance because it is likely, with some amendments, to become a law. It shows that the League has no with to do an injustice to a player if such injustice can be removed without suicidal effect, and it shows clearly that the policy of one for all is still in the blood of the League., quoting the Cleveland Herald |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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