Clipping:High salaries elevating the game
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| Date | Saturday, August 9, 1890 |
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| Text | [editorial matter] In connection with this salary question it will not be amiss here to call attention to a fact that is pretty generally lost sight of, viz., that high salaries are not altogether an unmixed evil. The extremely high salaries prevalent in the base ball profession of late years, responsible though they be for many of the ills which now afflict the body of professional base ball, yet have redounded to advantage in one important particular, inasmuch as they have tended largely to raise the standard of the profession. To play base ball for a livelihood does not mean the degradation it did years ago, and a glance over the roster of the various clubs will reveal the fact that a majority of the players who have been coming to the top are from the ranks of the educated, refined and well-to-do. High salaries did this, because they soon put an end to the toughs. These had cultivated nothing but their animal tendencies from childhood up, and as soon as they were able to command large amounts of money for very little work they cultivated too freely. In consequence the managers in all parts of the country realized the necessity of signing men who had sufficient common sense and education to be able to withstand temptation. The toughs, bums and drunkards, no matter how able, are being weeded out rapidly. To-day questions of character are almost as potential as records of ability in securing engagements, and respectable young men may now enter the profession without feeling that they are inviting the suspicion and contempt of their friends and the general public. The Sporting Life August 9, 1890 choice of hotel and financial health [from Ella Black's column] I regard the hotels at which the clubs top as a sort of thermometer by which the observant public can tell something of the financial condition of the different bodies. The high-toned expensive four dollars per day hotel was only early in the season, at a time when all the player and others connected with the clubs still clung to the idea that each and every team was going to make an enormous profit this season. Now their “dream of dollars is o'er,” and has been dispelled very decidedly. They are no longer able to stand quarters that will not make a special rate or anything of that sort. After leaving eh Anderson the clubs went to the Seventh Avenue Hotel and the Monongahela House because at both places they were given a special rate that made it an object for them to stop at either house. Now, of late both of these houses have been left in the shade and the St. Charles has sheltered the teams that visit the city. This is because the regular rate of the house is two dollars per day, and the special rate that is given to clubs is much smaller. Now, to my way of thinking this changing of hotels and gradual descent from four to two dollars per day for the team's board (per man), shows very plainly they have not any of them got any money to waste. It is not one side that is economizing any more than another, but both the major leagues are trying to do it. Ball players, like all other men love their appetites, and want plenty of good, first-class food with which to satisfy it, and it is on this account that I am led to believe that the change I referred to has been made, because the clubs could not stand it any longer to pay the expensive rates required at the first-named houses. Certainly, it is being done, and to save money can be the only reason for it. The Sporting Life August 9, 1890 |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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