Clipping:Rumors of thrown League games
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| Date | Saturday, October 14, 1876 |
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| Text | What is the League Association going to do at its Cleveland Convention in regard to suspected players? This is a question of vital importance to the interests of professional playing for the season of 1877, and the League will do well to give it deep consideration. Last Winter, when we asked the League directors why it was they threw out the Philadelphia Club for alleged dishonest practices, and then, with glaring inconsistency, re-engaged some of its most marked men, the reply was: “We thought it best to forgive them their crooked ways, and to trust to the stringency of our League laws to make them play straight this season.” The folly of this line of action has been shown by the experience of the play of 1876, during which more crooked work has been privately indulged in by players of more than one of the League clubs than was ever before known. It is quite true that absolute and direct proof of fraud cannot be procured; but nearly conclusive proof by circumstantial evidence is at command. When you know that your players frequent the haunts of gamblers, that they are interested in pool operations, that their associations are with men who live by pool-gambling, you must certainly know also that such men are very likely to engage in crooked work; and when also, in this connection, you see errors committed at opportune times for the success of a pool-ring arrangement, sufficient circumstantial evidence is then at command to prove dishonest play. Errors at the hands of such players as Start of the Mutuals, Fisler of the Athletics, Wright of Boston, Clapp of St. Louis, Spalding of Chicago, Fulmer of Louisville, York of Hartford, Gould of Cincinnati, and of twenty other players we might thus single out as examples of marked integrity of character, are but the incidents of contingencies of the game; but it is a very different matter when you see important errors committed by players whose daily habits of life, their associations and surroundings, are all unfavorable to a reputation for square play. The mistakes the majority of managers of professional clubs have hitherto made has been to place fielding and batting skill as the primary essential of a professional's ability to do successful work in the field, and to make integrity of character a secondary consideration, when it should be the first. The question is: “Will the League again commit the blunders in this respect they did this season?” If they do, then we need not look for any decrease in the dishonest professionals for 1877. There are players in the League nines of 1876 who are as honest as they are skillful and intelligent, whose presence in the team is a credit to the game they play and the club they belong to. But there are others—a small minority, we are glad to say—who are just as much a discredit. Now, these latter should be rooted out of the professional arena, and if the League Association intends to carry out the reform of existing abuses which it professed to be required to do, it will throw out all marked men. Until this is done, any restoration of public confidence is out of the question. New York Clipper October 14, 1876 It may be said, with some degree of justice, that it is almost impossible to discover actual proof of “crooked” work in the field. Perhaps it is so in one respect; but there is sufficient circumstantial evidence at command to place a player in the position of being justly suspected of fraud—at least to an extent which would arrant his removal or expulsion. There are certain antecedents, certain habits of life, and certain associations and surroundings which indicate pretty plainly the character of a player; and these frequently exist to an extent which almost precludes the idea of honesty. It is just as impossible for an honest ball-player to exist in an atmosphere of moral corruption as it is impossible for such player to benefit from the faculties of clear sight, keen perception, unclouded judgment and steady nerve while leading a life of indulgence in sensual and intemperate habits. It is in this way, therefore, that a conclusion can be arrived at that a player is justly amendable to the charge of suspected dishonesty; and when a decision of the kind is reached, there should be no law admitting such player to membership of a League-club team. The experience of the season has fully proved the fallacy of the argument that stringent rules will keep dishonest men honest. No matter what rules you may enact, temptation will always find the inherent knave ready to do the dirty work he is called upon to attend to. New York Clipper December 2, 1876 |
| Source | New York Clipper |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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