Clipping:The cause of rising salaries
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| Date | Wednesday, January 25, 1888 |
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| Text | [from Frank Brunell's column] We all know how base ball prices have advanced, and how the $15,000 team of 1879 or 1880 cost $25,000 or more in these days of ours. Young blood, “limited protection,” and hoggishness. There is no doubt about the raise in prices. But there are some concealed causes for it. And some of them are necessary causes, too. One is the increased cost of batteries. In the $15,000 team days two batteries were plenty. Now four or five are necessary. Are the pitchers and catchers less able to work, or are they “working” clubs and systematically doing less than their duty? Neither! The game has grown more acute and the acuteness is of the all-round order. Batting, fielding and base-running has sharpened so that only a team of high class specialists can hope for success in first-class company. In the $15,000 team there was usually two of the batterists able to play in or outfield positions, and play it well enough not to weaken the general game played by the other men. But those days are past and the man who turns over the past and paints word picture of wonderful men “who played greater ball than has ever been played since,” may mean well enough and believe what he paints to be a copy of the truth. But he is wrong. The game of to-day is a game of specialists. Not six men in the leading groups can play more than one position properly, or for all there is in it. Ask one of your thoughtful players if I am not right. … Specialists, even while of the unfinished class, cost money, and it has been the chase for specialists as much as anything else that has whispered “Excelsior” into the capacious and none too discriminating ear of the base ball manager and got him into the trick of spending money too fast... |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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