Clipping:The introduction of pool selling
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| Date | Sunday, August 23, 1868 |
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| Text | At Troy, regular pools were made up in the Atlantic and Union match, hundreds of professional gamblers from the races at Saratoga visiting Troy for the purpose. This kind of thing will mark all these championship matches to the close of the season... New York Dispatch August 23, 1868 In looking over our exchanges a few days since, we came across the following, which to a casual reader would not seem to be of any great importance; but to those who have the welfare of “Our National Game” at heart, it is the beginning of what will give a death blow to base ball playing if its evil influences are not nipped in the bud. The article was as follows:– “At the Atlantic National match at Troy, a few days since, pool-selling was inaugurated, and some $15,000 changed hands on the result of the game.” Pool-selling is nothing more nor less than gambling–right down systematic gambling. Suppose two clubs are about to play an important match. The pool-seller announces that the pools for the game are ready to be sold, and when those interested are assembled, he announces the names of the clubs to play and calls for bids for first choice and then for second. These two bids constitute a pool, and the one who is fortunate or unfortunate enough to hit the right club takes the amount of the pool. After one pool is made up the same thing is done over again, until all present have, if so inclined, invested their money on their favorite club. Now all this is wrong, and not only wrong but the evil influences, which betting has led to in turf and aquatic sports in inaugurating a system of fraud, will be the same in base ball matches, if the clubs once get within the influences of the betting ring. There is nothing that can be more detrimental to the continued success of our national pastime than this one thing, and if it is not stopped, and that at once, farewell to any thing like fair and honest base ball contests. The game will degenerate until it becomes a power in the hands of the sporting men, and the clubs mere tools, to aid them in their money getting plans. Let all then, who would preserve base ball from the evil influences, which must result from the system of betting, now in its infancy, rally, and by their influence and example check this evil ere it becomes too late to cope with it with any certainty of success. New England Base Ballist September 3, 1868 |
| Source | New York Dispatch |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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