Clipping:An opinion of O. P. Caylor
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| Date | Sunday, July 4, 1880 |
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| Text | The self appointed base ball authority is a singular specimen. He can be likened to an annual plant or fungus of unhealthy growth, that blooms somewhere along in April, emitting a rank odor all through the summer months extremely offensive to every one save himself, to whom it is as sweet wafted fragrance from Araby the blest. In the fall, heaven be praised, the plant withers on its attenuated and unnatural trunk and dies, to the intense relief and improved mental health of every one who unfortunately comes within its baleful influence. No class of persons have been more deluded by this unsavory jack o'lantern than professional base ball players, who, as a rule, have minds entirely too pliable. Chancing by a little ill timed praise on the part of some journal to come under the favorable notice of the individual in question, they are immediately lauded up to the skies and accepted by the groundlings as players of undoubted merit. It takes but a short time to disclose the fallacy, and the professional's downfall is as rapid and inevitable as fate. Then it is that the authority with a pinchbeck collar of his own manufacture comes down on the poor wretches with a whereas. He howls with the wolves and helps shutter the fraudulent image that he created. The base ball wrecker of the Enquirer, a man of this pattern, has in the past two years very nearly killed the National game in Cincinnati, and President Hayes would confer a boon on lovers of the sport if he would appoint him as Minister to the heart of Africa and cut off all means of retreat. He is cordially despised by all men who have invested their capital in playing nines, to say nothing of the opinions of admirers of the sport. During the winter this young man, whose pecuniary existence depends on the sport, casts his evil eye about until it fastens upon a ball tosser of seeming promise. Immediately thereafter the alleged authority covers him with his guano and fosters him until spring, when he foists him upon an unwilling Board of Directors, who are convinced of their mistake when the man who turns out to be worthless has cost a number of valuable dollars of the club's money. The authority, to his credit be it said, has intelligence enough to know that the fact of his emptiness is but too apparent to journals of the first class, and the knowledge galls him. At intervals he gives vent to his feelings by indulging in little gadfly bites that are passed by unnoticed, until, by his persistence, he rouses one of them up to a reply, the retaliator afterward regretting the action as being a loss of dignity as well as a contamination. No city that harbors an authority of the kind described can ever expect to have a successful ball team; but one can survive, and unfortunately it is usually the latter that goes under. The Cincinnati Club and its adherents are behooved to remember Sinbad the Sailor, and shake off this “old man of the sea.” Cincinnati Commercial July 4, 1880 [N.B. The Commercial's baseball editor was Charles Scanlan.] |
| Source | Cincinnati Commercial Tribune |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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