Clipping:A defense of the reserve system
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| Date | Sunday, September 5, 1880 |
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| Text | Let us see how the abolition of the five-players agreement, or the absence of something of a similar character, would work. Cincinnati, for example, desirous of getting a team that it thinks would win the championship, and being determined to outbid any and all other clubs in order to get the players it wants, enters the field after the 23d of October and begins the engagement of a team for 1880. the local management and the local newspaper advisers agree upon something like this for an outfit: Jones, Gore, and Kelly for the outfield, Will White and Corcoran for pitchers, John Clap and Flint for catchers, Jim White for first base, Burdock for second base, Burns for short-stop, Williamson or Connors for third base, and Hines or Dalrymple for substitutes. This would be a tremendous batting and fielding collection, and might or might not win the championship: much would depend on management, in which respect Cincinnati is lamentably deficient. Anyhow, Cincinnati wants these players, and is going to have them at whatever rate of salaries promised,--payment being quite another affair. But how about Chicago and Gore, Kelly, Burns, Williamson, Corcoran, and Dalrymple? Presumably Chicago wants to keep these players, and to a certainty Chicago can afford to pay them $2 for every dollar offered by Cincinnati. Boston wants to keep Burdock, Troy wants Connors, Providence wants Hines; more than that, they are going to have them, or else they are going out of the ball business, for a club cannot survive which loses the players having the strongest hold upon the favor of its patrons. Chicago, Boston, Providence, and Troy will pay these players $2,000 apiece before they will let them go. Bu Cincinnati will pay $2,500, and gets them—gets a mean which will cost upwards of $25,000 for salaries alone, or $32,000 when traveling, hotel, and incidental expenses are added. To meet this expense the Cincinnati Club must average $400 per game for eighty games, at home and abroad,--a thing which no club ever did or ever can do. The average will be less than one-half that figure when Cincinnati shall have crippled every other club in the League by taking away their best and most popular players. Result, a net loss of $16,000, which the Cincinnati stockholders must pull out of their pockets and pay into the Club treasury. Will the Cincinnati stockholders do it? Unquestionably they will not. Then the players engaged lose one-half the salaries promised, and have played ball for considerably less than what they would have received had the five-players agreement operated to prevent this senseless competition. We do not believe the ball-players of the country are so silly and short-sighted as to want to kill the goose that lays for them the golden egg,--said goose being the League, which has been instrumental in elevating and popularizing the game of ball, in creating a demand for players, and in guaranteeing them honest and fair treatment by the clubs employing them. What is good for the League is good for ball-players, for the day when the League ceases to control the National game in America by wise legislation and judicious business management will see the speedy downfall and obliteration of the game as a grand popular amusement and pastime; and nothing will more surely disrupt the League and reduce base-ball to chaos than a policy which increases salaries beyond a point justified by club receipts. Salaries are already as high as they should be, and the person who advocates a plan that will inevitably increase the present expense of maintaining a club, be he officer, stockholder, player, or newspaper reporter, is no true friend of base-ball. Ball-playing talent is worth what it will bring, and it will bring, in the long run, not what indiscreet club officials are foolish enough to bid for it, but what experience has amply demonstrated the public will pay for it in the shape of patronage, and no more. In many instances this revenue from patronage has not equaled the expense of maintaining the club, and club stockholders, enthusiastic and ardent devotees of the game, have paid the deficit. This will have to do it this year in several instances, and they are willing to do it again, provided the deficit is not too large. How to keep it down to the minimum should be the study of every club management, and no how to make it larger. It was for this that the plan of reserving players was devised, and it is for this it should be continued. |
| Source | Chicago Tribune |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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