Posted By:
JoannOK, just thinking off the top of my head.
I would think that all tickets for the season were mailed to season ticket holders before the first game, much as now. It seems to me that having Game 27 be "whichever is the 27th home game played" instead of "the 27th scheduled home game" would be asking for trouble. People would get confused, not realize that one was cancelled and therefore the rest of the season "off register" with the numbering, etc. It seems much more reasonable that the scheduled games were the numbered games, and then use maybe blanks or the numbered ticket for the rescheduled date for cancelled/postponed games.
But why wouldn't the ticket have the teams and the dates? I'll display my ignorance here, and say that maybe at that time schedules weren't known or published in time to get tickets printed? Maybe the printer had some schedule or cost structure or lead time that required that they be printed before final schedules were available? Maybe even just the slower mail service required that they print and mail way ahead of time. If they know they are playing X home games per year, they can print all tix for the season any time they want or need if they use numbers instead of dates.
I don't know if any of these conditions existed in 19th C, but with lesser communications than today I guess it's possible. Using the ticket for whichever is the actual (versus scheduled) sequenced game just seems like it would cause problems - and there the lesser communications could play a role too. It just seems too likely that too many people would accidentally bring the wrong ticket to a game. The 27th is the 27th, and the rest are handled by exception or substitution. Seems simpler to me.
But this is all just random thinking on my part - still have yet to contribute actual knowledge!
BTW, what a cool cool item. How could it have survived for this long? And ... lol ... I am still a little stuck on that nice OJ you evidently just had sitting around to use for photo scaling purposes. That would be the centerpiece of my collection. I have like, dollar bills, match books, business cards, etc, that I could use for photo scaling. Not perfect OJ's. Great card!
Joann