OT/baseball players being paid to play!

[mayx2]

In our local paper,Uniontown Herald Standard, a guy writes a" did you know" article about past stories about our city and county that appeared in other newspapers over the years and today it was about an 1891 article about baseball I thought was interesting.

"Did you know there were local concerns about the state of baseball back in 1891?

"Base ball (that's how they spelled it back in August of 1891) isn't what it used to be," was a claim contained in an article in the Connellsville Courier.

It seems the local Connellsville team was unable to take the field against the team from Uniontown, because it didn't have a "professional catcher and pitcher."

It's hard to believe there were actually professional players hired as ringers for small town baseball teams before the turn of the 20th century, but that article confirms it.

There was, however, some rather prophetic language in that article that could be applied to, say, the New York Yankees today. "The game depends, not upon the players, but upon 'hired men,' and the club with the longest pocket-book wins the game," claimed the writer.

But there was more. "We presume that it is only a question of time before the game will be played exclusively by 'hired men,' and the players will do nothing but stand around and quarrel with the umpire," the writer concluded.

Lou

[Jantz]

Lou

I've done alittle research on my hometown team. The town pitched in some money to buy the local boys some equipment and apparently the manager ran off with it. They had to get the "constable" involved to get matters straighten out.

I also found an article once involving my hometown & Fred Merkle.

You can run across some interesting stuff like this sometimes.

Nice article, thanks for posting it.

Jantz

[mayx2]

Here in Western Pa,when coal was still king,the coal companies had baseball teams that I know from hearing stories from my Dad,uncles and others of that generation were paid to play.I'm talking from 1920's-early 1950's quite a few of the guys who played on Coal Co.teams went on to play pro ball.It was just a little surprising to hear it went on in base balls infancy, so to speak!

These type stories I find very interesting and there aren't alot of the old timers who can tell the stories from first hand accounts anymore!

Glad you found it interesting,Lou.