ranks" had much to do with it. It is equally unquestionable that the very
reverse had a great deal to do with the lamentable failure of the Boston
team to follow up the success with which that club's team opened the
campaign. The contrast, these two clubs presented in this special respect
calls for the most earnest consideration of the vital question of
insisting upon temperate habits in all the club teams during the period of
the championship season each year. The evil of drunkenness among the
professional teams is one which has grown upon the fraternity until it has
become too costly an abuse to be longer tolerated. Drunken professionals
should be driven from service just as the crooks of a dozen years ago
were, never to be allowed to return. Drunken players are not only a costly
drawback to success individually, but they permeate the whole baseball
fraternity with a demoralizing influence. The fact is, professional
baseball playing has arrived at that point of excellence, and reached so
advanced a position in regard to its financial possibilities, that it will
no longer pay, in any solitary respect, to allow players of drinking
habits in first-class teams. The demands of the game, as it is now played,
are such as to require a player to have all his wits about him to play
ball up to the standard it has now reached. He needs the steadiest of
nerves, the clearest eyesight, the most unclouded judgment, and the
healthiest physique to play the game as it is required to be done by the
exacting public patrons of the present day. Another thing, the capitalists
who have ventured thousands of dollars in baseball stock companies, can no
longer allow their money to be risked in teams which are weakened by the
presence of men of drinking habits. Mr. Spalding's plucky and most
successful experiment has conclusively shown that a baseball team run on
temperance principles can successfully compete with teams stronger in
other respects, but which are weakened by the toleration of drinking
habits in their ranks. Here is a lesson taught by the campaign of 1888
which points a moral, if it does not adorn a tale.