and attention the professional clubs were enabled to devote to its
thorough development from the year of Harry Wright's famous "Red
Stocking" nine of Cincinnati, in 1869, to the existing period of model
professional ball playing. In the first place, the amateur clubs could
never have given the game the time and labor required for its evolution
which the professional clubs were enabled to do; and, moreover, not one
club in a thousand could have spared the money required to fit up and
keep in serviceable condition such finely equipped ball grounds as those
now owned by the leading professional clubs of the National League. To
these facts, too, are to be added the statement that to the National
League's government of the professional class of the fraternity is due
the lasting credit of sustaining the integrity of play in the game up to
the highest standard; so much so, indeed, that it has reached the point
of surpassing, in this most important respect, every other sport in
vogue in which professional exemplars are employed. Take it for all in
all, no season since the inauguration of the National League in 1876, has
approached that of 1894 in the number of clubs which took part in the
season's games, both in the amateur as well as the professional arena;
and certainly no previous season ever saw the professional clubs of the
country so well patronized as they were in 1894. Moreover, it was the
most brilliant and successful season in every respect known in the
annals of the college clubs of the country. In fact, there was but one
drawback to the creditable success of the entire championship campaigns
of 1894, and that was the unwonted degree of "hoodlumism" which
disgraced the season in the professional arena, and this, we regret to
say, was painfully conspicuous among the players of the National League
clubs, this organization having been noted, prior to its absorption of
the old American Association element in its ranks in 1892, for the
reputable character of its annual struggles for championship honors. One
result of the rowdy ball playing indulged in by a minority of each club