team in the League was a decided falling off in the attendance of the
best class of patrons of the professional clubs.

Much of the "_Hoodlumism_"--a technical term applicable to the use of
_blackguard language; low cunning tricks_, unworthy of manly players;
_brutal assaults_ on umpire and players; that nuisance of our ball
fields, "kicking," and the dishonorable methods comprised in the term
"_dirty ball playing_"---indulged in in 1894 was largely due to the
advocacy of the method of the so-called "_aggressive policy_," which
countenanced rowdy ball playing as part and parcel of the work in
winning games. The most energetic, lively and exciting method of playing
a game of ball can mark a professional club contest without its being
disgraced by a single act of rowdyism--such as that of spiking or
willfully colliding with a base runner; bellowing like a wild bull at
the pitcher, as in the so-called coaching of 1893 and 1894; or that of
"kicking" against the decisions of the umpire to hide faulty captaincy
or blundering fielding. Nothing of this "hoodlumism" marked the play of
the four-time winners of the League pennant from 1872 to 1875,
inclusive, viz., the old, gentlemanly Boston Red Stockings of the early
seventies, under the leadership of that most competent of all managers,
Harry Wright. Yet, despite of this old time fact, if club managers do
not adopt the rough's method of playing the game, as illustrated in the
League arena in 1894, advocated by the class of newspaper managers of
local clubs, the scribes in question go for the local team officials for
not having a team with "plenty of ginger" in their work and for their
not being governed by "a hustling manager." Is it any wonder, under such
circumstances, that the League season of 1894 was characterized by
"hoodlumism?"

But little advance was made in the way of effective team management in