[chucksabr]

Professional Base Ball A Big Hit In North and Midlands

Both League and Alliance Very Profitable With Exceptions

Even Everton Is Wildly Profitable; Whither Accrington?

As the opening match of the 1890 season draws nearer, a review of the finances of professional base ball clubs north in industrial country shows an industry that has great potential to grow more lucrative, and spread throughout the kingdom. It will be more difficult with time for the southern teams to ignore what may be an inevitability towards universal professionalism.

Tickets for base ball matches, priced between 3d. and 2/-, depending on club and region, are proving irresistible to the labour and professional classes. For those unfamiliar, base ball is a sport imported from America, one in which both brains and brawn are prized and on full display. The batsman who can muscle the long fly, or pitcher (base ball's version of the cricket bowler) who can use his wits to "strike out" the batsman (the near equivalent of taking a wicket) are also highly prized and well compensated, with some players as high as on £2 per week, in addition to their regular jobs.

Fixtures are set for one match each Friday and two matches (a "doubleheader") each Saturday, for twenty-two weeks starting in May and winding up in September, with half of the matches a club engages in at their home grounds, and the other half on "road". Matches generally start at one in the afternoon, with a second game following immediately the first on Saturdays, generally commencing coincidentally with tea. With matches lasting approximately two hours, there is little to fear as for the sun going down on an unfinished match.

The attendance by the locals is increasing for nearly every team, up twenty-one per cent. on average in the League and twenty-seven per cent. in the Alliance, 1889 over 1888. Nearly every club in the league is very profitable, with some clubs claiming a profit of over £1,000 in 1889 alone. Aston Villa is presumed to be the most profitable club, as their attendance increased by some fifty per cent. to almost 100,000 patrons in 1889, and their turnover is assumed to be over £2,000.

The money is so good for professional base ball that there is talk among League members about admitting additional clubs, and perhaps even playing games on working days, as many towns in the League have industrial shifts outside of regular daylight hours. In the United States, professional base ball is so popular that teams play well over one hundred games every year from April through October, and some teams even play on Sunday, although not without controversy. As unlikely as Sabbath base ball is in England, it is possible that games will be scheduled on each of the other six days of the week within the next few years.

And the play in the Alliance is considered nearly as good, and better by some, as in the League which presumably garnered the very best clubs with its inception in 1888. The Black Cats of Sunderland were invited to play in the League for 1890, whilst the Everton Blues were exiled back to the Alliance, which should conclusively prove the relative proficiency of each association.

One very glaring exception to the happy returns is the Accrington club, which is owned by Sir Finlay Drury, chairman of the Accrington Corporation Steam Tramways Company. As generous as he is known to be with his labour, he is equally and curiously mean with his base ball operations. Thorneyholme Road is widely understood to be the most dilapidated grounds in the game, making for a depressing attendance experience, and he has been quite penny-pinching on playing talent as well. This has not gone unnoticed by the Hyndburn locals, who have been staying away in droves, spending the past two summers counting the moments until football season arrives instead. A forty per cent drop in attendance for the club goes right against the general tide, and were it not for Sir Finlay's close business association with Francis Ley, the father of British base ball, The Reds instead of the Blues would surely have been the team put right out of the League over the winter.