1893 Season News & Notes
As the Baseball League seeks to find its equilibrium between defence and offence, there was another substantial spike in runs scored in 1893 over 1892 in both divisions, due to the lengthening of the pitching lane from 50 feet to 60 feet 6 inches, which kept the dimensions used by the League in line with those of the American baseball leagues. In the First Division, league hitting leapt from .245/.311/.326 and 4.7 RPG in 1892 to .279/.347/.377 and 5.8 RPG this year; in the Second Division, the increase went from .243/.312/.318 and 4.6 RPG last year to .275/.344/.368 and 5.4 RPG in 1893. The fans of the League seemed to approve of the change, as attendance skyrocketed in the First Division. The top level attendance leapt by +75% from 1,151,006 to 2,018,932. (Per game attendance in the second level actually feel by -11% in part because of the move from an all-weekend to a full weekday schedule.)
This change manifested itself in a slew of new records, including batting average (.390,
William Clark, Sunderland), runs scored (92,
Fred Grant, Notts County), base hits (143,
Dwaine Cooper, Newton Heath), doubles (33,
William Smyth, Everton), triples (34, Grant), RBI (84,
William Simmonds, Blackburn) and stolen bases (67,
Frederick Elliott, The Wednesday). On the sabermetric side, Clark also set a season record for WAR with 6.1.
Similar record offensive levels abounded in D2, many of them ex-D1 players flexing their muscle against inferior pitching:
Charles Smith of Preston North End set records for batting average (.394) and WAR (6.8);
Richard Joseph, also with Preston, for Total Bases (173);
Joshua Reeve with Derby County for runs (92); and
Vivian "Mad Dash" Sharp, also with the Rams, for OBP (.549), SLG (.573) and OPS (1.122).
On the pitching front, the expanded season on the second level allowed for new marks to be set for wins (24,
Tom Cartwright, Burslem Port Vale) and losses (20,
Ernest Watkins, Bootle Bucks), as well as complete games (27,
Alfred Fulton, Ardwick) and innings pitched (267,
Roland McCann, Ardwick). And lest we believe that the new hitting environment made it impossible to have a transcendent single game performance,
Frederick Lord of the Walsall Town DSwifts did manage to toss a 6-1 no-hit win against Lincoln City on 8/7/93.
In the top level, though, because they played the same number of games in '93 as in '92, the only new pitching records set were for games started (31,
Ernest Rooney, Notts County) and hits allowed (315,
William Stainton, Everton), neither of which is particularly eventful.
Willie Thompson set a D1 record for doubles in a game with 4 at Burnley on 6/19/93.
Edwin Sloan of Walsall Town in D2 set a nine-inning game record for at bats and hits in a game when he went 7-for-8 in a 29-10 thumping of Derby County on 7/4/93.
Retirements of note include
William Gregory of Wolverhampton, who leaves having amassed 406 hits and a slash line of .256/.363/.335, and his teammate
Charles Adair, one of the original baseballers who took up the game with gusto in the wake of the Spalding Tour of 1878, and who hit .286/.371/.421 overall and is best known for his fantastic 1889 campaign in which he slugged eight homers and hit .372/.464/.601 in 61 games.