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Newcastle United Out, Exiled to Midland; Loughborough In

Magpies Club in Financial and Management Shambles

When the Newcastle United club arrived in the Second Division of the Baseball League to start the 1893 season, they did so with the high hopes that accompany a generous club chairman, a large city of interested base ball enthusiasts surrounding them, and a base ball park at St. James capable of seating up to 11,000 paying customers. But such hopes have disintegrated into a morass of mismanagement by the club and apathy by the fans. And so the Magpies have been shown the door by the League, to be replaced in 1895 with the Corinthians of Loughborough.

Although the Magpies were not a sparkling performer in the Midlands before rising to the League, they did have the capacity to place a team on the field that could compete at the elevated level. Instead, chairman Sir Alfred Jones squandered good money on merely average players even after hiring a more than competent manager and coaching crew that includes Abraham Walsh, ex of Preston North End as a second baseman and remade into one of the sharpest coaches of pitchers in the game.

With one of the highest player wage bills in the Division at almost £1,300, the Magpies were repaid with the lowest gate among the sixteen clubs, fewer than 60,000 patrons paying their tanner to watch, and resulting in a loss to the club of several hundred pounds during the course of the campaign. This poor business showing was precipitated by an execrable performance on the pitch itself resulting in a mere twenty-six victories against sixty-four losses, a pathetic 29% winning record. While the season gate started out in hopeful fashion with an opening day attendance of over 3,000 in a 3-6 defeat against London’s Woolwich Arsenal, as the losses mounted, the gate was duly suppressed, barely surpassing 1,000 for nearly every remaining match of the season.

Sir Alfred did himself no favour by allowing his staff to fritter away good money on the likes of batsmen Louis Hall, Ernest Sheehan and Edwin Clark. They’re fine players as far as they go, but they are not the stars deserving of the star salary they have been receiving, and their shortcomings were exposed in painful fashion in a faster professional league than they’ve deserved to play in.

Worse yet, the club have let their pitching staff go to seed, particularly in the absence of Gary Carter, their top starter who was injured in May and missed the entire season. With their only real weapon dispensed of, the Magpies has nowhere to go but down, and down did they go.

Sir Alfred is said to be furious with his club and his situation, but it is the opinion of all were work in the game that he has no one to blame but himself for his state of affairs. Perhaps the exile will do him and his club some good, open his eyes, and lead him to make the changes that will return the club to the League as members in good competitive standing. There is too much quality of fandom and facilities in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to waste in the nether regions of non-League base ball.