[chucksabr]

Season Starts To-Day, Hopes and Trepidation Pervade

Another spring has sprung, and with it comes the beginning of yet another British baseball season, played at all levels of course, but most well exemplified by the professionals of the English Baseball League. Theirs represents the pinnacle of athletic endeavours at any time of year, but particularly during the sweetly warm times of the year that lend themselves to lazy afternoons spent taking in a game.

The players are not seeing themselves as lazy layabouts, however. This baseball is all serious business to the men of the League, indeed, their vocation, and they aim to work harder and play harder than the competitors that stand between them and the League Cup. The favourites in the First Division this year appear to be usual clubs, including perennial champion Blackburn Rovers, the Black Cats of Sunderland and the Owls of The Wednesday, but this year Bolton Wanderers may be the surprise team making a move. The star of that squad is Jay Jones, the best centre fieldsman on the island, and who delivered his best year last season with a .405 hits average and fourteen home runs, one of the best batting seasons in memory. Wanderers have not exceeded fourth place as of yet, but all should keep an eye on them. One very large unknown also comes to the Division from Newcastle, as the Magpies of United swarm in with full force after the experience of having been expelled to the Midland League for 1894, reloaded with great force, then bullied their way back into the Top Flight a scant two years later. It should be quite interesting to see whether they have the wherewithal to make it in the big time once again.

In the Second Division, the newly-arrived Doncaster Rovers, late of the Midland circuit, bring a very strong side to the League. The names to which we should pay attention include their young and old duo of starters, twenty four year old right hander Wayne Alexander, and thirty six year old “lefty” William Larsen. They also being in Charles Dupont, one of the better old catchers of the non-League loops who we expect should acquit himself well enough in the second level. More traditional contenders for promotion include Notts County Magpies and Manchester City Citizens, who’ve themselves strengthened quite nicely with young performers such as starter Fred Armstrong, signed from the open market, and second baseman Nick Sinclair, a trade acquisition after nine seasons up in Grimsby.

The trepidation resides mainly in Darwen and Derbyshire these days, the latest clubs who’ve fallen into a state of some disrepair. After having played for eight seasons in the original League and then in its First Division, with some success, it seems the Salmoners engaged in a bit of hubris by first raising their gate price up to 8d., the highest in the top flight, but then accompanied that with a floundering within the table, dropping to 7th in 1893, then 8th, then 9th, then plummeting to 16th and last position in 1896, getting drummed down to the lower level in the test series with Newcastle United after the season. Beyond merely their still decreasing performance, the Darwens have also been repaid by their followers essentially by losing them, as their gate has dropped to the worst in the entire League by far. We are not sure how much longer League baseball can survive in Darwen, but if we were to bet on it, we would have to bet on “not long at all”.

As for the Rams, O, how the mighty have indeed fallen! The erstwhile Baseball Cup champions’ high-priced squad have performed miserably the past several seasons, leading them to exercise a trade of their national hero, Vivian “Mad Dash” Sharp, to the Seasiders of Blackpool at the end of the ’96 season. They have also wasted the talents and efforts of starter Brendan Phillips, second baseman Theophilus Hurley and third baseman Joshua Reeve over the years. It’s difficult to see how Derby County view themselves as a club with a baseball future, and we might well be seeing the end of the Rams in the League before long as well.