[chucksabr]

Fulham Cry Foul!

For yet another season, the Fulham Baseball Club have been barely edged out for promotion to the top tier of clubs in the Baseball League. This time around, having drawn their season series with Nottingham Forest at three, the run differential of a mere six cost them the right to compete in the First Division for 1903. The Cottagers’ 531 runs scored versus 354 yielded runs resulted in a 177 run differential. The Foresters scored 550, gave up 367, and as such ended up with two key things, a 183 run advantage, and the promotion.

In 1901, you may recall, Fulham lost out on promotion to Clapton Orient after the two clubs drew for second on the table, only to see Orient win the nod by dint of having won five of the six season matches from the Cottagers. Fulham expressed their unhappiness in muted tones at the time, given the superiority of Orient in the head to head matches, although it was not lost on anyone that Fulham outplayed the rest of the Division by two games better than the O’s.

This season, with Fulham and Forest even on both record and head to head competition, a mere six runs over the course of an entire five month season will consign the cottagers to another year in the nether regions of the League, where the gate and the talent will be second rate, possibly stunting their chances to make their mark on the League in full face of all who follow the British game.

The Cottagers are none too happy about this state of affairs, and their chairman, the estimable Charles Creswell, is only too happy to say so to anyone within earshot who may or may not listen. Mr Creswell has been heard to say, repeatedly, something on the order of “When a promotion is at stake, table draws should be settled on the pitch, and never on the arithmometer!”

This publication is certainly in agreement with that sentiment. It would behove the League to settle a circumstance of this kind with a 103rd match of the season not only to forestall future inevitable complaints of this sort, but also to generate additional gate receipts for what must be by practical definition a full house, to which surely none of the brilliant business minds in charge of League affairs could mount any serious objection.