The (English) Baseball League (est. 1888): A History

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1904
Second Division League Leaders

Batting Leaders

Pitching Leaders

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1904
Second Division Top Game Performances

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1904
Second Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1904
Second Division Top Systems

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1904
Second Division Financial Report

[chucksabr]

His Only Three Home Runs of the Season

Sam Pollard, Blackpool’s superannuated second baseman, has played with the Seasiders since before League days. He has hit plenty of home runs, well over forty in his career. Aged forty three years, it is understandable that the homers are few and far between these days.

But o, every once in a while, the surge of youth ascends and takes hold of the creaking body to deliver one more performance worthy of a young man’s boast. And so it was on the 6th of June of this programme, when Pollard cracked not one, not two, but THREE! Three home runs in a single day, only the fourth instance in Second Division history that any batter has done so.

After starting the game inauspiciously with a line out to the hurler in the second innings, Pollard came up two innings later to drive his first homer a massive four hundred feet over the centre field barrier, plating Stock ahead of him.

The sixth innings is that which will define Pollard’s epitaph, however. He led off the frame with a home run, and later that very innings, the pièce de resistance: yet another home run, this with Stock, Cox and Walters on the bases at the time, for what has become known as a Grand Slam.

Sam Pollard’s remaining days in the League are few. Aged forty three, he could muster only sixty one trips to home plate, and even with a sparkling hits average of .436, the Seasiders knew there were better options to employ on the pitch. But for one night, the crown jewel of his fourteen year career, Pollard was a strong and powerful young man once more, and the best choice the Blackpool club could have made on that sixth of June.

[chucksabr]

League Will Add Four Clubs

The continuing success of the Baseball League has led them to the inevitability of adding four clubs, two for each division, starting with the 1905 programme, despite their rejecting the very idea just last month.

The total League gate has increased by well over one million supporters in just the past two years, and over half of all clubs have built new grounds or extended capacity in their current grounds. This added gate is a result of the better quality of play on the pitch with each passing year, a pleasing spectacle to behold, and which has augured baseball’s increasing appeal as the game of summer. But also, the inclination among supporters to attend more matches also results from the clubs’ desire to keep the matches orderly by marshalling spectating towards seats in the grounds, rather than allowing supporters to stand for entire matches as is common of football matches, with its attendant propensity to inspire rowdiness.

The grounds of fifteen League teams now exceed over ten thousand in seated capacity, with White Hart Lane, home of the newest League club Tottenham Hotspur, the largest at 17,600. Five Central League clubs also have grounds exceeding 10,000 seats—three of them are joining the League for 1905, and the two others will extend their seating to satisfy League request.

This change will invalidate the promotion and relegation scheme that normally ensues at the end of the season, at least for this season. Rather than descending to the Second Division, Small Heath and Notts County will continue to play in the top tier, whilst the loop will still absorb previously promoted clubs Aston Villa and West Ham United to round out their twenty.

A second League vote took place for the rounding out of the Second Division. Rotherham County and Hull City won the first vote and will retain their promotions from the Central. The second vote reinstates Wolverhampton Wanderers, who'd been booted previously, and also brings in previously unsuccessful candidates Bradford City, Leeds City, and the Chelsea club of Fulham, London. The Everton club, which had already suffered the indignity of exile to the Alliance back in 1890 and ’91, remain on the outs.

Two other changes, one direct, one indirect. The direct change is that of a fixture extension; to maintain the scheme of six games against each division foe, a total of 114 matches will be played by each baseball club starting in 1905; the indirect change is that of the name of the Small Heath club to that of the Birmingham club, made perhaps with an eye towards changing their luck on the pitch as well.

Baseball League 1904
First Division Final Table: REVISED





Second Division Final Table: REVISED

Shortly after the original vote, it was decided that each division would increase by two clubs. In the First Division this was achieved by reprieving the two relegated clubs. This left four vacancies in the Second Division with the vote being between the two clubs who had previously not been re-elected plus three of the non-league sides who had originally failed in their bid for election. Voting (number of votes):

36      Wolverhampton    Now re-elected to the League
36	Leeds City       Now elected to the League
26	Bradford City    Now elected to the League
26	Chelsea          Now elected to the League
20      Everton          Again not re-elected to the League

[Koi Fish]

Giving this a bump. Good stuff here.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by Koi Fish

Giving this a bump. Good stuff here.

it really is, the precise control of the attendance and financials is excellent.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by dward1

it really is, the precise control of the attendance and financials is excellent.

Can I just tell you how happy it makes me that you noticed that? Because I put a lot of work into those things, as well as era-appropriate first and last names, ethnicities, place of origins, scheduling, player sizes, stadia and name changes, etc.

Thank you for that. That's very motivating.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Koi Fish

Giving this a bump. Good stuff here.

I appreciate your enjoying it so much that you graced my dynasty with only your fourth post in your over two years here, and your first post since June of 2012.

[Koi Fish]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I appreciate your enjoying it so much that you graced my dynasty with only your fourth post in your over two years here, and your first post since June of 2012.

I hope it motiviates you to keep this going!

[chucksabr]

I definitely plan to, although it will probably take a couple to three years to get up to present day.

[chucksabr]

Baseball: The 1905 League Championship

It is the first of May, and thus the new baseball programme commences to-day. The championship begins a fortnight earlier this year due to the extension of the Baseball League’s two divisions by two clubs, to twenty total in each. Thus, 114 matches will be played by each club in 1905, or six against each of the other nineteen clubs in the division. This increase may pose a threat to the stamina of players accustomed to finishing up for the summer after match one oh two, but champions are forged in the crucible of such challenges, and it is certain a victor will emerge, albeit somewhat the worse for wear.

In the First Division, Newcastle United look to be among the class of the loop, and a good bet to secure a fourth Emperor of India Cup in six years. Their pitching is among the best in the entire League, on par with the hurlers of Burton United, although the Magpies are certain to score more runs than the Burtons. Sunderland probably have the best attack of any club, and may give Newcastle “a run for their money”. The Black Cats do not have the pitching prowess that the Magpies do, but their attack may be enough to overcome the defence deficit and lead them to Cup glory in September.

The Second Division sees five new sides up from the bushes, encompassing the Hull City, Leeds City, Rotherham County, Bradford City and Chelsea clubs. The former two are the sides to watch, especially the Tigers of Hull City, who feature probably the finest left fielder in the British game in the London Welshman Joshua Lloyd, already a fully formed specimen at the age of twenty two. The Tigers will seek to stave off Burnley as the top side of the lower level, as the Clarets try to fight their way back to the top tier after having barely missed returning each of its two years of exile.

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1905: Clubs

<<<<< All updated uniforms courtesy of forum member No Pepper >>>>>

.
.

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1905: Club Locations


First Division



Second Division

[chucksabr]

Meet Harold Bridgeman

From the University of Cambridge comes a pitcher of such esteemed lineage that he forestalled the sporting career his athleticism would have afforded him years ago to instead follow in the family tradition of university.

Harold George Henry Orlando Bridgeman, of North Shropshire, received his course degree in Classics. With good reason, as his father, Lord George Bridgeman, Fourth Earl of Bradford, is in fact the Chairman of the Board of the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge. However, since he is not the eldest heir, Young Mister Bridgeman is not in line to succeed his father in his titles.

Upon recognition of his athletic and academic gifts, Mister Bridgeman forewent the customary military stint to pursue his Classics degree, as well his baseball studies at the Cambridge University Baseball Club, who easily won the inter-university Bradford Baseball Cup all three years of his tenure there.

Let it be known that Mister Bridgeman is not merely a novelty selection by the Chesterfield Town side, as though chosen for the curiousness of his birth to nobility. He is quite a finished product such that he alone may lift the Spireites to promotion to the top tier for 1906. Blessed with superior pitch speed, movement and control, he will likely contend for the Second Division’s Pitcher of the Year right away, at the tender young age of twenty three.

And lest anyone worry that Mister Bridgeman will set himself far above his mates of lesser breeding, he has already been in good spirits with the chaps, who have hung the playful moniker of “M’Lord” on him!

[chucksabr]

From the Department of Off The Grid:

I have been running the Central League in the background in addition to the Baseball League, both to provide a history for teams and their players when they get voted into the League, and to have someplace to which relegate a team when they get voted out of the League.

Darwen and Woolwich Arsenal were two such teams. Darwen got booted after the 1898 season; you may remember Arsenal recently getting popped after their godawful showing in 1903.

Darwen has been limping along through the dregs of the Central, where they will probably play out the string and eventually wind up. Arsenal, on the other hand, is playing like a team with a mission to get voted back in, and soon.

So it's the irresistible force facing the highly movable object on the 19th of July in front of an initially disinterested crowd of 1,303 at Manor Ground in London for a 2:00pm start. The game starts predictably enough: the Gunners running away in a laugher, up 15-3 through six and a half.

And then, the fire hose opened. I mean, really opened wide. After it was all over, the Gunners had plated TWENTY FIVE runs in the bottom of that seventh inning, aided by nineteen hits (including two home runs) and EIGHT Salmoner errors, to take a 40-3 lead going into the top of the eighth.

Of course, this is baseball with its lack of clock, so you never know whether the other team is going to make a comeback and take the lead from you. So, just to be certain the stake went all the way through the heart, Arsenal scored two more in the eighth, to arrive at the final score of 42-3.

Really, you can't make this stuff up. (Although, apparently, OOTP can.)

Here's the box score for the game and, as a special bonus, the game log of the 25-run seventh inning. Enjoy!

[Lafayette53]

Really enjoying this one.I generally play my historical fictional leagues in a similar style (as "god") so seeing this sort of thing always gives me good ideas to use myself. Two questions, purely out of curiosity for running my own leagues--

1) Are all players products of the OOTP dev engine or are Bridgeman, Alastair Bolton, etc. created/customized by you?
2) Are teams restocked through a draft or in some other way?

[chucksabr]

Baseball League 1905
First Division Results