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

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Baseball League 1906
First Division Top Game Performances

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Baseball League 1906
First Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers

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Baseball League 1906
First Division Top Systems

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Baseball League 1906
First Division Financial Report

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A Noble No Hit Effort For “M’Lord”

Lest anyone still believe that the signing of Harry Bridgeman, second son of the Fourth Earl of Bradford, was a mere novelty with intent to marry Chesterfield Town supporters with seats at Saltergate may now be disabused of that notion for good and all.

Pitcher Bridgeman, playfully referred to as “M’Lord” by his mates as a gentle poke at his birth to nobility, was fairly flawless as he dispensed with Grimsby Town batsmen in short order in front of fifteen hundred Mariner supporters on a very warm Friday afternoon in July. Mister Bridgeman faced twenty eight batsmen without giving up a base hit, issuing a base on balls or hitting any batsman with a pitched ball. The only two base runners for the Mariners reached on errors by short stop Harris in the second innings and second baseman Lewry in the fifth innings.

After the final Mariner batsman Wain was disposed of in the ninth innings, the Spireites surrounded M’Lord Bridgeman and lifted him onto their shoulders, shouting “Huzzah!” repeatedly as they retreated with him to their dugout to begin their celebration of a momentous game pitched by their noble mate, who also happens to be the finest pitcher in the English League's Second Division.

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Results

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Promoted Club

Tottenham Spurs

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Promoted Club

Sheffield United Blades

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Final Table

The three League sides seeking re-election came up against six non-league sides in the vote for League membership. Voting (number of votes):

28      Woolwich Arsenal       Elected to the League
28	Manchester City	       Re-elected to the League
23	West Bromwich Albion   Re-elected to the League
17	South Shields	       Elected to the League
10	Doncaster   	       Re-elected to the League
6	Lincoln City	       Not elected to the League
2	Grimsby Town	       Not re-elected to the League
0	Leeds City  	       Not re-elected to the League
0	Bradford Park Ave.     Not elected to the League

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Team Batting and Pitching

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Award Winners


Batsman of the Year: Frederick Austin




Pitcher of the Year: Harold Bridgeman




Newcomer of the Year: William Jenkinson




Baseballer of the Year: William Reynolds

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division League Leaders

Batting Leaders

Pitching Leaders

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Top Game Performances

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Top Systems

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Baseball League 1906
Second Division Financial Report

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The Thrilling Young Mr. Arscott

It is thrilling when so rare a young talent bursts onto the scene to become, immediately, the best performer in his field. That is what young Bobby Arscott has done for British baseball.

Arscott is from the market town of Daventry and matriculated from University College Nottingham with a degree in French three years ago. He played in the baseball club at the college and was of course considered quite good, but did not consider seriously pursuing baseball as a professional endeavour, as a lucrative civil service career was calling him.

To fill his free time, Arscott registered with the Linby Colliery Baseball Club in the Nottinghamshire Baseball Combination League, an amateur outfit in the county. Arscott was far and away the best player in the League straightaway, and he caught the eye of Mr. Stephen Hartnell, chairman of the League who also is a cousin of James Oxley, general manager of the Blackburn Rovers club.

Mr. Oxley arranged for an audition for Arscott, and he could scarcely believe his good fortune at what he beheld. Arscott came to the Blackburn audition a fully finished product, with some of the most advanced contact batting skills and batting eye Mr. Oxley had ever seen, and Arscott’s speed and base running skills has few peers.

Arscott burst onto the League scene this past season posting the best season any newcomer has ever delivered, batting .420 with 174 hits, including 19 twos and 25 threes, drawing 114 bases on balls, and stealing an incredible 108 bases, the new high mark of the League. For his effort, both the Newcomer of the Year and the Batsman of the Year awards were bestowed upon him, and he also placed third in the voting for Baseballer of the Year, but only because Blackburn placed fourth in the table instead of first. Nevertheless, he is already widely considered the best position all round player in the British game.

British baseball supporters, and especially those in Blackburn, Lancashire, are very excited at the prospect of several more seasons of exciting production that will surely emanate from the young Bobby Arscott. Keep your eye on him!

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In the interest of delivering commentary that sounds authentic for its time in history--in this case, the Baseball League's offseason of 1906-07--please understand that sometimes, ideas might be expressed, or language might be used, that may sound insensitive or even offensive to your and my ears of over one hundred years later.

Whenever this kind of commentary does appears in such historical-based "you are there" posts, which are always set in Georgia font rather than the forum's default font I use for explanatory posts such as this, please keep in mind that they do not reflect the point of view of me as the proprietor of this dynasty, but rather they are as close an attempt as I can manage to capture the flavor of the commentary and ideas typically expressed at that time.

Please feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss and would like further explanation of this circumstance.

Thank you for following this dynasty.

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How Baseballers Sustain Their Wages During The Winter

The best baseballers in Britain have become a fully professional lot. No longer is it the case that a player breaks his back all week in the pits or the factory or even the comfortable office, then play baseball on Friday and Saturday afternoons to stoke his earnings. Nowadays, the professional baseballer will devote his entire time from practice in late March, through the season start in early May, and onto the end of the season in September— late September, if he is lucky enough to play for the First Division’s EOI Cup after league competition has terminated. Then, the player will return to honest work for the autumn and winter, awaiting the sweet kiss of spring to draw him out to the baseball pitch for another year for the pleasure of the sporting public.

But there is also a class of baseballer for whom the workaday world is simply no option. For him, only the pitch will suffice as a wage paying endeavour of any sort. And so it is this player who finds his alternative employ in those climes in which baseball can be played for pay during the League’s winter slumber, whilst keeping his skills sharp upon his return in March.

Already, we find players such as first baseman Alfred Smith of Nottingham Forest; third baseman Willie Buxton of Clapton Orient; pitcher Harry Hind of Burslem Port Vale; and right fielder Austin Henry making the month long journey to Australasia to play in the leagues of Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland where it is their summer to our winter, and all reports have them dominating their lesser local peers there.

Other leagues in the realm closer to home also draw serious British baseballers. Indian leagues in Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi and Madras attract dozens of baseballers both great and less than great, including pitcher Alfred Drew of Crewe Alexandra and the redoubtable right fielder Pat Hodgson of BPV. Leagues abound in the British West Indies as well, in Kingston and Georgetown and Nassau, as well as in Africa in Accra and Lagos and Johannesburg, all with a high quality of ball, and none paying too well, although well enough for many of the best of British baseballers— and several average players as well— to continue plying their trade on the pitch rather than find temporary winter labour in some unsavoury circumstances to pass the time in between seasonal competitions.

As to the inevitable question of whether baseballers indigenous to those colonial leagues play sufficiently well to find employment in the English Baseball League. One such player has done so with some success, that being Stoke’s Gerald Davies, the native African of nine seasons’ experience who himself has been returning to the pitches in Accra for winter baseball each year. He has been but an exception, and indeed at the young age of twenty eight his skills have been on the wane for several years, as if to confirm the native’s inferiority to the white man in the physical fitness and endurance needed to play baseball at the highest level well into a man's thirties. It seems unlikely we will see a repeat of this experiment, except among clubs so desperate for talent of any kind that they will accept such mediocrity from races clearly fit to deliver such.

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Substitute Batsman For Pitchers?

From America has come the suggestion that pitchers ought not to bat, but instead be allowed a permanent “substitute batsman” during the game. The notion is finding a champion among some of the chairmen of the League, such that it may be implemented before long, although not for 1907.

The idea is that in the place of the traditional slot in the batting order that would be occupied by the pitcher, another player would take his place on a permanent basis during the match, whether allowing a starting fielder to bat twice in the order, or to allow a player sitting on the bench to pick up the bat in the hurler’s place.

The promulgator of this notion in America is the club chairman Cornelius McGillicuddy, aka "Connie Mack", a venerated figure of the sport of baseball in America for two decades, first as a player and now as the leader of the Philadelphia Athletics club of the American League. Athletics have won two league cups in the past five years, and thus Mr. Mack is a man of some influence himself in baseball circles “across the pond”.

A magazine article appeared in Philadelphia earlier in 1906, which came to the attention of certain chairmen in the League and who have been citing parts of it as chapter and verse in defence of their position on the matter. Messrs. Bertie Harper, William Bull and Charles Creswell, of the Liverpool, Middlesbrough and Fulham clubs, respectively, are said to all be especially keen on the idea of the substitute batsman. The full text of the article appears here:

“The suggestion, often made, that the pitcher be denied a chance to bat, and a substitute player sent up to him every time, has been brought to life again, and will come up for consideration when the American and National League Committees on rules get together.

“This time Connie Mack is credited with having made the suggestion. He argues that a pitcher is usually such a poor hitter that his time at the bat is a farce, and the game would be helped by eliminating him in favor of a better hitter.”

That is the part that the esteemed chairmen are fond of quoting, yet this is immediately followed by an indictment against the idea in the very same magazine article:

“Against the change there are many strong points to be made. It is wrong theoretically. It is a cardinal principle of base ball that every member of the team should both field and bat. Instead of taking the pitcher away from the plate, the better remedy would be to teach him how to hit the ball.

“A club that has good hitting pitchers like Plank or Orth has a right to profit by their skill. Many of the best hitters in the game have started as pitchers, Burkett, Seymour, Wallace, Callahan and Donlin come readily to mind as men who would never have taken their rank had the pitcher been deprived of his chance to go up and have a swing.”

This is also where we come out on the idea. We believe it is no coincidence that the three chairmen keenest on such a change also have among the worst batting pitchers in the League. Look no further than Boro’s Frederic Young, the worst of the bad, who could muster no more than four base hits in fifty seven at bats in 1906, for an execrable .070 hits average. Or the Cottagers’ Willie May, author of a mere ten base hits in 85 trips to the plate for a .118 hits average. Lest we leave the Reds out of all this, behold their pitcher Alfred Cooper, who has managed only ten base bits for a .135 average. Cogitate briefly upon this evidence, and the mystery behind why these chairmen would prefer their pitchers not bat becomes clear.

What would other pitchers around the League make of this idea, if you were to propose such to them? Louis Newton of Aston Villa, owner of a .354 hits average with four two base hits to his credit, would surely reject it out of hand. Willie Peace of Burton United, who has scored thirteen runs and batted for a .337 average, would be unimpressed. And Matthew Magill of Newcastle United would remember his own thirty one hits, ten runs scored, .348 hits average— and a home run!— and then laugh in your face!

We cannot underestimate the power of highly respected men to convince their colleagues to set forth on an unadvisable course of action. We hope that will not be the case here. We cannot advise strongly enough against the suggestion that a permanent substitute batsman should bat in place of the pitcher. Nine men field, nine men hit. That’s the way it is, and ought to be, in the British game of baseball.