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

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Black to Leave League after Twenty Six Seasons

Charley Black, one of three remaining players to have played with the Baseball League since its origins, is retiring from the game.

Black spent his entire career of twenty six years with Bolton Wanderers, twenty three in the First Division, with whom he won three championships (1898, 1900, and 1911), and the EOI Cup last year. Black also helped lift Wanderers back into the top flight after the club’s three-year exile between 1907 and 1909.

Black leaves the game as the career leader in League matches played, with 2,093, as well as in two base hits with 465. He is among the leaders in several other batting categories as well: second in total at bats with 7,967; third in runs scored (1,430) and hits (2,467); and seventh in threes (259). His career hits average, a respectable .310, is by our count the 63rd highest in the history of the League.

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Old Baseballers and the Benefit

One of the hoary traditions of cricket, not to mention that of the theatre, the music hall and of other entertainment vocations, has made its way into baseball as well, that being the benefit match awarded by clubs to stalwart baseballers as a reward for their long service with the club, and as a way to help prepare them for life after professional baseball.

The baseballer rarely plays past the age of forty, as his tiring legs and fading eyes no longer provide a fair match against young and strong players twenty years or so his junior. Yet, once retired he must find other employment to bridge the years between his athletic endeavours and his old age, and not every player is sufficiently equipped to ply a lucrative trade outside the baseball pitch. Thus, the benefit match, a staple of county cricket for decades and that being a sport in which players are even less well compensated than League baseballers, is a way to help the player stay personally solvent whilst finding other work.

The benefit typically awards the gate receipts of a match, or in certain cases an entire series, to the old players who have given at least ten years of their lives in the service of the club. Game receipts can range from about £50 for smaller clubs to amounts approaching £200 for championship contenders. Thus, a benefit from certain clubs such as Liverpool or Blackpool can reach in excess of £500 for a series, rivalling the top benefits paid to footballers and easily more than five times the top annual wage paid in the game to-day. Given that the average man employed in England earns roughly £2 per week, it is easy to imagine a great baseballer living quite comfortably for the first few years out of the game while searching for suitable middle aged employment to take him to his infirm years.

Both Charley Black of Bolton and Ed Parker of Blackburn, the great baseballers both retired from the game this year, received benefit matches from their clubs within the past few years. Both were on maximum wage for much of their careers but had been reduced in recent seasons due to the falling off of the skills and thus their usefulness to their clubs’ efforts to win a championship. The Black benefit in 1911 yielded him £115 for a single match, and the Parker benefit the following year paid him more than £250 across two matches, both sums many times the sum of their wages for the year. This past season benefit matches were awarded by Liverpool to pitcher Freddie Finn, age thirty eight but still proficient enough to have won Pitcher of the Year in 1911 and still be on maximum wage, and which netted him £570 for the series against Tottenham Hotspur in July; and on the other side of the coin, pitcher Harry Graham was awarded by Derby County a benefit match against Stoke in September and received £39, still over half of his sum total wages for the year. As widely as the amounts vary, the gesture and the receipts are equally welcomed by the recipients.

The benefit has become so firmly ensconced into baseball as to be codified in League rules, to wit, from 1910 league rules have entitled a player traded or otherwise transferred before completing his ten years’ qualification for a benefit to receive an accrued share of it: that is, a sum commensurate to the length of his qualifying service and the amount which he would have received if not transferred. Initially, the amount the player receives in such cases is to be regarded as a share of any payments gleaned from the trade and to be given in proportion to a proration of the wages saved by the selling club; but in practice the club's Management Committee links such payments to presumed benefits rather than to the size of the trade.

As with the benefit itself, the accrued share is still considered a discretionary payment which the club is within its rights to refuse. Indeed, a player who is adjudged to have precipitated a trade or transfer is deemed to have no entitlement to the accrued benefit payment under League rules. Jack Simpson’s move from Bolton to Birmingham in November of 1912 was one such example where ‘the player, by his conduct and his demands on the club, had practically forced [them] to trade him’ and therefore receive nothing. Thus, it behoves a baseballer to be judicious in his conduct with the club lest he cost himself the chance to provide himself and his family the rewards his labour should accrue and that he would otherwise be considered entitled to receive.

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1914 Baseball League Commences To-Day

As football winds up its season and relinquishes its hold on the interests of the sporting men of Britain, it is time for the summer sports of cricket and baseball to awake from their slumbers and lead Britons into warmer days of lazy hours spent in the sun enjoying the exploits of most proficient sportsmen the Kingdom has to offer.

The County Championship started on Saturday, as Leicestershire began their match scoring but a single run against Essex before the rains swept in, and Surrey went 38/1 against Northamptonshire before they too suspended for foul weather. The cricketers will resume play to-day, which should be a brilliantly sunny day across the land, and the top baseballers on the Island will join them on their own pitches to open up season for the Championship as well as for the Second Division of the League.

Among the baseball clubs, Liverpool have as strong a hold on the League as any team ever have, and have a whole string of championships and EOI Cup to back up any boasts they may care to make. Numerous challengers have made their run at the Reds and have come up short, at least on the Championship end of things; the Cup is a somewhat different matter, as short series do not always expose all the flaws of lesser teams as do long seasons. And so although we cannot say with much certainty which club will be hoisting the Cup in September, we can fairly estimate which club shall be champions and one of the two teams in the tie. Crewe Alexandra provided a fine tussle for Reds last year, and Bolton Wanderers have also won the Cup in recent years; both teams should provide ample competition for the championship, along with Hull City, Port Vale and Chesterfield Town.

The Second Division always provides less suscitation merely by dint of its position inferior to that of the top flight, but there might be an interesting story in Blackburn Rovers, who have spent two unhappy seasons out of the top tier after spending the first twenty three years of the League there. They have stocked themselves with good young pitching, and they do still have Bobby Arscott, at the age of thirty three still among the best and most thrilling batsmen in the game, and one who makes every seemingly routine ground ball anything but routine. They finished fifth last year and are quite keen to prove they belong among the best. There do not look to be many teams in that loop that night usurp Rovers in their quest to return to the top, although we can ascertain that the games must be played before any promotions earned, and at the end we shall all see.

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Baseball League 1914: Clubs

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

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Baseball League 1914: Club Locations


First Division (Everton Hidden)




Second Division

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New Record for Base Hits as Burton Crush Grimsby

Five batsmen had four base hits apiece, and even the weak batting pitcher joined the fun with three hits of his own, as Burton United beat Grimsby Town by twenty three runs to two. United compiled thirty base hits which is a new League record for a single match.

Second base man Hope, centre fielder Taylor, catcher Begley, third base man Knight and first base man Cresswell each had four base hits, while left fielder Glass and pitcher MacGregor added three apiece. As with the better bowlers in cricket, baseball pitchers are by far the worst batsmen in the order and usually bat last so as to limit their exposure to the plate. MacGregor also performed quite satisfactorily on the mound as he yielded only six base hits and one walk which resulted in a mere two runs by the Mariners.

Made even worse for the home club is that well over nine thousand supporters showed up to witness the thrashing of their baseball club. Grimbarians have high hopes for their favoured club after having been promoted back into the top tier for their first season there since 1899. The gate has exceeded 14,000 on three separate occasions, a rather impressive figure for a city of just 80,000 souls, and Mariners had won four of six matches at home before suffering this indignity. As things stand, Grimsby is now standing at six wins and ten defeats, and if this is any indication of the First Division performance that can be expected of them, they will certainly squander quickly the goodwill they have built so far, and their gate will suffer as a result.

Burton have their own problems, with their management and lack of local supporter interest in their club, but even so winning is not a problem for them, as they now have chalked up eleven victories in their first sixteen matches to date during this championship campaign.

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BASEBALL AND RECRUITING

FIFTH INNINGS APPEALS TO SPECTATORS

“Steady” is the description applied to the present week’s recruiting in the London area. While the figures are not so large as those of last week, which was distinguished by the military display of the Lord Mayor’s Show and by the opening of Parliament, they compare well with those of the preceding month. In some parts of the country recruits whom one would gladly see in the Regular Forces are joining the Reserve Territorial Battalions for Home Defence.

The following appeal, signed by Mr. E. Gordon Jnr., secretary of the Baseball Association, was issued yesterday from the offices of the Association :—

An Appeal to Good Sportsmen.—To Baseball Players and Spectators.—The need for more recruits for our Army is very urgent. Every man must know his duty to himself and to his country. There are approximately three millions of men with no family responsibilities. I ask these to show that they are good sportsmen and to enlist now and help the other good sportsmen who are so bravely fighting England’s battle against the world’s enemy.

As a result of the meeting of the Council of the Baseball Association, the Association offered to put their grounds, with the exception of afternoons on which home matches are played, at the disposal of military authorities, and, further, stated that they were prepared to request all their members to cease playing matches if the War Office were of the opinion that such a course would assist them. The Army Council having replied that the question of the stoppage of baseball matches was one for the discretion of the Association, the council of the latter expressed the opinion that its members should continue playing matches, “where, by doing so they could assist, and did not hinder the authorities in recruiting.”

At a conference on Tuesday between a representative of the War Office and Mr. Gordon, it was considered what further action could be taken by the Baseball Association and its associated leagues and clubs to assist in recruiting, and it is understood that this will probably be on the lines of holding meetings, at which prominent men will speak, during an interval taking place at the end of the fifth innings of each match, and that, at the close of the match, a band will march to the nearest recruiting station depôt those among the spectators who desire to enlist.

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MR. BRIDGES ON BASEBALL

We have received from Mr. Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, a letter in which he says :—

I certainly voice the feeling of the country that it is high time that professional baseball should be discontinued.

I have heard that at the beginning of the war those persons who are responsible for the arrangement of professional baseball felt doubts and sought advice of the War Office, when, not receiving precise instructions, they resolved to continue their matches as usual. They must now perceive that this decision was a mistake, and they should remedy it as soon as possible. The amateur baseballers set them a good example, for they not only discontinued their play, but volunteered a full complement of fighters; and thus acted as the true sportsmen that they are. As for professional baseball, the sight-seeing crowds are not, I hope, as much to blame as they appear to be; I take it that they are ignorantly misled by the small body of men who cater for them; but surely it is impossible that these few managers should be so unintelligent or unpatriotic as to be beyond the reach of an appeal to reason!

The whole nation is mourning for those who are daily falling in its defence, and I would suggest that the heroic death of Lord Roberts, who sacrificed his life in his enthusiasm for his country’s welfare, is such an occasion of national grief as may well serve these baseball managers as a motive for fixing the term for the cessation of their public entertainments.

Our enemies calculated upon finding the mass of our people apathetic. If any class is showing itself to be so, they are traitors and more dangerous than are the Germans themselves. It is high time that our baseballers let the world see what they are really made of and that they do not deserve the execration that is falling upon them.

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Results

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Baseball League 1914
Emperor of India Cup Series

Hull City defeated Port Vale
Four Matches to One

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Baseball League 1914
Emperor of India Cup Winners




Hull City Tigers

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Champions and Emperor of India Cup Runners Up

Port Vale Valiants

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Table

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Team Batting and Pitching

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Award Winners

Baseballer of the Year and Batsman of the Year: Joshua Lloyd




Pitcher of the Year: Percy Antram




Newcomer of the Year: Billy Gardner

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Baseball League 1914
First Division League Leaders

Batting Leaders




Pitching Leaders

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Top Game Performances

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Top 20 Batsmen and Pitchers

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Baseball League 1914
First Division Top Systems