the system in vogue for the business management of the sport was defective; that means ought to be adopted to separate the control of the executive management from the players and the playing of the game. The idea was as old as the hills; but its application to Base Ball had not yet been made. It was, in fact, the irrepressible conflict between Labor and Capital asserting itself under a new guise.
The experiment of business control of Base Ball by the men who played the game had been tested under several administrations of the National Association of Base Ball Players and the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. No further evidence of the inability of ball players, whether amateurs or professionals, to manage both ends of the Base Ball enterprise at the same time was needed than was presented in conditions apparent to everybody—and especially in the overdrawn bank accounts of those who had undertaken to finance the sport.
Now, this picture of the situation as it was carries with it no reflection whatever upon the business acumen or executive ability of ball players as individuals. Scores of those who have won fame on the diamond have also won fortunes in business. But no ball player, in my recollection, ever made a success of any other business while he was building up his reputation as an artist on the diamond. The two branches are entirely unlike in their demands. One calls for the exercise of functions differing altogether from those which are required in the other. No man can do his best at ball playing unless his whole soul is in the effort. The man whose whole soul is absorbed
