Athletics at Philadelphia in a very close game, 27 to 25. But on this occasion the Athletics had their revenge, beating the Red Stockings on their own grounds by a score of 11 to 7. In this year, in addition to their victory over the Red Stockings, in the game here referred to, the Athletics played seventy-seven games, winning sixty-six and tieing one. The official record, in its table of runs, credits the Athletics with a grand total of 2,222 to 710 for their opponents.
The death of the National Association of Base Ball Players, which occurred in 1871, was expected, natural and painless. Everybody who was interested in the welfare of our national game had been looking forward to this consummation, not only with resignation, but with some degree of impatience. The organization had outlived its usefulness; it had fallen into evil ways; it had been in very bad company; and so, when the hour of its dissolution came, no sorrowing friends were there to speak a tearful farewell. If the National Association of Base Ball Players, following its demise, had any obsequies, they do not appear of record. The "dear departed" seems to have gone to its long rest unmourned, unhonored and unsung.
The following, from the pen of the late Henry Chadwick, at that time editor of Beadle's Base Ball Player, the official organ of the game—from which publication this excerpt is made—will be of interest as telling the story of the last hours of the Association:
