say, was painfully conspicuous among the players of the National League clubs, this organization having been noted, prior to its absorption of the old American Association element in its ranks in 1892, for the reputable character of its annual struggles for championship honors. One result of the rowdy ball playing indulged in by a minority of each club team in the League was a decided falling off in the attendance of the best class of patrons of the professional clubs. Much of the "_Hoodlumism_"--a technical term applicable to the use of _blackguard language; low cunning tricks_, unworthy of manly players; _brutal assaults_ on umpire and players; that nuisance of our ball fields, "kicking," and the dishonorable methods comprised in the term "_dirty ball playing_"---indulged in in 1894 was largely due to the advocacy of the method of the so-called "_aggressive policy_," which countenanced rowdy ball playing as part and parcel of the work in winning games. The most energetic, lively and exciting method of playing a game of ball can mark a professional club contest without its being disgraced by a single act of rowdyism--such as that of spiking or willfully colliding with a base runner; bellowing like a wild bull at the pitcher, as in the so-called coaching of 1893 and 1894; or that of "kicking" against the decisions of the umpire to hide faulty captaincy or blundering fielding. Nothing of this "hoodlumism" marked the play of the four-time winners of the League pennant from 1872 to 1875, inclusive, viz., the old, gentlemanly Boston Red Stockings of the early seventies, under the leadership of that most competent of all managers, Harry Wright. Yet, despite of this old time fact, if club managers do not adopt the rough's method of playing the game, as illustrated in the League arena in 1894, advocated by the class of newspaper managers of local clubs, the scribes in question go for the local team officials for not having a team with "plenty of ginger" in their work and for their not being governed by "a hustling manager." Is it any wonder, under such circumstances, that the League season of 1894 was characterized by "hoodlumism?"