From that date, until the date of his death, he was actively interested
in every detail relating to Base Ball which might pertain to the
advancement of the sport, and his principal effort in his future
participation in the game was to see that it advanced on the lines of
the strictest integrity and in such a manner that its foundation should
be laid in the rock of permanent success.
Naturally this was bound to bring him into conflict with some who looked
upon Base Ball as an idle pastime, in which only the present moment was
to be consulted.
The earliest environment of Base Ball was not wholly of a substantial
nature. It was a game, intrinsically good of itself, in which the
hazards had always been against the weak. There was not that
consideration of equity which would have been for its best interests,
but this was not entirely the fault of the separate members of the Base
Ball body, but the result of conditions, in which those whose thought
was only for the moment, overshadowed the best interests of the pastime.
There was an inequity in regulations governing the sport by which the
clubs in the smaller cities were forced, against the will of their
owners, to be the weaker organizations, and possibly this was less due
to a desire upon the more fortunate and larger clubs to maintain such a
state of affairs, than to the fact that the organization generally had
expanded upon lines with little regard to the future.
The first general complaint arose from the players who composed the
membership of the smaller clubs. They demurred at the fact that they
were asked to perform equally as well as the players of the clubs in the
larger cities at smaller salaries. Not that they did not try to do their
best, for this they stoutly attempted under all conditions. It was the
effect of a discrimination which was the result of the imperfect
regulations that existed relative to the management of the game.
This attitude of the players resulted at length in the formation of a
body known as the Brotherhood. To offset not the Brotherhood, but the
cause which led to its formation, Mr. Brush devised the famous
classification plan. Imperfectly understood in what it intended to do
for the players, it was seized upon as a reason for the revolt of the
players and the organization of the Brotherhood League.
At heart it was the idea of Mr. Brush so to equalize salaries that the
players of all clubs should be reimbursed in an equitable manner. As
always had been the case, and probably always is likely to be, the
players who received the larger salaries were in no mood to share with
their weaker brothers any excess margin of pay which they thought that
they had justly earned, and it was not a difficult matter for them to
obtain the consent of players who might really have benefited by the
plan to co-operate with them on the basis of comradeship.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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