in the business of playing ball has no soul left for the other business—just as important in its way—of conducting the details of managing men, administering discipline, arranging schedules and finding the ways and means of financing a team.
And so there came a day in the fall of 1875 when certain men—to be spoken of more personally later on—desirous of the success of the national game, determined upon a reorganization on lines differing entirely from those that had previously obtained. They proposed an organization that should draw a sharp line of distinction between the terms "Club" and "Team." Heretofore Base Ball Clubs had won and lost games, matches, tournaments, trophies. Henceforth this would be changed. The function of Base Ball Clubs in the future would be to manage Base Ball Teams. Clubs would form leagues, secure grounds, erect grandstands, lease and own property, make schedules, fix dates, pay salaries, assess fines, discipline players, make contracts, control the sport in all its relations to the public, and thus, relieving the players of all care and responsibility for the legitimate functions of management, require of them the very best performance of which they were capable, in the entertainment of the public, for which service they were to receive commensurate pay.
This then was the germ, yet in its chrysalis state, that was incubating in the minds of devotees of the game—some of them players and some not—during the closing hours of the life of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, in 1875.
