professional Base Ball, and you have not had a case since. Later we expelled ten of the most prominent players in America for drunkenness. That has helped to remove drunkenness from Base Ball.
"Now we seem to be up against a new condition. I don't know just what is the cause of it, but when I read in the papers that the National League is not expected to live the day out, I cannot resist coming up here to at least enter a protest against letting it expire. It seems to me that you have had a sort of consultation of physicians. I don't know just who can be called the head physician; who wrote the prescription; I don't know what apothecary made up the dose, but I know that some poisonous preparation has been given to this old body that lies prostrate here to-day, and I accuse the man who did it, and I accuse all the rest of you who permitted it. If this body dies, I charge you with its death.
"I would feel that I was not doing what I ought to do as an honorary member of this League if in these days of distress I did not raise my voice in solemn protest against any further efforts in the same direction. I have no personal feeling against any man in this room. In fact, I can say that some of the best friends I have in the world are here. But when it comes to the question of personal friendship for one of you, or two of you, or all of you combined, I think more of the National League than I do of any one of you or of all of you.
"I hope that some kind of argument, some words that I may utter here, will bring you to a realizing sense of the situation. The eyes of this Nation are upon you, and somehow or other the people have an idea that you are a band of conspirators, talking nothing but gate receipts. You have got into a fight with the American League; you have lost players, I understand; I certainly judge from the papers that you have lost their support, and I am told that some have violated the confidence that was reposed in them by this League.
"I accuse you of having violated a trust in having abrogated the National Agreement. The most damnable thing that was ever done in Base Ball was the way that was done. I don't know and care not who the members of the Board of Arbitration may be, and I care not whether or not you had a right; I say it was damnable to take away the very foundations of this whole business. I feel an especial interest because the first National Agreement in effect was one that bore my name in '77.
"Now, it appears that peculiar things have been going on here, and I don't know just what all this commotion is about. I don't really get onto it; but I find myself in an embarrassing position
