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 CHAPTER XVI.

1875—80

HAT the men who took upon their shoulders the task of organizing and maintaining the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs realized the herculean proportions of the enterprise in which they were engaging is not to be believed; else they might never have undertaken it. They did know, however, that they would have opposition. They knew that an immediate and bitter struggle with the whole gambling fraternity would follow the inauguration of their plans; for the men who organized the National League were aware that gambling and Base Ball must be divorced. The union had never been legitimate. It had been forced upon the game by the weakness of its parents and the aggressiveness of its adventurous wooer. The alliance was an unholy one, and its offspring were bastards, all. The only hope for the future of the pastime was to separate it at once and forever from, its evil consort. That of itself would mean a struggle; but the new sponsors welcomed the conflict, because it was a fight for the very life of the sport they loved, and they were willing to make sacrifice for it.

They knew also that there would be opposition from another source. Quite conscious were they that there 217