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 There is not a condition or penalty prescribed in the League contract, constitution or playing rules that will work a hardship to any conscientious, earnest, deserving player. It is only players of the opposite character who will suffer, and it is their turn to suffer. The clubs have had more than their share of the pecuniary loss, the aggravation, annoyance and mortification caused by the state of affairs which these conditions and penalties have been devised to correct. Justice to the players is a demand and obligation at all times recognized; justice to the club managers and stockholders, who have made good the deficiencies in the club treasuries, season after season; justice to the public, upon whose respect and patronage the clubs must depend for an existence; justice to the noble game of base ball, which it has been the constant aim of the League to elevate, perfect and popularize—these, and these alone, are the considerations which have influenced and brought about the League's latest legislation on the subject of discipline and penalties."

Touching the subject of the opinion of ball players on changing the rules, Mr. Richter, in an able editorial in the Sporting Life, in March, 1893, says: "It has been demonstrated but recently that the average ball player has not sense enough to realize the situation of the national game or interpret the signs of the times; that he is selfish enough to kick against salary reduction in the face of the general depression and loss, and foolish enough to talk of combines in spite of his disastrous experience with combines and brotherhoods in the past. And yet the average ball player is held by some magnates and many hero worshiping journalists, who hold that the base ball sun rises and sets in the popular idols of the day, as sensible enough and broad enough to formulate opinions on important rule changes. And, furthermore, they seem to consider the opinion of these light waisted players as entitled, not only to respectful consideration, but to precedence over the opinions and theories of those who work for, think of and study more about the game in a day, for the love of it, than does the average player who thinks only of the income to be derived from it, in a year."

THE KICKING NUISANCE.

It was fully anticipated by President Young that the stringent rules governing umpiring for 1893 would have eliminated the evil of "kicking" from the past season's campaign, but the moral cowardice of the majority of the League staff of umpires, as shown in their failure to enforce the legal penalties for the violation of the rules in disputing umpires' decisions, led to the continuance of the old abuse, and to such an extent that President Young had to issue a special edict to his staff of umpires to strictly enforce the rules against kicking during the latter part of the campaign, or else risk the loss of their positions.

The disputing of decisions rendered by umpires, in which only errors of judgment are involved, is folly in the extreme, as a matter of policy, aside from the fact that it is in direct violation of the printed rules of the game. No such decision can be reversed, to begin with; of what use, then, is it to dispute them? Moreover, whenever a captain of a team disputes such decisions, he virtually charges the umpire with being either lacking in integrity or in judgment, and what umpire, no matter how impartial he may desire to be, is going to decide a doubtful point in favor of the captain who charges him with dishonesty or stupidity? It is not in human nature for any umpire to do it. The kicker, therefore, loses a point every time he kicks, and there is no possibility of his gaining a point by kicking.

There are constantly occurring in every game points of play in which a doubt is involved as to whether a player is out or not in base running, and also as to whether a ball is pitched over the plate and within the legal range or not; and the rules making the umpire "the sole judge of play in the game" leave it optional with him to decide the doubt in favor of one side or the other. Just here comes into play the shrewd point of silent acquie