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Old 11-10-2013, 07:39 PM   #62
chucksabr
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League Teams Starting to Enjoy Talents From Beyond City Borders


Despite that League base ball is still a weekend affair, undertaken by labourers who still toil Monday through Thursday at real employment, more clubs have been looking for talent on the pitch (and, incidentally, in the factories) from surrounding towns to help lead them in their efforts to usurp the Clarets’ hold on the glories of League championship. Reciprocally, baseballers are starting to traipse in to these towns of their own accord, looking both to obtain steady work and for the opportunity to play base ball among the best peers that their chosen game has to offer them.

Old man Gregor Hughes with the Villans of Aston Villa was among the early pioneers of this trend, travelling in from Oldbury, Smethwick to help the Villans in their chase last year by providing stellar relief pitching. But we expect to see a veritable plethora of such mercenaries for 1891, and from points both near and far, which seems to portend an inevitable trend toward the all-week commercialisation of the game.

Some of the young mercenary names we should expect to make impact in the near future for their clubs include Derby County’s second baseman William Bates (from Coventry, 52 miles away), short stop Edwin Geary (Macclesfield, 67 miles) for West Bromwich Albion, William Perry (Bury, 90 miles) as centre fieldsman for Wolverhampton, pitcher Augustus Hunt (Oxford, 80 miles) for new league club Small Heath, and the distance winner thus far, centre fieldsman Frederick Magee of Stoke Ramblers, who travels 205 miles from the far reaches of Brightlingsea, Essex. There are more, but these are considered the best young "guns for hire" that have signed on with clubs so far.

There are pitching talents we are hearing about that have made their way to the Midlands and north region and are trying to catch on with a League club, including Southern League star Richard Banks of London, Reuben Worthington of Bournemouth, and Welsh hurler Jim Seares who hails from Cardiff. All are aged in the teens as of yet, but judging from the advance notice we have received about these moundsmen, we should be shocked to hear that they have not caught on with clubs serious about their future at this time next year.

Last edited by chucksabr; 10-21-2018 at 04:07 PM.
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