Today is Labor Day; in that vein, please remove your caps for the Curt Floods and Andy Messersmiths of the baseball world who challenge the reserve system and paved the way for the players union we know today.

In any case, I'm doing some unrelated research on information found in some public domain newspapers, and thought it would be fun occasionally to take a detour and share some baseball writing from the turn of the century. Some of these account are both entertaining and fascinating, or, too good not to share! Here is the link to the Library of Congress project that is digitizing and making these old newspapers public. The papers are public domain. I encourage you to take a look if you are interested in history or just want to do something different on the internet sometime.

One hundred years ago on this date is an account of a doubleheader played between the Marshalltown Ansons and Clinton Pilots. The teams were from Iowa towns competing in the Central Association league, an unaffiliated minor league that survived about six years. Most or all minor league teams at that time were unaffiliated with the American and National league clubs; in fact, they were often just little leagues scratched together and disbanded under the softest of pretenses.

Without further ado...

Clinton, Sept. 7.—The Ansons finished up like whirlwinds Monday, wiping up the Pilots for two. That they did so was not altogether their fault, neither was the game presented to them. Both contests were marked by more or less carelessness, due to the fact that they were the last games of the season, and as a result were uninteresting as baseball exhibitions. The first one dragged horribly, while the second was played in the remarkable time of an hour and ten minutes.

Cooper, signed by Marshalltown for the last day of the season, made two efforts to humble his former teammates on their own grounds. He was unsuccessful in his first attempt, being forced to take position on the bench in the third inning. He came back strong in the second, however, and allowed only two hits up to the last inning, "goose egging" the Pilots........................

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Source: The Times-Republican (evening edition), Marshalltown, IA, Sept. 7, 1915, p. 9.

Link: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85049554/1915-09-07/ed-1/seq-9.pdf

NOTE: I will get around to uploading a screen grab of the old paper itself to spice up the blog entry and provide a little more flavor for the time. Otherwise see link directly above.