[z28jd]

Originally Posted by btcarfagno

One thing to note, however, is that you are looking at only one side of the story. You are hearing from the Allegheny's club president and their dutifully obliging local newspaper. Do you have any record of what the Cleveland paper had to say about the same game? Not that I have any idea what the difference would be between 112 losses and 113. But the reasoning may have nothing to do with the yearly loss total. Maybe the club president had some kind of bet and was trying to welch out of it by claiming the game was just an exhibition? No idea. But I need to see more before I am convinced.

The local papers weren't kind to the team at this time, so I highly doubt they combined with him to call a random road game an exhibition in the middle of a 112 loss season. The game recap above had to be sent to the local paper from whoever covered the game in Wheeling. They didn't do road trips back in 1890 to cover games.

There's also the matter of the team being 21-104 at the time. If he wanted to avoid losses, they wouldn't have cut some of the best players near the end of the season to save money.

The Sporting Life had this note in with all of their other random notes from the time, which were compiled by them. This was listed two issues before the quote from the team president