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Originally Posted by Tigerden
Scott- Your no-hitter collection is amazing. I wondered if you have ever picked up any no-hit tickets that were not advertised as being no-hit games? I assume that some of these tickets were pulled out of scrap books and others might have been marked as no-hit games by the fan who was fortunate enough to attend the game.
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Hi Adam,
Thanks! Yes, actually both of these scenarios are true.
The thing to keep in mind about early baseball tickets is that that most patrons attending games did not have dated tickets. Many teams, Yankees, Indians, Tigers, St. L Browns, Cardinals etc., etc. did not have dated early vintage tickets. Unless a ticket accompanied a scored, dated program or the fan wrote info re: the game on it, a collector like me has a difficult time locating early vintage games that you can pinpoint to a specific date.
Also, it's important to note that even the teams that did have a dated version of a baseball ticket, these were rare and reserved these only for season ticket holders (there were very few) and special dignitaries. Attendance in early baseball was frequently very low because night baseball did not yet exist and people worked during the day. Night baseball did not even begin until 1934 and very few teams had it for many years.
It was not uncommon for early games to have attendance in the 500-2000 range, when attendance was even reported at all in the newspaper. BTW, attendance reporting was very inconsistent at the turn of the 20th century and before. O/T- I have a collection of early baseball newspapers (over 120 early no-hit games) and I have noted this when I have read through the articles surrounding no-hitters....
As far as scrapbooks go, I will tell you that if it were not for scrapbooks, many older vintage baseball tickets would exist today. Several of my rarest older vintage baseball tickets came from fans that kept a scrapbook.
