Nov 21 at 12:00 PM - Sale 2687 -

Sale 2687 - Lot 218

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(SPORTS--BASEBALL.) Minute books of the Lower Naugatuck Valley Industrial Baseball League. 151, 101 manuscript pages. 2 volumes. 4to, original ½ calf, backstrips worn; minor wear to contents. Various places, 1910-1915
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Additional Details

This semi-pro baseball league operated a notch below the organized minor leagues. Teams were located in Ansonia, Seymour, Shelton, Derby, Beacon Falls, and other small industrial sites along Connecticut's Naugatuck River. Like many other leagues across the country during this period, teams were organized by large industrial businesses. Games were played only on weekends. The players may have received a small stipend or perhaps just a reduction in work duties. Occasionally a player might be scouted from an industrial league team and signed to a professional contract, but mostly they were playing for the glory.

The first volume contains the league's minutes from its organization in February 1910 through May 1914, plus a roll call of the team directors, captains, and managers at the weekly league meetings. The second volume begins with the league's running receipts and expenditures from 1910 to 1915, showing that the sponsoring factories each paid a registration fee of $2. Expenses were mostly for umpires, schedules, and stationery. This is followed by the league minutes through May 1915.

At the opening meeting to plan the 1915 season on 22 March, "application for membership in the League was also made by James Drake for the Maple Leaf Society, a colored men's ball team, but no action was taken." The next week, the application was voted to be "laid on table." Professional baseball, like most of American society, was strictly segregated during this period, so the unfortunate decision was not surprising. The team was more receptive to an inquiry from the Newark Female Stars, who were invited to play a game on 6 June 1915. The 24 May minutes order that "a committee be appointed to wait on the ladies' ball team, see that they get dinner and transportation to the grounds, and look after their interests while guests of the league."

Individual players are rarely named in this volume, but a four-page list of each team's roster is laid in at the May 1915 entry.

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