The Ball Club Breaks Up and the Boys Scatter for Winter
Seattle's professional nine pockets its benefit-game proceeds, cancels the barnstorming trip east, and dissolves — leaving a dozen players to find work from Butte to Omaha.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Last Sunday's benefit game will net the Seattle baseball team somewhere between $350 and $400. This will be a little over $35 apiece for the players. The idea of holding the team together for a trip through to Chicago, playing exhibition games along the road, has been abandoned, and the men will begin to scatter in different directions.
Tom Parrott, who will be the first to leave, starts for his home in Portland this morning. Gus McGinnis is dickering with Helena, and will probably go there. Danny Minnehan and Mark Polhemus have accepted Butte's terms and are waiting for their tickets. Billy Earle expects to leave tomorrow night for Cincinnati, where he will winter; he may finish out the season with one of the league teams. Gil Hatfield will probably leave for New York and Charlie Irwin for Chicago at the same time. Willie Lange will go home to San Francisco in a few days, and "Kid" Camp starts for Omaha some time this week. "Big Bill" Bissamer has not yet decided where he will go.
Most of the players in the other league teams have either left for home or to accept engagements elsewhere.
The entire Tacoma team has been transferred to Missoula in the Montana State League. Jake Stenzel, of the Portlands, has signed with the Pittsburg League team. Billy George has gone to Helena. McNabb and Baldwin have joined Los Angeles. Mains and Leiper passed through Seattle several days ago on their way East. White, Tebeau and Burns will likely go to Oakland with John S. Barnes. Joe Werrick expects to winter in Portland. Ollie Beard and Phil Reccius, of the Spokanes, are taking a hunt before going back to Kentucky. Gilliland and Borchers were left in Seattle. The former will likely start for his home in Pennsylvania soon, while the latter will go to Sacramento.
“The idea of holding the team together for a trip through to Chicago, playing exhibition games along the road, has been abandoned, and the men will begin to scatter in different directions.”
Professional baseball in 1892 Seattle was a hand-to-mouth affair: a benefit game, a $35 split, and a roster that evaporated the moment the season ended. Seattle has been losing and remaking its teams ever since — the Pilots fled for Milwaukee in 1970 and the Sonics for Oklahoma City in 2008 — and the argument over whether a city this size can hold a club has never really gone away.
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