ized that it was to be the
last year that I should wear an Athletic uniform, and yet such proved to
be the case. While playing with them my salary had been raised each
successive season, until I was now drawing $1,800 a year, and the limit
had not yet been reached, as I was to find out later, although at the
time I left Philadelphia for Chicago I would, for personal reasons that
will appear later, have preferred to remain with the Athletics at a
considerable less salary than I was afterward paid. This, too, was
destined to be the last year of the Professional League, the National
League taking its place, and as a result a general shifting about among
the players took place in 1876, many of the old-time ball tossers being
at that time lost in the shuffle.

The year 1875 saw no less than thirteen clubs enter the championship
arena, Philadelphia being represented by no less than three, while St.
Louis, a new-comer, furnished two aspirants for the honors, the full
list being as follows: Boston, Athletic, Hartford, St. Louis,
Philadelphia, Chicago, Mutual, New Haven, St. Louis Reds, Washington,
Centennial, Atlantic and Western, the latter organization representing
the far Western city of Keokuk.

The series consisted of ten games, six to be played as the legal quota,
and at the close of the season but seven of the thirteen original
championship seekers had fulfilled the conditions, three of the clubs
having been disbanded when the season was but about half over. Again and
for the fourth time the Boston aggregation carried off the honors, with
a record unsurpassed up to that time, as out of seventy-nine games
played they won seventy-one and lost but eight, while the Athletics, who
finished in the second place, played seventy-three games in all, losing
twenty and winning fifty-three.

That three of the clubs that started in the race should have dropped out
as they did is not to be wondered at, and why one of them at least was
ever allowed to enter is a mystery. Looked at from a purely geographical
standpoint, the Keokuk Club, known as the Western, was doomed to failure
from the very start. It was too far away from the center of the base-ball
interests and the expense of reaching it too great to warrant the
Eastern clubs in making the trip, and the city itself was too small to
turn out a paying crowd, while the other two local clubs found the field
already too well covered and succumbed to local opposition.

Small scores in