Category: Biographies

A Ball Player's Career Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson

The town of Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, in the great State of Iowa, is now a handsome and flourishing place of some thirteen or fourteen thousand inhabitants. I have not had time recently to take the census myself, and so I cannot be expected to certify e...

Chapters

21. CHAPTER XXI. WE VISIT THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS.

So sang the jolly mariners on the good ship Pinafore, and so might have sung the members of the Chicago and All-American base-ball teams as they sailed out through the Golden Ga...

39. CHAPTER XXXVIII. L'ENVOI.

With my retirement from the Chicago Club in 1897, my active connection with the game may be said to have ceased and it is more that probable that I shall never again don a unifo...

30. CHAPTER XXX. THROUGH ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

The first thing that impresses the stranger in London is the immensity of the city, and the great crowds that continually throng the streets night and day, for London never sleeps.

31. CHAPTER XXXI. "HOME, SWEET HOME.

Our voyage back to "God's country," by which term of endearment the American traveling abroad often refers to the United States, was by no means a pleasant one, as we encountere...

26. CHAPTER XXVI. FROM CEYLON TO EGYPT.

We landed in Colombo on the steps of a pagoda-like structure containing the Custom House, and passing through found ourselves on a broad avenue that led direct to the Grand Orie...

23. CHAPTER XXIII. WITH OUR FRIENDS IN THE ANTIPODES.

That night after the gentlemen of the party had donned their dress suits and the ladies their best bibs and tuckers, we repaired in a body to the Royal Theater, where a large an...

22. CHAPTER XXII. FROM HONOLULU TO AUSTRALIA.

The majority of our party, and among them Mrs. Anson and myself, remained upon the deck that evening chatting of the many beautiful things that we had seen and gazing in the dir...

20. CHAPTER XX. TWO WEEKS IN CALIFORNIA.

We were booked for a stay of two weeks in San Francisco, and that two weeks proved to be one continual round of pleasure for every member of the party. The appearance of the cit...

24. CHAPTER XXIV. BASEBALL PLAYING AND SIGHTSEEING IN AUSTRALIA.

We played our first game at Melbourne on Saturday, December 22d, the second day after our arrival from Sydney, and in the presence of one of the largest crowds that ever assembl...

32. CHAPTER XXXII. THE REVOLT OF THE BROTHERHOOD.

The playing strength of the League teams of 1889 was remarkably even; that is to say, on paper. Detroit had dropped out and Cleveland had taken its place in the ranks, four of t...

34. did. Dahlen at short was a tower of strength to the team, being as agile

The race in 1891 was one of the closest in the history of the League. Opening the season in the third place we never occupied a lower position, but on the contrary, out of the t...

25. CHAPTER XXV. AFLOAT ON THE INDIAN SEA.

The "Salier," which was one of the German Lloyd line of steamers, sailed from Port Melbourne at daybreak on the morning of January 8th, 1889, and before many of us had put in ou...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII. UNDER THE BLUE SKIES OF ITALY.

The night we left Ismalia and started for Port Said, the port of entrance at the northernmost end of the Suez Canal, was a glorious one, the full moon shining down upon the wate...

35. CHAPTER XXXIV. IF THIS BE TREASON, MAKE THE MOST OF IT.

Experience is a mighty dear teacher. This is a fact that has been generally admitted by the world at large, but one that I have never fully realized until within the last few ye...

29. CHAPTER XXIX. OUR VISIT TO LA BELLE FRANCE.

It was some days after we left the beautiful city of Florence, with its wealth of statuary and paintings, before we again donned our uniforms, the lack of grounds upon which we...

18. CHAPTER XVIII. FROM CHICAGO TO DENVER.

It was a jolly party that assembled in the Union Depot on the night of October 20th, 1888, and the ball players were by no means the center of attraction, as there were others t...

15. CHAPTER XV. WE FALL DOWN AND CLIMB AGAIN.

At the annual meeting of the League held in Providence R. I., December 6th, 1882, the Worcester and Troy Clubs resigned their membership, neither of them being cities of suffici...

13. CHAPTER XIII. FROM FOURTH PLACE TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP.

The year 1878 saw but six clubs in the league race, there being the Boston, Cincinnati, Providence, Chicago, Indianapolis and Milwaukee clubs, and they finished in the order nam...

5. CHAPTER V. THE GAME AT MARSHALLTOWN.

If my memory serves me rightly it was some time in the year 1866 that the Marshalltown Base-Ball Club, of which my father was a prominent member, sprung into existence, and amon...

14. CHAPTER XIV. THE CHAMPIONS OF THE EARLY EIGHTIES.

The team that brought the pennant back to Chicago in the early '80s was a rattling good organization of ball players, as the "fans" who remember them can testify, and while they...

37. CHAPTER XXXVI. WITH THE KNIGHTS OF THE CUE.

There is no more fascinating game in existence at the present day than billiards, and no game that is more popular with gentlemen, and for the reason that it can be played indoo...

9. CHAPTER IX. WE BALL PLAYERS GO ABROAD.

The first trip that was ever made across the big pond by American ball players and to which brief reference was made in an earlier chapter, took place in the summer of 1874. Lon...

16. CHAPTER XVI. BALL-PLAYERS EACH AND EVERY ONE.

The team that brought the pennant back to Chicago in the years 1885 and 1886 was, in my estimation, not only the strongest team that I ever had under my management but, taken al...

19. CHAPTER XIX. FROM DENVER TO SAN FRANCISCO.

Colorado Springs, the fashionable watering place of all Colorado, was to be our next stopping place. Leaving Denver on the night of October 27th, we were obliged to change from...

4. CHAPTER IV. FURTHER FACTS AND FIGURES.

The professional player of those early days and the professional player of the present time were totally different personages. When professionalism first crept into the ranks it...

2. CHAPTER II. BOYHOOD DAYS AND MEMORIES.

What's in a name? Not much, to be sure, in many of them, but in mine a good deal, for I represent two Michigan towns and two Roman Emperors, Adrian and Constantine. My father ha...

27. CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMIDS.

The Hotel d'Orient, while not as fashionable as Shepard's or the Grand New, was a most comfortable house and set one of the best tables of the many that we encountered on the tr...

7. CHAPTER VII. WITH THE ATHLETICS OF PHILADELPHIA.

The winter of 1871 and 1872 I spent in Philadelphia, where I put in my time practicing in the gymnasium, playing billiards and taking in the sights of a great city.

17. CHAPTER XVII. WHILE FORTUNE FROWNS AND SMILES.

Should I omit to mention herein the two series of games that the Chicagos played with the St. Louis Browns, champions of the American Association, in 1885 and 1886, somebody wou...

6. CHAPTER VI. MY EXPERIENCE AT ROCKFORD.

I can remember almost as well as if it were but yesterday my first experience as a ball player at Rockford. It was early in the spring, and so cold that a winter overcoat was co...

10. CHAPTER X. THE ARGONAUTS OF 1874.

The players that made the first trip abroad in the interest of the National Game may well be styled the Argonauts of Base-ball, and though they brought back with them but little...

3. CHAPTER III. SOME FACTS ABOUT THE NATIONAL GAME.

Just at what particular time the base-ball fever became epidemic in Marshalltown it is difficult to say, for the reason that, unfortunately, all of the records of the game there...

12. CHAPTER XII. WITH THE NATIONAL LEAGUE.

It was some time in the fall of 1875 and while the National League was still in embryo that I first made the acquaintance of William A. Hulbert, who afterwards became famous as...

8. CHAPTER VIII. SOME MINOR DIVERSIONS.

Philadelphia is a good city to live in, at least I found it so, and had I had my own way I presume that I should still be a resident of the city that William Penn founded instea...

38. CHAPTER XXXVII. NOT DEAD, BUT SLEEPING.

The proposed New American Base-Ball Association, of which so much was heard during the fall and winter months of 1899 and 1900, is not dead, as some people fondly hope, but only...

11. CHAPTER XI. I WIN ONE PRIZE AND OTHERS FOLLOW.

If it is true, as some people allege, that marriage is a lottery, then all I have to say regarding it is that I drew the capital prize and consequently may well be regarded as a...

36. CHAPTER XXXV. HOW MY WINTERS WERE SPENT.

How do the members of the base-ball fraternity spend the winter seasons? If I have been asked that question once I have been asked it a thousand times. The public, as a rule, se...

1. CHAPTER I. MY BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTRY.

The town of Marshalltown, the county seat of Marshall County, in the great State of Iowa, is now a handsome and flourishing place of some thirteen or fourteen thousand inhabitan...

33. CHAPTER XXXIII. MY LAST YEARS ON THE BALL FIELD.

The season of 1891 proved to be almost as disastrous, when viewed from a financial standpoint, as was the seasons of 1890, owing to the war for the possession of good players th...