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

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...