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Despite of the costly experience of the past five years in the countenancing of drunkards in the League ranks, we see, this season of 1895, club teams including players notorious for their old drunken habits. Why managers cannot perceive the folly of re-engaging such men is a mystery. No matter what their skill at the bat or in the field may be, their drinking habits, with the demoralizing effect on the teams at large which follows, more than offset the advantage of their alleged ability in the field. Despite this obvious fact, however, club officials--either presidents, directors or managers--still blunder on in having these drunkards on their teams, even after condoning their offences time and again, on the promise of reform, which in no single instance has ever taken place that I am aware of. But surpassing this folly, is that of engaging ugly and vicious tempered players for their teams, who are simply demoralizing agents in any team on which they are engaged. These ill-tempered fellows are not only death to necessary discipline, but they are sure to find occasions to form cliques in a team, which war against the best interests of the club at large, and are obnoxious in the extreme to the pennant winning rule of _playing for the side_, a rule as important to the success of a club team in a pennant race, as the reserve rule is to the life of the professional club business at large. Bad management of clubs involves a variety of blunders, not only in the running of the team without regard to business principles--sadly neglected by a majority of the League clubs in 1894--but especially in the making up of teams in the spring months, in which one blunder is conspicuous, viz., that of selecting players for each team without regard to their ability to play in _harmony together_, but solely by the records made in the unreliable table of averages of the past season, in which everything in the way of scoring figures tends to aid the mere record player and throws obstacles in the way of team work players' records. Another managerial blunder is shown in the gathering together of a long list of signed players, with the view of selecting a strong team of a dozen players from the crowd for the serious work of the campaign. For instance, in the makeup of many of the League teams of 1894, the blunder of getting together six or eight pitchers and occupying the whole of the early part of the season's campaign in experiments with them was positive folly. It has never paid in a single instance. It was, in fact, death to the success of at least four League teams last season, Cincinnati in particular. Many of last year's team managers failed to realize the important fact that in testing the merits of pitchers in the spring season they need to be given a fair trial, and not dismiss them after the hasty judgment of their ability of a few games of trial. Pitchers need to be thoroughly tested before they are released, after engagement, and this testing process cannot at the shortest be done in less than a month's trial. No pitcher can do his best while in doubt all the while as to the result of a single day's play on his engagement. Five pitchers are amply sufficient to begin a season with, and at most three catchers. But one of the greatest and most costly blunders in team management made in 1894 was that of encouraging