A Ball Player's Career, page 39 by Adrian C. Anson
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during the season I was approached by members of the Athletic Club management with offers to play as a member of their team the next season, that of 1872, and they finally offered me the sum of $1,250 per annum for my services. This was much better than I was doing at Rockford, and vet I was reluctant to leave the little Illinois town, where I had made my professional debut, and where I had hosts of friends.
When the end of the season came and the Rockford people offered to again sign me et the same old figures I told them frankly of the Philadelphia offer, but at the same time offered to again sign with Rockford, providing that they would raise my salary to $100 per month. The club had not made its expenses and they were not even certain that they would place a professional team in the arena during the next season. This they told me and also that they could not afford to pay the sum I asked for my services, and so without consulting the folks at Marshalltown I appended my name to a Philadelphia contract, and late in the fall bade good-by to Rockford and its ball players, turning my face towards the City of Brotherly Love, where I played ball with the Athletics until the formation of the National League in 1876, and it was not until five years had elapsed that I revisited my old home in Marshalltown, taking a bride with me.
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.
The whirligig of time had in the meantime made a good many changes in the membership of the Professional League, for in spite of the fact that 1871 had been the most prosperous year in the history of base-ball, up to that time, many clubs had fallen by the wayside, their places in the ranks being taken by new-comers, and that several of these were unable to weather the storms of 1