The Philadelphia League Club and the American Association Athletic Club played a spring and fall exhibition game series for the professional championship of Philadelphia, the result of which was a victory for the American teams, as will be seen by the appended record:
ATHLETIC VICTORIES.
ATHLETIC VS. PHILADELPHIA. ——————————————————- DATE. PITCHERS. Score. ——————————————————- April 9 Seward, Gleason 4-2 April 11 Seward, Sanders 15-4 April 12 Weyhing Casey 7-1 April 14 Seward, Gleason 3-1 April 16 Weyhing, Tyng 13-7 October 18 Seward, Sanders 8-5 ——————————————————-
PHILADELPHIA VICTORIES.
PHILADELPHIA VS. ATHLETIC.
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DATE. PITCHERS. Score.
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April 13 Gleason, Mattimore 8-2
April 17 Buffinton, Blair 7-1
October 19 Casey, Weyhing 8-0
October 20 Buffinton, Smith 12-0
THE EXHIBITION GAME CAMPAIGN.
The experience of the season of 1888 in the playing of exhibition games during the spring and fall between League and American Clubs, shows that while the spring series prove attractive, owing to the desire of the patrons of the game to see how the club teams of the two organizations compare with each other in relative strength, preparatory to the opening of the championship campaign in each arena; those played in the fall, after the two championships have been decided, have ceased to draw paying patronage. This decrease of interest in the fall exhibition games, too, has been largely due to the introduction of the World's Championship series, which now monopolize public interest after the regular championship season has ended. It has been proposed to substitute a series of regular championship matches, on the basis of the series of the world's championship contests for the old time fall exhibition games, the plan in question including not only games between the championship teams of the League and the Association, but also between all the eight clubs of each organization, so as to show which are the eight leading club teams of the League, and the American Association. Had this plan been carried out in 1888, we should not only have had the interesting series between the two champion teams of New York and St. Louis, but also those between Chicago and Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Athletic, Boston and Cincinnati, Detroit and Baltimore, Pittsburg and Cleveland, Indianapolis and Louisville, and Washington and Kansas City. It is to be hoped that a grand test series of games of this character will mark the closing professional campaign of 1889, for such a series would substitute very interesting championship matches for October in the place of the unmeaning and useless exhibition games of the past fall campaigns.
THE WORLD'S CHAMPIONSHIP.
THE FULL RECORD OF THE SERIES.
It has now become an established rule of the National League and the American Association, to close each season with a supplementary championship series of games between the teams of the two leading clubs winning the respective championships of the two organizations each year, to decide as to which of the two champion clubs is entitled to the honor of being the champion club of the United States, and consequently the world's champions in base ball. This supplementary series of games has grown in importance each year since the inaugural trial games of 1884, when a short series of games of this character took place on the Polo Grounds in October, 1884, between the League championship team of the Providence Club and the American championship team of the Metropolitan Club. It was a short series of best two games of the three played, the result being an easy victory for the League team, as the appended record shows: