We are willing to lay some sort of odds that these fellas who made up the Greenport Baseball Club in 1907 didn't make a whole lot of money - probably what our major league fellas makes in an inning. Regardless, the current season is, by the way, producing drama by the inning, with payrolls that more and likely eclipsed the gross product of the North Fork in 1907 many times over, and even those guys are from what are called secondary markets make a bundle.
So this ten member Greenport club with a 'manager' (top middle - how fitting) showed up probably because it was a fun thing to do and maybe they passed the hat in the stands. Maybe Sterling Bottling gave them a beer afterwards. We don't know but club baseball, something of a rarity now, lives and thrives elsewhere and it is really something.
Some of us have lived elsewhere where businesses and factories, groups like the Elks or Masons, and towns like Greenport in 1907, field teams, put them in uniforms and devoted summer nights or weekend days to the pursuit of the ground ball. One of us played third base for Wilman's Furniture in the Cincinnati 10-12yo league years ago (many years ago we might add) and we played 3 games a week and lost in the city championship 8-6. We very much remember it like any of these fellas, non-living we are pretty sure, would remember their season, their key game, who was on first......
Speaking of which, one of us has to inspect the lawn, order seed and perhaps rake the latest batch of twigs from the overnight wind, but be assured that poor fella will just have to do so remembering his Cincinnati Reds 60+ years ago, the city championship with the crisp baselines, a dugout with a water 'bubbler', and a real deal, paid umpire yelling "play ball".
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