100 years ago in the Record
Sunday, Aug. 25, 1918
Sunday is amateur baseball day in Troy, with plenty of action and controversy to fill the sports pages of tomorrow’s Record.
Troy’s two top amateur teams lose this weekend. The All-Troys are held to four hits by the pitcher for Tom Purcell’s All-Professionals, who come from behind with a four-run ninth inning to score a 6-3 upset. All-Troy hurler Mike Hogan strikes out eleven in a losing effort.
Brooks, the All-Professional pitcher, usually plays for the other top Troy team, the Laureate Boat Club. The Laureates (or “Oarsmen”) could have used him yesterday. They suffered an arguably bigger upset when they fall, 3- 0, to the schoolboy allstar team of the Intercity Catholic League.
At Third Rail Park in Rensselaer, the Albany Southerns shut out the Green Island Gentrys, 7- 0. The Gentrys blame the loss on All-Troy manager Jack Willetts.
In an interview with our “Let’s Get Together” columnist, a Gentry representative claims that Willetts “is wrecking some of the clubs about town, and he is injuring baseball by offering the amateurs here in town, who should be willing to play for sport’s sake, a measly half dollar more than the other club can afford.
“He recently sent a representative to Green Island, who remained several hours in the village in an effort to induce several star players of the Gentry club to join his band. To make matters worse, he induced players to leave at a time when a critical game was booked at Albany. I don’t think this fair treatment and I am telling it to the world.” “On one point the Gentry representative is right,” our columnist concedes, “Manager Willetts, if he would preserve the peace of amateur baseball in Troy and vicinity, should not wreck a club by offering its star men a few additional paltry pennies. “Unfortunately, there isn’t a baseball commission in this city or that particular phase of the sport would be taken care of.” Willetts is busy defending himself from accusations of cheating in last weekend’s game with the Cohoes Insulars. If the Insulars witnessed cheating, Willetts asks, why did they wait until yesterday to make the charges in The Record? Answering the specific charge that someone moved a foul flag in the AllTroy’s favor, Willetts claims that one of the Insular fans actually did it. Another Cohoes fan, signed “A.L.M.,” writes to our paper to assert that “the Insulars lost fair and square … and haven’t a logical kick coming. That Insular bunch hasn’t played a game yet that it didn’t kick.” A.L.M. himself lost a $25 on last week’s game, but “I am not yelping.”