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Young men in school could look forward to playing ball for money in a dozen different places, even if they failed to make the major leagues.

Nearly any lad with a modicum of skill might find a payday awaiting him in the Three I League, or the Pony League, or the Coastal Plains League, or the fast Eastern League, if not indeed in one of the hundreds of city leagues that abounded everywhere.

Even a city of thirty thousand might have six baseball teams, sponsored by grocers and hardware merchants or department stores, that played two or three times a week throughout the summer, usually in the cool of the evening, before an earnest and partisan audience who did not begrudge a quarter each, or even more, to be dropped into a hat when the game was half over.