Day 2 of Independent Research and I have just let myself into a fascinating world

    Today was a great solid day of research. I finished up Thomas K. Perry's book on Textile Mill Leauge baseball and it was fantastic, I also did some preliminary searched on the internet. We are so privileged to live in an area that is an absolute hot bed for history, even more so for the national pastime. I am blown away by the things that I am uncovering it seems with each turn of a page or click  of a mouse.
   
      My goal here is to find out how players,teams and mills were affect by competition. I look at the late 1910's to the late 1920's as the bearth of what we now look at as scholarships, contracts and free agency. Baseball has become a multi million dollar industry in which the team that proposes the better offer gets the best players. I in fact think that the mill leagues and the mill owners operated in the same way. It is no secret that mill bosses would bring in high profile players to help there team win thus attracting more workers to their mills. The catch of course was that the jobs of these players were not really jobs at all they might walk around with a few tools for a few hours and then hit the ball field.  I however am already getting pulled in different directions because there is just so much fascinating information IN JUST ONE DAY!.
   
      Would you believe if I were to tell you that Wofford provide players to the mills once they graduated? They sure did. This really intrigues me that local colleges would funnel their graduates to mills in order to improve the mill teams. So we now have to think, did they create special jobs for college grads? Was a young man in his baseball prime more apt to want to play for the mill's or move to the majors. I can already see this taking me into a whole new direction because it is fascinating how our college along with other area colleges played into what was considered such a tight knit community. Seldom was there cohesion between the lint heads and the townies. College teams even played mill teams our terriers were quite
  

   So I will be taking a  break for probably for the weekend because the military is calling my name, however Monday I am going to dig through Wofford's archives and see what I can find on Wofford's baseball players and how they impact textile league baseball if at all. As it stands today I am almost certain that I will present to you all on that exact topic, only time will tell. I have a very exciting week next week for a historian, I am meeting with Dr. Stone on Monday to begin my journey through the Wofford Archives, Tuesday I will be meeting with a archivist at the South Carolina room at the Greenville Public Library and here is what will have you on the edge of your seat....I have been invited into Mr. Perry's home to talk Textile Mill Baseball with the lead expert on the subject in the United States!!!!!!!

In closing if there ever arises an opportunity for me to do nothing by study textile mill baseball I will jump on it.


Oh yea let Shoeless Joe in the hall!!!