In preparing this issue of SPALDING'S OFFICIAL BASE BALL GUIDE for the season of 1913, it has occurred to the Editor that the season of 1912, and the period which followed its completion, have been filled, with a great deal of unusual and uncommon vicissitude.

In the first place the personnel of the National League, the oldest Base Ball organization in the world, has been greatly changed by reason of death and purchase of one franchise.  New owners have brought new faces into the game, and when the National League starts on this year's campaign there will be some younger but equally as ambitious men at the heads of some of the clubs.

The players have effected an organization.  That, too, is an incident of interest, for it is well within the memory of the Base Ball "fans" of this day what happened when another organization was perfected in the past.  For this organization it may be said that the members promise that it will be their object to bring about better deportment on the part of their own associates and that they will work their best for the advancement of Base Ball from a professional standpoint.  If they do this they will be of benefit to the sport.  If they work from selfish motives it is inevitable that eventually there will be a clash, as there was in the past.

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