Can we even run this? 1898 Obscene Language Baseball Document – Not For Kids!

This might be the greatest thing I’ve come across…and quite possibly the last.

Items of historical significance can take many forms. We have always gone out of our way to stay away from items that we think are in poor taste or off-color. We also try our best to seize opportunities to document the history of the game and its relationship to American culture.

Which brings us to a recent dilemma encountered by our office this past week.

...Reading this document started out very drab for a sentence or two, but then quickly got our attention as the language used became very unexpected for an official Major League baseball document, let alone one devoted to demanding players not use “any indecent or obscene word, sentence, or expression.” It turned “blue,” and, well, got “bluer.” This piece is ironic as it provides many examples of exactly the kind of “brutal language” that was being outlawed. In fact, it is so over the top that at first we thought it was some type of a joke.