“We didn’t use to travel in any such style as this in the old days,” remarked Wilson, as he looked around at the rich appointments of the Pullman. “As a matter of fact, we had to scratch sometimes to get money enough to carry the team from one place to another in an ordinary day coach. Those were the days when baseball was a sport, pure and simple, and nobody thought of it as a business to make money from. Usually there were no regular salaries for the players, and they simply divided up the receipts from the different games and made them go as far as they would. Many of the games were played in open fields, where everybody could come and contribute what they liked when the hat was passed for the collection. Even when there were enclosed grounds, the admission fee was twenty-five cents or less, and except on special occasions the crowds were nowhere near as large as they are to-day. But we’d rather play than eat, and we played the game for the fun we could get out of it. And fun it was, I assure you.”