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HE prose literature of Base Ball began with the game itself, and has kept pace with it in attractive form. If it is true, as has herein been said, that whenever the elements are favorable and wherever grounds are available the game is in progress, it is quite as true that whereever and whenever newspapers and periodicals are printed in America literature of the game is in process of making. Not only volumes but libraries have been written. Historical, statistical, descriptive, narrative, technical and humorous articles and books, in unlimited numbers, have flooded the country for years, and the cataclysm continues its supply of literary matter in an ever-increasing deluge. Recently the high-class magazines have taken up the subject, and the foremost publications of America are devoting much valuable space to the exploitation of features of the American game.

From out of this vast ocean of material one can only present, in a work like this, a few excerpts, touching divers phases of the general theme. In selecting these, I have only chosen such as here appear as representing types of Base Ball writing, each peculiar to its author or its class.

The following characteristic editorial is from the New York Sun of April 18, 1908: 463