Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/501

 "Not long after this, however, a squad of British officers rode into the vast enclosure of the Temple of Earth, where were encamped the khaki-clad troopers, 'dough-boys,' and gunners of Uncle Sam. The visitors were amazed to hear from beyond the yellow-tiled roofs a mighty roar as if an army were shouting itself black in the face. The terrific commotion rose and fell in waves of wrath and jubilation, and the puzzled Englishmen pushed on until they came to rows of templed walls and marble terraces, swarming with hundreds of blue-shirted fighting men.

"Here in one of the most sacred and inviolable places of all China—a place for ages dedicated to an annual pilgrimage of solemn worship by the Emperor—a thousand lusty Americans were using the very altars for 'bleachers' while they 'rooted' for the rival nines of Riley's Battery and the Sixth Cavalry squadron. The American Army League was in full swing for the Peking championship, and the hoarse volleys of 'Rotten umpire!' 'Soak it to her, Kelly!' 'Wow-w, slide, you lobster!' re-echoed from gray parapets that had never before been profaned by a foreigner.

"It was all as typically American as it was a unique episode in history. Those athletic Englishmen from India had their eyes opened to an appreciation of the national pastime of eighty-odd million Americans, and before the occupation ended they were deserting their own fields to enjoy the thrill of a fiercely fought nine-inning battle on the diamond of Chaffee's Camp.

"These Yankee exiles fell to 'playing ball' as naturally as to foraging, and while they were engaged in driving the festive three-bagger through the startled air of North China, jackies in white duck were circling the bases in blazing Cuba and Honolulu, or landing from revenue-cutter patrols to stake out a home-plate on frozen Alaskan beaches; and soldier and sailor teams were swinging their bats from one end of the Philippines to the other. As the British drum-beat has encircled the globe, so has the slogan of 'Play ball!' followed the Stars and Stripes, proclaiming the reign of the finest outdoor game ever devised."

In the May number of the American Magazine for 1911, writing on "Hitting the Dirt," Mr. Hugh S. Fullerton, of Chicago, had a forceful paper from which the following is a reprint:

"Base stealing, the gentle art of sprinting and 'hitting the dirt,' is the finest drawn and most closely calculated play in Base Ball, and the one that, above all others, reveals the mathematical exactitude of the national game. A player who can run eighty-five feet in three and one-third seconds from a flatfooted start, ought to reach