Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/504

 million of players, all the way down to the barefooted tots who whang a three-cent ball with a barrel stave and wrangle over 'the foul-strike rule.' The vast army of amateurs must, therefore, look to the leagues for every change or improvement in the game, and in this way the professional element dominates the Base Ball of eighty millions of Americans. Unlike the history of other sports, professional Base Ball has helped instead of hindered the game of the amateur. Where one State league plays its circuit of six or eight small cities, a hundred amateur nines are springing up to pattern after the organization of the professionals, and with uniforms, managers, and regular schedules, boom the game for the pure fun of it. In Greater New York alone more than two hundred clubs of amateurs and semi-professional players contest regular series of games in private grounds and in the public parks.

"As a 'national game,' Base Ball has no more than begun its conquest. One of the great, popular awakenings of this generation has been the 'outdoor movement,' in which the gospel of fresh air and wholesome exercise has been preached from every housetop. The public schools are teaching it, employers are promoting athletic clubs for their working people, and a million dollars is not considered an extravagant sum to invest in the equipment of a college athletic plant. The average American is so constructed that athletic endeavor bores him unless it is enlivened by the spirit of competition. He must be trying to 'lick the other fellow' or he will quit the game in disgust. Base Ball is the one sport open to all, without any barrier of expense, and with rivalry enough to rivet the interest of its players.

"The pallid student with bulging brow may croak that it is a wicked, economic waste for thousands of grown men to be paid large salaries for hitting a ball with a stick of wood. On the contrary, these clean-built, sunburned, vigorous athletes of the league diamonds are the faculty members of the National University of Base Ball Culture, and their pupils are to be found in every other American home.

"The greatest day of the sporting calendar is 'the opening of the league season.' Then it is worth the price of admission just to see twenty thousand cheering Americans banked half way round the velvet turf in the sparkling April weather; when the heroes in their spick-and-span uniforms parade grandly across the field behind the band; when the big flag soars to the top of the tall pole; when the Mayor or Governor tosses the dedicatory horsehide sphere from his box; when the first gladiator strides up to the home plate, and the umpire croaks 'Play ball!'"