Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/564

 Mr. Marshall explained the object of his visit and the general lines of the information he was seeking, incidentally remarking that he had never seen a game of Base Ball.

In answer to my surprised inquiry, "Where have you lived all these years?" he replied that he had been a war correspondent and had spent most of his time in Europe, and more recently in Cuba.

Here was I, facing a man who had never seen a game of Base Ball; yet this man wanted to write an article on the "Psychology of Base Ball," which, so far as I knew, although I had been connected with the sport almost from its inception, was a phase of the subject that had never before been brought out.

While he was arranging his shorthand notes, seated in an easy chair, with a pad carelessly resting on his knee, I confess that I had some misgivings as to his forth-coming article, and as a precautionary measure requested him to show me proof of the same before it appeared in print. To this he assented.

Shortly after this first and only interview with Mr. Marshall I was suddenly called to my home at Point Loma, California, and never saw the article until some days after it had appeared in the New York Times of November 13, 1910. Had I seen the proof I would certainly have blue-penciled some of the personal references. I do not claim to have the face of a "Greek Hero"; I do not assume to resemble a Bishop of any church, and I could not be the father of a game whose birth antedated mine by ten years.

Following is the article in full: