Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/568

 and, in a way, revered him, but the camera man was an obstruction. What a cry went up! 'Too much Johnson! Too much Johnson!' roared instantly unto the vaulted heavens."

Mr. Spalding smiled at her. "Two cranks in a family means domestic bliss, if they are both Base Ball cranks," he commented, thereby adding to his exposition of the game's psychology.

"Any one who blocked a crank's view of the game would meet with instant criticism," he said proudly. "And if Teddy himself were playing and made an error he'd be roasted by the best friends he possessed upon the bleachers.

"But, in spite of this. Base Ball is the most good-natured pastime in the world.. Partisans will rave and tear their hair, but how often do you hear that one of them has torn another's hair on Base Ball grounds? In the history of the world no such great crowds have gathered to watch anything the world has ever known—sport or anything else—with so few fights. Base Ball, you see, arouses no brutal instincts. It is a turmoil rather than a battle. It is more a war of skill than a war of strength. Foot ball often breeds fierce fights. That game calls for heavy muscles, don't you see? as well as skill, and I shall dare some critics when I say that foot ball science is less delicate than Base Ball science. Brute strength in one foot ball player can, and often does, overmaster the pure science of another. In Base Ball this could not possibly occur.

"The game is in the open, too. Twenty thousand people can cluster round a diamond and see every move the Base Ball players on it make. There is no chance for secret cheating, therefore there is no tendency in that direction. It is not alone the umpire who can see what happens on the field, but every newsboy, every millionaire, among the spectators. In foot ball there is often chance for hidden fouls.

"Professionalism has not wrecked Base Ball—it has merely brought about a higher degree of skill in players by offering them an income which permits them to keep up, after they have become men, the sport in which they have excelled as boys. The professional is merely a grown boy, and, in the minds of a large number of his fellows, a very lucky boy at that. His profession is his sport a little glorified. He is the natural outcome of the boy's love for the game—ah, how that same boy loves it!

"And it is the only professional sport I know of which it does not hurt a boy to revel in. He worships the professional who wins, and, doing this, he never worships a plug-ugly or a thug. Drunkards and all other moral undesirables are barred from real success upon the Base Ball field by the very nature of the sport. The men whom the boy 'roots' for are a very decent lot of fellows—such a