Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/515

506 Saturday afternoon at the grounds at Seventh and I streets between the Athletic and Young California clubs. The latter was badly scooped, the score standing 14 to 32 in favor of the Athletics. A club so deficient in patriotism (the writer can't resist concluding) as to fly the banner of a rival state, deserves defeat.

Sport activity was small and coverage meager in the early 80's. Reference to the files of the Morning Oregonian for the first half of the year show not more than three or four items a month, on the average. Sports covered included shooting-matches, cricket, amateur boxing, horse-racing, cricket, trout-fishing, rowing, and baseball. Total space for all sports for the entire period did not exceed three columns. There had been, in short, no increase in sport coverage in the decade, nor was there noticeable improvement in the quality of the writing, so far as it is possible to judge from a collection of such short items.

Baseball was on a professional basis in 1881 (later called "semi-pro"), but the yield to the individual player was small, as indicated by an item in the Oregonian June 25, reciting that "Players of the national game in this city are dissatisfied because the $100 for games on the Fourth is to be divided in three purses. The wish seems to be that the best club should receive the entire sum, which is not large enough for division, and that the games be played on the South Portland grounds instead of the unprepared meadow named by the committee on amusements."

The status of boxing, prizefighting, pugilism—which under all these different titles has amounted more or less to the same thing—has always been a matter of worry to newspapers. Right now we read occasionally some lament by a modern sportswriter, who pines for the days when fighters fought and were real he-men, like old John L. Sullivan for instance. Back in the 80's the writers were doing the same sort of thing from a different angle, looking back to a previous "golden age" of the sport. Here is an example from the Portland Daily News of April 9, 1883, decrying the brutality of the sport and the brutality of its devotees, and mentioning Sullivan, Slade, and Mace by name in no complimentary terms. The concluding paragraph:

They (the fighters) are today debauching the people's morals. The Golden Age of the Republic as to pugilism, which lasted from the Sayers-Heenan fight to the time when Sullivan developed from a Boston North End tough into a human catapult should be closed. Then the people will cease to adore mere brute force and bull-headed physical ability. Brains will again take precedence of force, and the man or men who can handle an oar skillfully, shoot the rifle with