Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/516

Rh accuracy, fish, swim and hunt scientifically, will be the ones recognized as sporting men, and the present generation of ruffians, jailbirds, thieves, murderers, thugs, state-prison graduates, will be relegated to deserved oblivion.

Sunday sports were none too popular in those days of the 80's, and the Oregonian in an editorial published March 19, 1883, deplored the fact that baseball was played only on Sundays and hoped that it might be possible to play more games on week days, thus allowing the game to return to popular favor, which, said the Oregonian, it had largely lost. The idea of arguing for popularity of Sunday games did not occur to editorial writers in those early days.

The same editorial, written in a helpful, friendly spirit of promoting clean sports, had a good word to say for cricket, which was then a fairly popular game in Portland; for rowing, which was active on the Willamette, and for horse-racing, which, however, was not unqualifiedly endorsed. Said the Oregonian, arguing for a weekday holiday:

"Sports as now carried on in Oregon, unless we except occasional turf scenes, are of the wholesome and honest sort. Employers ought to allow the young men in their service time for a proper share in them. The youth who plays ball or cricket, or who rows a boat at proper times, is a stronger and better man for the exercise. He can serve his employer better. We hope to see a general Saturday or Wednesday half-holiday movement. Young men ought to have a few hours of daylight for field sports each week."

The old Puritan spirit is inescapable in all this pioneer and semi-pioneer sport comment. The idea of exercise is uppermost (. . .he can serve his employer better . . .), and enjoyment for its own sake does not appear to be very common among these Victorian far-westerners.

Sports and sports writing really began to look up in the 90's. Baseball and boxing in particular took an impetus. Horse-racing held its own, and football of the soccer variety began to compete for notice in the papers. And yet the percentage of total space devoted to all sorts of games remained exceedingly light. February 12, 1891, the Oregonian contained 1¼ columns of sports out of a total news space of 45 columns, or less than 3 per cent. On July 12, in the height of the outdoor sport season, racing received two columns of space, while another two columns was given to baseball and other general sports — a total of four columns out of 112 in the paper, or less than 4 per cent of total space.

Sports writing, however, continued, on the whole, uninspired. The account of a football game which appeared in the Oregonian's