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6 the British nation; and the time is not far distant when American athletes will carry off championship honors in every manly sport and pastime in vogue; as they have already done in the most prominent sports of the period, of which England's great specialty in sports, yachting, affords a shining example.

The decade of the nineties in the American athletic arena, as well as in that of Great Britain, has seen an era of brutality in sports entered upon, which, it is to be hoped, time will end in due course. It has already culminated, and a sensible reaction set in in 1894. In this connection, and without enumerating the specially brutal sports still in vogue, it is timely to state that our national game, while at the same time fully developing every true manly qualification in the form of courage, endurance, pluck and nerve, which the best of manly sports requires, is entirely devoid of a single brutal feature. In this respect base ball stands out in brilliant and attractive colors. Moreover, the game, as played by its professional exemplars, occupies an exceptional position for the honesty which characterizes the contests played under the auspices of the great Major League and its Minor League branches. This it is which commands a public support and patronage unequalled in field games. In fact, base ball, as played by the clubs of the National League, is familiarly known as "the only honest sport in vogue in which professional exemplars take part."

Our national game has, during the past twenty odd years of professional club history, gone through some trying ordeals; beginning with the period of the existence of the first professional national association in 1871, and culminating in the establishment, on a permanent footing, of the existing reconstructed National League in 1892. During the decade of the seventies, professional ball playing had to struggle for life against the abuses of crookedness in its club ranks, brought about by that curse of sports, pool selling; and this evil of dishonesty led to the organization of the "National League of Professional Clubs," in 1876, which replaced the original "National Association of Professional Ball Players" first organized in 1871. During the decade of the eighties, the rival professional club organization, known as the "American Association," sprang into existence, and following its advent came the evil of contract