Page:Spalding's Baseball Guide (1894).djvu/9



Never before, in the annals of our national game, was there recorded a single season which equalled that of 1893 in the number of base ball clubs which took the field throughout the entire base ball world; and also in the general attendance at match games on enclosed grounds in the United States, on which both amateur club nines as well as professional club teams took part; and likewise in the number of games played throughout the year, North, South, East and West. Besides which, base ball was played on foreign fields, especially in England and Australia, to an extent surpassing in number of matches any previous year since the Spalding tourists played their exhibition games in Australia, India, Egypt, on the Continent of Europe and in Great Britain. There was a great deal of talk during the revolutionary period of professional base ball history, in 1890 and 1891, about "the great decline of base ball in popularity;" but this was, in reality, little else than newspaper sensationalism; inasmuch as it applied only to the comparatively limited field occupied by the professional exemplars of the game. The amateur class of the fraternity was not in the least adversely affected by the demonstration in the professional ranks during the players' revolt in 1890; or during the season of the secession of the old American Association from the national agreement government, which followed it in 1891. On the contrary, the college clubs of the amateur class of the fraternity benefited greatly by the base ball war of those two years, the attendance at the Harvard, Yale and Princeton games never before having been as large as during those two years of professional club demoralization. But like the results of the great war of the rebellion in the early sixties—the outcome of which was the destruction of the curse of human slavery—the professional base ball business was really benefited by the purifying effects of the base ball rebellion and secession of the early nineties; and to-day the great Major League, which grew out of the revolution of 1891, stands forth as the permanently established governing power of the whole professional fraternity.

Never before, too, have sports and pastimes in general, and field games in particular, reached so great a degree of popularity as they command at this very day. For years Great Britain held entire supremacy in the athletic world of civilized countries, but now the United States rivals