Litchfield enquirer., 1867-09-19
The National Game

For some years the press, the platform and the pulpit discoursed immensely of the necessity of outdoor games. Tho race was depreciating frightfully: part be- coming thin-limbed, thin chested, and dyspeptic with unintcrnnitting in-door-ap. plication; part, heavy handed, slow-foot- ed, and stiff -jointed, with unintermittine 3 out door labor. All work and no play was running us, and we must take example in season from boat-racing, ball-playing, healthy Old England, or die.
 Hence, perhaps, base ball; q game less scientific than cricket, moro so than foot ball, less dangerous than either. Now. Young America sports its uniform, talks base ball talk, and pitches into tho national game With characteristic feryor.
 Lately, however, we hear loud murmurs.
 Indignant employers, thrifty fathers, ten ] der mothers lament in chorus the distrac- ! tions and risks of the game Muffins who never caught or batted a ball in their lives join clubs and fill the papers with their bitter first experiences N breaks little finger at San Francisco, M upsets thumb at Portland, and eager editors, whose com positors have formed clubs, copy and swell
 the damaging report The grumblers, in short, have the floor, and when a first nine comes back beaten from match game, "d(euce)d glad of it'' is rathera common
 form of greeting
 You of the Base ball persuasion are un- doubtedly, therefore, an injured class! You have done as you wero told, and are abus- cd for it! You have the capital to start 9 political organization. Nothing would be easier than to have the legal amount of baseball exercise per week, fixed by stat ute at five days if you desired it. But the very man who spoke for you in the Legis- lature would, nevertheless, turn up. every clerk ill his store who played single in ming between A. M. and 10 F. NJ
 A high moral position is your true policy; it is not so easy to keep as high political position, and therefore we mako few sug- gestion: Exercise and recreation are good things; consequently, base ball is good thing; but exercise and recreation are not the only things, consequently base ball is not the chief end of man-and hcrcabouts some of you CIT. Exercise to be of much uso must be regular; consequently, match games should be tho exception not the rule -nino hours spent in travel to get three hours of play is bad cconomy,-To win on this tack you need, in short, little more discretion
 If any individual of a past age attempt invidious comparisons; you will undoubt- edly speak to him, reverently, after the manner of your generation, thus: ''There is reason why our amusements gre not like yours. The New England that enjoy ed General Trainings, dislocating each oth- CTS, limbs in wrestling matches at 'srais- ings, playing crude sort of baseball with anywhere from ten to thirty on side, was moro or less intoxicated at the time A
 General Training which seemed glorious thing to a generation as drunk as fddlers, we consider bore. That respectable DOT tion of New Milford called Mcrry-all took its namo from raising" but the raising was not done on lemonade. When New England got sober it was for time little
 blue and dispirited, naturally enough, Amusements suited to sober race were slow in coming, but such an amusement
 has at last been discovered, and we are ta-
 king advantage of the discovery"