The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-06-25
BASE BALL.
From the Harrisburg Topic.

From the Harrisburg Topic.
The American people are perhaps the least
practical while the most industrious and en-
terprising of all the people in the world.
We say the least practical because they are
the easiest led away in admiration of affairs
that have nothing in them," that are meri-
tricious, silly, even foolish. We are subject
to periodical passions for foolish things, and
when thing becomes a fashion, however
ridiculous it may be, those who refuse to
worship and commend it are at once set
down as the ignorant ones. We are led to
these remarks by the returning base bal
fever, and its counterpart croquet. If
number of genteel idlers organize a base ball
club, and engage with other clubs in rival
ries which have no meaning, il is expected
that business should at once be suspended,
that the telegraph and the newspapers
should yield all their facilities
to spread before the public a result
which does not prove anything. The best
baseball players in the world are men who
never did an honest days labor in their
lives, yet such fellows will fry what little
brains they have, in the heat of a summer
solstice, competing with bat and ball for a
superiority which does not add feature to
society 8 good, physical powers of usefulness,
or moral dignity. But it is fashionable.
That's enough. The men or man who does
an honest day s work, where genius and art
and mechanism contribute to the wealth and
glory of the land, are not made half as repu-
table by the telegraph and the press as is a
baseball club. Our city contemporaries
would not advertise the most useful invention
unless they are paid for it, and yet during
the season they do not hesitate to force
on their readers columns of stuff about
baseball contests which are bore to
all but those who were glorihed thereby
Without being accused of harshness, a
similar reference to those who delight
to engage in eroquet is not out of place.
We frequently see young ladies displaying
great muscular force in a game of croquet,
who would swoon at the base invitation to
sweep parlor carpet or prepare the vegeta-
bles for dinner Herein is just where the
American people so often render themselves
ridiculous before the world. Our amusements
are of the impracticable kind; and when we
do engage in anything of sportive character,
instead of making it snbservient to good
sense, we outrage the latter quality and turn
our pleasures into designations. This base
ball fever now amounts TO a ridiculous dis
play of petty vanities which claim to have q
monopoly of our attention American jour
nalism is to blame for this cultivation of q
national snobbishness, and it is about time
that the telegraph were employed in furnishing
newspapers with intelligence of more use-
full character than that of reports of baseball
contests.
Still another view of these base ball con-
tests is that which reveals their criminal fea-
lures. Whenever great game is played, the
sporting men and gamblers make 1t the
means of plying their trade, until base bal
clubs are used by gamblers to rob the public,
one club allowing the other to be victorious
that the gamblers may be enabled to fleece
their victims. Part of this money goes foI
paying the expenses of the clubs iii drinking