Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1886-07-08

A Incident which Proves That They WM
Never He Understood ~ Ladies'.
My first serious mistake lay in taking
party of ladies to the ball park.
asked them il they understood the
game. They replied that they did in a
general way. never knew before
what dense ignorance is corezsd up by
that vague and unsatisfactory express
sion. We arrived at the park without
exciting incident, save the temporary
excitement of leaving a bill Of large de-
nomination at the gate. I purchased
score cards all around, and explained
briefly and courteously the intents
thereof. The ladies said sOh," and
for about ten seconds were deeply in
terested. Then they fell to looking
around to see who were there and what
they had on. Every few seconds a
score card would slide out of lady's
lap. This kept me busy and served to
relieve the monotony of waiting. The
Detroits were praciicing in the field
and Hanlon was knocking flies into the
suburbs. Presently he hit terrific ball
over the center field fence. Singularly
enough one of the ladies saw him per-
form the feat.
''Why doesn't he run?" she cried, ex-
citedly.
"Why doesn't who run?" asked, in
establishment.
THAT little fellow with the club, :"
she said.
Iexplained that it was probably be-
cause the club overweighed him. This
seemed to satisfy her. and she resumed
her inspection of the spectators. /
discovered that the ladies were very
much interested in the uniforms, and
observed with alarm tendency to get
the clubs mixed. It took some min
utes to straighten the matter satisfac-
t0rily, and then the umpire called time.
The umpire is pretty busy man.
but he absolutely revelcd in idleness
that day as compared with my labors.
The second ball pitched was foul.
which whizzed into the grand stand and
came near diminishing my responsible
tiles by one. This necessitated q
change of base, and we moved around
in an agile manner, my perturbation
being increased by volley of sugges-
tons from the rear of s'dOwn in front.
Again fairly seated, one of the ladies
discovered that she had forgotten her
parasol, so back travelled, secured it,
returned, picked up score card or two
and sank into my seat in profuse per-
spiration. Then the questioning began.
why do they keep taking off and
putting on those masks?"
(Which is the pitcher?"
"What makes them slide along on
their faces?'
(Which side is at the batp"
''What is q fOul?"
'Isn't over the fence out?"
These questions l answered with be-
coming fortitude and patience, but
when the youngest and daintiest lady
said it was a perfect shame to dirty
their uniform by rolling along the
ground / gave her up as a bad job.
At the end of the first inning l took
the score cards with some apprehen-
sion, which proved to be we'll based.
l found that three of the ladies had
kept the Kansas City score on the
Detroit side, and one of them had cred
tied the home club with four runs and
some sixteen base hits. l straight
ened out the score with some difficulty
and was rewarded by the remark of
the owner of the most complicated
system of scoring that she wouldn't
have missed seeing the game for any
thing" That was where we differed,
but, then, l make it point to be al
ways open to reasonable propositions.
Kansas City Times.