, 1888-09-11
THE PRESENT NATIONAL GAME.
What a writers in a Magazine Says
About 1t.

nhaI a hrlterI IN a magazine says
About II.
The baseball of today has, to be sure, its
primitive germ in the delightful boys game
we used to know, but its departure from
that in character is both marvellous and ma
lign. Its main object seems to be to obliter-
ate all the fun which the game naturally SUP
plies, with one other-the development of a
pitcher" He is called a ''pitcher"
principally because he won't CT can't
pitch. That is, he has learned a contortion
of the body and swing of the arm that de-
feats all expectancy of the batter and ex-
tinguishes the true fun of the game. On
him more than any one else depends the sue
cess of a side; but what it succeeds to it
would be difficult to tell. When it gets its
innings they are more or less useless, be
cause another pitcher with tricks peculiar to
himself excites again the admiration of the
crowd of spectators by hits either scarce, &C
cidental or impossible.
In the old game of free and frequent hit
ting, a side was no more persistently sin
than one is now. 1t went out as often, but
it could tell what it gained by an Ginning"
1t secured the sport for which ball playing
was first invented, and for which it has been
played certainly 1000 years, viz the joy Of
hitting the ball. When it went out, the
other side succeeded to its rapture and ex-
p~erience. The modern game, IN the on
tracy, is something like what fishing might
become if some one would only invent a
regulation bait" which no fish would ever
bite, or like the hunting which the proprietor
of a grove recommended and was called to
account for recommending, when he eplied
that there was no game in the grove l
know, but 1 thought that fact would make
all the more hunting
The Catcher in modern baseball is an
other development that must not be passed
by. In the circuses there is often a trained
athlete who stands in front of a cannon and
catches the ball in his hand when it is fired
out, at no very great distance from the gun.
The charge of powder which sends it, how
ever, is measured, and serious accidents re-
sultiBg from the undertaking, 1 think, are
not numerous. But the catcher of the reg
ulation baseball implement, or globe, or toy,
call it which you will, takes his life in his
hands. He has to catch q ball which might
as we'll be a cannon ball, with little power to
tell where it will find him or he it, and with
a certainty that if it hits him a serious or
fatal injury is most likely to ensue.
This device, however, does not always pre-
vent a catastrophe. Injury and virtual may
hem to the hands the Catcher is always
sure to get If he remains in the business long.
Calloused joints and broken fingers are GER
tain to come. Injuries which no sane person,
not a baseball player, would accept for a
princely fortune given in advance, are made
light Of by a true catcher, " and are often
referred to by the craft as If they were the
scars won in an epoch deciding battle. The
Regulation" ball is really al implement of
barbarism. 1t has hurt others thar the
catcher, and occasionally kills an innocent
person who happens to stand in the line of
its path with easy celebrity. American Maya
zine.