Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-05-28
DEcADENCE OF BASEBALL.

The dispatches from New York, Phila-
delphia and Boston declare that the inter-
est in baseball in these cities has so sud-
denly ceased that the bottom may be said
to have tumbled out of the whole business.
The attendance at the contests has fallen
from tens of thousands, until on the day
of the last playing there were present at
the League game in New York, only 2S3
people, Brooklyn us, Philadelphia ,00S,
Boston 1892. The Brotherhood games
were not any better attended. 1t is re-
ported also that baseball has ceased to be
a topic of street talk, and that in public
places where it was SO short a time ago
the engrossing subject of enthusiasm and
debate, it is now not heard Of This de-
cline of interest in the game is attributed
to the fact that the owners of the teams
have reduced the contests to mere money
getting schemes.
The American public is very jealous of
its enthusiasm. If it once suspects that it
has been worked up to pitch OF excite
ment merely as means for managerial
ends, it cools so suddenly as to wreck
things in the collapse. We can under
stand that had the Olympian games been
contested merely as matter of form. and
without the personal spirit of the players
entering into them, they never could have
had place in the esteem and admiration
of the people. So, too, in this country.
We will not long maintain enthusiasm
over hired players merely. Baseball will
recover its interest and renewal of pub
lie confidence and support when the
games become real contests between clubs
of young men who struggle to win for the
sake of the town or community they rep
resent. No such spirit of chivalric effort
can enter into games in which the players
have only such interest in the colors they
wear, as is measured by salary.
Here, in California, the game retains
its original place in the esteem of the
!. public, and enthusiasm has not begun to
cool, but the wave of retrogression will
certainly reach the coast, and baseball will
then follow the roller-skate. We are sorry
for this, because in the national game we
see means for good to the young men of
the country; it tends to cultivate taste
for athletic sports of the better order; to
energize the spirit now inspiring our
young men to make themselves better
physical men, and it goes a long way,
as we recently said, in teaching youth
the folly of dissipation, and the truth that
physical vigor can be retained only
through temperate habits, reasonably early
retiring, and abstention from those things
that enervate and make unnecessary de-
mands upon the strength and vitality. In
short, the practice of the game is in line
with the revival of interest in the gym
nasium, the sports of the field, and those
exercises that conserve manly and health
full development. But if the game of base
ball as now run for public amusement de-
clines, and the money-making disposition
drops it because the public refuses to cater
to it, it can still be saved by the organiza-
ton of clubs to play the game for the
sport it affords, and in honor of the COM
munities they represent, much as college
and rowing clubs are maintained. Whether
this will be done remains to be seen.