The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-22
WIT GROWING STALE
An bid ..Fan,, peelares That 5 aHit,

An Old ''F'an'' Declares That a Tilt
 by a sBleacherite' Is Rare.
 Tt doesn't seem to me as if the
 rooters are as witty or original as they
 used to be- said the frizzled baseball
 zealot and fanatic. I've been to every
 game on the home grounds this season, and to some games on foreign grounds, s and haven't heard more than half d
 dozen genuine funny remarks from the rooters' sections. I'm a bleacherite, or sun god, too, occasionally, and 1t was
 in the bleachers where the fun used to be, you'll remember. Some days Il go into the grand stand and some on the bleachers, but, as I say. there's an ! absence of sure-enough witty cracks { from the rooters nowadays that I de- ] plore greatly. It used to be as good as 5 the game to listen to the shrewd, S whimsical really-and-t funny \ things that mellow fans would have to
 say to the players. Some of their say { ings were as good as the best things < you'd hear in the theater at a funny show. The chaps who got these things off did not set themselves deliberately { to the task of being funny for the en- tertainment of the crowd, but their re-
 marks rose involnntarily to their lips, and they were often So telling that they'd all but break up the games. while all hands including the players Themselves, rocked with the enjoyment s of the quips.
 "But nowadays the alleged funny fellows at the ball games appear to just lay themselves out to be funny. and, consequently, they're not the least
 bit entertaining. In fact, most of them
 are simply nuisances and bores, and Hthey get on the nerves of everybody within the sound of their voices. No man can be deliberately and deternlin- edly persistently funny for a whole afternoon at a ball game, and when
 you observe out of the ball of your z eye that such a chap is just exuding ! his noise for the sake of making hit, \ why along toward the middle of the game you feel like hitting him with | < bat.
 It cant be that all of the good things from the rooters, benches have been said yet, and that's one of the reasons why I can't explain the utter Hack of spontaneity of the rooters, cracks at this day and date.
 There's big voiced, Well, well, lwelr man used to get off his gigantic ihowl only a couple of times during the scourse of the game, and then only at lthe opportune points so that there was actual meat for mirth in his huge note
 of amazemerlt.
 { There seems, too, to be a good deal Hess patience and a heap more bitter ness among the fans nowadays than there used to be. The take -flirn-out' zpeople begin their unreasonable shout
 the instant player of the home nine makes the slightest kind of an error, : and then the player loses his nerve, and has all that he can do to scramble through the game. It doesn't make
 any difference, apparently, to the pre- sent generation of fans whether a man
 of the team has been sent, in a pinch, ! to cover a. position that he is entirely new to. If he exhibits the most. nat
 ural and unavoidable little break in This playing of the new position, they Sget at him with their wild demands
 that he be taken out and the result is always disastrous upon the players { game. Time was when player had to
 make a number of bad breaks, and < clearly show that he was out of form and in no shape to go ahead, before the | take -hinn-out' shriekers got busy. i| '1The rooters of to-day, too, seem to
 me to be a a good deal too personal in s5 their remarks to players, and am not
 Surprised that it has happened several i times this season that players insulted | in this manner have climbed into the stand and slugged their tormensors. l The one-time rooter was funny with
 put being bitter or mean. He was too
 good-humored and mellow and alive to
 the rights of others to make allusion,