The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-10-12
BASE BALL RIOTERS.

sit doesn't seem to me as if the root
ers are as witty or original os tley used
to be- said the grizzled base bail yea
lot and fanatic. i've b>en to every
game on the home grounds this season,
and to some games on foreign grounds,
and I haven't heard more than half a
dozen genuinely funny remarks from
the rooters' section. I'm j bleacherite.
or sun god, too, occasionally, and II
was in the bIeachers where the fun
used to be, you'll remember. Some
days go into the grand stand and some
on the bleachers, but. as 1 say. there's
an absence of sure-enough witty cracks
plore greatly. 1t used to be as good
as the game to listen to the shrewd,
whimsical, really and truly 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 here in the theater at humorous
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 involuntarily to their lips.
and they were often so telling that
they'd often all but break up the games,
while all hands, including the players
themselves, rocked with the enjoyment
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
they get on the nerves of everybody
within the sounds of their voices. No
man can be deliberately and deter
minedly and presistently funny for a
whole afternoon at a ball game, and
when you observe out of the tail ofyour
eye that such chap is just iexuding
his noise for the sake of making hit
why along toward the middle of the
game you feel like hitting him with a
bat.
sit can't be that ali 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 lack of
spontaneity of the rooters' cracks at
this day and date.
There's a big-voiced Well, well, well
nlanat the Washington games pretty fire.
quently, who spoils the whole effect of
his yawp by repeating it time again,
until people become heartily tired and
sick of it. The o1d-time We'll, well, well
man used to get off his gigantic howl
only a couple of times during the coruse
of the game, and then only at the oppor-
tune points. so that there was actual
meat for mirth in his huge note of am
azement.
There seems too, to be good deal
less patience and heap more bitter
ness among the fans nowadays than
there used to be. The 'take-him-out'
people begin their unreasonable shout
the instant a 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. 1t dosent make
any difference, apparently, to the pre-
sent genera ton 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 natural
and unavoidable little break in his
playing of the new position, they get
at him with their wild demands that
he be taken OUT and the results 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
-hirn-out' shriekers got busy.
1.-The rooters of today. too. seem to
me to be good deal too personal in
their remarks to players, and am not
surprised that it has happened several
times this season that players insulted
In this manner have climbed inro the
stand and slugged their tormentors.
The bld-time rooter was funny without
being bitter or mean. He was too good !
hunored and mellow and alive to the
rights of others to make allusion, for
instance. to the bow legs of a player, !
or to the ugliness of his face, or to
some other physical characteristic that !
Is liable to be sore spot with the man |
in uniform The rooters of today, I /
am bound to say, are wholly ungener- |
ous and inconsiderate in their way of .
out these things and in harp |
ing and chewing on them throughout /
the length of a long game or double
header 1t isn't square. I don't blame
the ball players for resenting it. 1 /
could mention several renowned actors
who are extremely bow-legged, but the
don't bawl that fact at them
when the actors are giving their per-
'ormances. And can't see why it isn't
lust as mean and common to allude to
he physical defects or peculiarities of
ball players as it would be TO hurl such
remarks at actors on the stage.
II never was an audible rooter my
self At very early stage of my life
reached the conclusion that I wasn't
/ little bit funny, and I've never tried
% be funny since 1 made up my mind
hat way wish some of the fellows
who attend the bali games would
achieve a belated reform in the same
direction. It's never too late to mend"