Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1907-04-23
PHYSICAL CULTURE

Louisville Courier-Journal.-
has come. This week will mark the
real opening of the baseball season.
The first big league games will be
played Thursday. In New York, Boston
Cincinnati, Chicago. Philadelphia. ST
Louis, Washington and Detroit grand
stand and bleachers will be blaze
of color and revel of yells. Nothing
will prevent the great American public
great American game.
Baseball is an amusement for the
spectators and as profession re.
munerative to player. has been duly
exploited in the public prints, but
baseball as a fresh air cure. health
restorer and constitution builder has
not been properly recognized by the
medical profession of the ruthless en-
ployer 1t should be more generally
understood that the game is one Of
the finest spring medicines and one Of
the most excellent forms of physical
culture. 1t is the only safe and reli
able form of physical culture that can
be taken for the most part in a sitting
posture and without conscious effort.
1t is therefore of incalculable value to
countless thousands of persons who
could not be persuaded to undergo The
fatigue of exercise with Indian clubs,
who would as soon strike a LADY as to
pound a punching bag, and who would
perish miserably at 40 rather than
take to tennis or cross country walk.
ing. This should be borne in mind by
employers of the sedentary classes, aud
as much rope as possible should be
given to the baseball going Office COY
and clerk
Laughing is the finest exercise FOR
the abdominal muscles. Who laughs
as the fan laughs when the third base
man fails to connect with the ball and
two men on the home team scorer
Get your mind off of your bust
ness" says the nerve specialist, land
you will suffer no more from insom-
mia, cold feet and melancholia" Whose
mind is further from business than the
man who faces dusty diamond wherc
demigods contend for supremacy and
the plaudits of worshipping multi
tude?
Get up good perspiration," says
the family doctor, and your liver will
not shirk its duty. Who gets up a
profuse and evenly distributed perspir.
alton, If not the man who sits upon a
hot pine board and is cooked through
and through, like planked shad, al.
though he is oblivious of his discon-
fort?
Deep breathing is the best lung reno
vator and chest builder Who takes
so deep a breath as the fan wnose eve
is upon the soaring spheroid that may
fall into the hands of the enemy in the
field and make three-bagger an I'M
realized dream? And who expels the
last bid of breath from the lobes of
his lungs with sucn force as does the
ecstatic fan when the fly is muffed?
There is no better method of making
the blood bound through the veins
than simple, joyous yelling. Accord
ing to physical culturist every one
should occasionally get out in The
woods, where there is no danger of ar
rest for disorderly conduct, and yell.
How much more sensible so ride to the
ball park in comfortable street chr
and sit down and yell with ones fel-
low man where competition breeds am
bition to excel.
Waving the arms and rising upon
the toes is advocated by physical cul
turists as means of strengthening the
legs and arms and back and chest
Who rises upon his toes and waves his
arms with such vim and vigor and OK
ercise all his muscles at once with
such abandon as the man who believes
that the umpire should be rendered
limb from limb and trampled in The
doubt, and is striving with all his
might to incite riot in the name of
freedom and fair play?
Among the beneficial forms Of ply
steal culture certainly must be included
that that man gets by regularly at
tending the baseball game, and the
Office force, at this time of the year,
needs nothing SO much as physical tip
h,,iIdipo