The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-09-15

happened several years ago but TOT some reason or other it never appear ed in print.
 Tales of how men were made mill lionaires in a single day in the frozen regions of the north, began making their way to this country. Then came a report that the natives of Alaska and the newcomers from this and oth- CT countries were hankering after baseball and amusing themselves by playing the game with snowballs
 Mitchell conceived the idea that he could acquire about as much gold by going into the northern regions and playing ball as he could get by dig
 ging for it, so he packed his clothes and started.
 When Mike got there he found that an association called the Alaska league had been organized and that the ball parks were enclosed in fences of snow, because timber would have cost a for tune. Bleachers were built of the same material
 As soon as the natives saw Mitchell throw ball, he received half a dozen offers to play. He accepted the best of these and found himself on the pay roll of one of the two clubs which were fighting for the pennant. It was a see-saw race and Mitchells team de- pended on him to land the flag.
 In the first game in which Mike par ticipated, he came to bat With two men on bases and his team one behind in the run column. He met the ball squarely on the nose and it sailed over the head of the right fielder; The leather sphere didn't stop until it reached the back snow fence, and then it dug deep into the beautiful white" Three men scampered across the plate while the right fielder was digging for r<the ball.
 But the fielder didn't reach the sphere After several minutes of dig ging he gave it up as hopeless task and called for a pick The park tender and a few~ fans got busy. It was a long time before they located the ball.
 Three times Mike drove the ball into the snow fence and three times pick was brought into use to recover it. In the seventh inning Mike hit the ball so hard that it was not recovered till in the evening. Mikes team won and the other club put up terrific howl because it didn't have the opportunity of finishing the contest.
 The second day Mike repeated the performance. The game lasted but five innings and the ball was never recovered The management was sore, but Mitchell was the idol of the Alas kan fans.
 {. When Mitchell reported for duty on the third day he was told that he was no longer member of the team Mike asked the manager why the canning. The manager carefully and as politely as possible, explained to Mitchell that he was compelled to discharge him or disband the team. The details were that there were but four baseballs in Alaska and that Mike had already lost two of them. Base halls were more precious than the gold that was paid to see them used and another reason for discharging Mitch ell was the fact that he had nearly destroyed the fence and the club own CTS wouldn't stand for his swatting any longer. It seems that every time he went to bat they had to use a pick and demolish bigger part of the fence than a night crew and day force could put up before the next game was called and with a few more days of Mikes playing, there would be no fence at all. Still another reason was that so much time was lost in digging for the ball that it was inn possible to play nine innings of l