Norwich bulletin., 1919-08-04
BASEBALL COMING INTO ITS
 OWN AS NATIONAL PASTIME

Baseball is coming back Into Us own. The national game is facing it's golden age" is the statement of the baseball writers as they have watched the universal resumption of league baseball in the United States. Send us baseball material. The camp is mad,"e is an insistent appeal of ath-
 letic directors in the army camps to the athletic division, commission on
 training camp activities. Two thous- and five hundred teams have com
 menced play for the championship of
 the A. E. F. is the word from over
 seas. Baseball is now being played
 between the University of Paris and the University cf Lyons" In every
 game is appealing to it's followers again this year. after season in which it was popular in the army camps only
 With out question, baseball was and is the king of sports in the army camps. Last year two million men over two continents" played the great national game while wearing the kha- Xxi. This year, 22,500 men are playing as the official representative Of some unit of the Expeditionary Forces in the championships of different camps and bases, the winning teams to meet later in Paris. Hundreds of baseball teams in addition to these are play ing around the different camps. In the camps of the United States base ball is being played at every oppor- 1 IQnlly. 1GdNlS, ITOIll US SOuIIieEl dd- vantage reported 124 games of base ball in one week and in most of the | camps, from two to twenty games are played weekly by officially con stituted league teams On an aver age two and three wildcat games are played for every league game con- i tested. More men are at present play I ing ball in the army. than have played 1 in the organized leagues in the last Even good friends of baseball how ] ever, are inclined to doubt if the term 1 of golden age of baseball can be ap- piled to the future. It is their opin- ion that the zenith of the game was reached last year and that it will be i many years before the total of players | again reaches that of 1918. It seems certain that league baseball will flour l ish, as the opening days have been i those of large attendance. This is due | in some measure to the smaller econ l omic pressure for workers and the number of new lovers of the game de- veloped in the camps. Baseball had | it's first introduction to the coutry at l large from the men who returned from | the ranks in the sixties and this war reems to be destined to add a new phase to not only baseball but all ath- | letics This is that baseball, as well l as all athletics, is for the physical de- velopment of all men and not for a | few. From this angle. the game that 1 gains the most men as it's players is | in the highest ascendancy
 1 Financial returns were the last l thing in the baseball of the camp 1 Some of the equipment came from the | Commission on Training Camp Ac- | tivities. Other parts of the equipment
 were supplied from post exchange
 funds. Some of the equipment was 1 donated by friends and organizations
 and some of the equipment was l loaned by the welfare organizations 1 working within the camp. Some few 1 of the teams made money for the camp they represented in one case l that of the 304th Mechanical Repair Shop at Camp Travis $12,0o0 was
 earned by the team before it was or
 dered over seas. Most of the men | played for the love of the game how 1 ever.
 This love of the game. exhibited by 1 the men in the camps and by the men | in France, where it is declared they
 helped the French peasants harvest l their crops that they might have the 1 fields the sooner for their games, is 1 almost certain to react in far larger
 number of civilian baseball games this year. One million men are back from France. and most of them have been discharged. Large percentag ges of the men in the camps on this side have found their way back to civilian clothes and are candidates for posi- tions on the sand lot teams in their 1 home cities. Some of them will be found in the list of the lea que base ball patrons, but if the experience of
 the camps holds good more of them will be found ''fn the spansles on game themselves.