The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-03-29
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS


 on this statement but take it all in all is there any other sport like 1t?
 It's game for boys, it's game for lads. it's game for young men, mid dle-aged nen and even old men. and n spite of the fact that few males are willing to admit 1t there are lot. of women who enjoy and understand it. i As I look back over my boyhood there is nothing I can recall which gave me the unmitigated joy which I got out of baseball. I played from the days in which we used what we called "injun rubber balls" the kind with, for when hit upon the nose away 1t went to the farthest corner of the field
 l I suppose into each boyish life there comes a tragedy, happening which dwarfs everything and for awhile | obsesses his thoughts It came to me through a lick I gave an india rubber | ball. The game was being played in l tHS Jdiu uGAt tO tAC A1dPbiSt NANA Ni a | the home of a neighbor lad. I lifted lfhe ball over the fence and through enc of the stained glass windows. l If the Huns who bombarded the l Rheims eathdral had shared my feel ] ings they would have been the guilti- est lot of ruthless iconoclasts in all the world had not only broken a valuable window in my minds eye. but victed in my own conscience before God and man, and felt that I was q lest soul and liable to go to Jail. 1 But, you say, 1t was only the work l ing of boyish imagination, but tell me. please, what is more real than are the fancies of childhood? Laugh, if you please. but for years I summed all Baptists, for I felt that every member I of the church was holding me re- sponsible for my sacrilege. l was out of my teens before I got to the point where could attend the meetings without feeling that every eye was upon me. |
 I When I was coming up the boys did not rush down to the stores and pay out dollar and a half or more for a league ball. We ran on different schedule in my home town. We bought 1 t 5-cent rubber ball and a dimes worth of cotton twine and, using the l former as a core, we wound the string 1 tightly about it until we got the proper size. Then If we were lucky enough to get hold of an old pair of l gloves we cut out cover.
 | Nearly every boy in Eufaula was an adept at ball making, and really some fully goods I dare say mighty few l city boys these days have any idea of how to make a baseball. One of the hardest things was to design the cover so it would fit and then to sew it on so tightly as to keep 1t from being knocked off, and yet many of us knew low to turn the trick.
 Now, in those days we did not have 1 all the modern paraphernalia. The nearest approach we had to the varit | lection of the hands and fingers was | to take kid glove and cut the fingers I off down to the point where they would cover up to the first joint. Such a thing as a catcher's mask or breast rlate. or shin guards, would have pro- l n al rin la ho1I field
 l We not only made our balls, but we you there Is an art in turning out a l hand made one. There was just about l the same difference between them and one of the modern machine made ones l as there is betwixt the axe helm of I hickory cut down from a sapling in the forest and tenderly seasoned and got l ten into form with a drawing knife and sandpapered to a finish and a store bought one. The former lasted season after season, while the latter | split on the first straining stroke.
 And then our home made uniforms. My, how proud we were of them. No callow college youth in his first full- 1 dress suit ever got the joy out of wearing to the annual hop we fellows sot out of putting on our fancy braided 1 uniforms when We walked out on the field to the cheers of the lassies to 1 defend the baseball honor of the home town against the visiting team I know lot of you fellows who read tAis will know what I am trying to put down here on paper.
 r. have been to many great affairs where wines of the choicest vintage sparkled in the glasses, but no enter l tainment have ever attended gave me the joy which I got out of being in vited. when a boy on the winning team, to visit local soda water fac tory and drink my fill. Talk about mixed drinks, but the way I first drained bottle of strawberry, then chose one of orange. switched to a lemon and through all the rainbow ] colors would give a modern mixer "a case of delirium tremens.
 I went out Saturday afternoon with l ny youngest son to see the Barons | rlay the "Phillies but all the time 1 he game was going on I was thinking about the old Eufagla days and the ! good times I used to have with my ] chums, many of whom have made names for themselves in business or