Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-14


III those who know and love the
~ game hail it as the greatest sea-
son that base bali has ever
known. Now. if this be true
those prophets who looked through glass last
Fall and Winter and viewed the future of the
national game with obviously waggng heads
must feel considerably abashed.
Let us first consider the grounds upon which
the base ball folks pick this as the greatest
year of the game. Only once in the last 80
years have the two major leagues touched
the 10000 600 mark in attendance and that
was in 1927 They viii surely cross that mark
again this year.
While some of the minor league clubs have
not done so well this year in past seasons
and there have been a few cases of leagues
and clubs being disbanded this year, there are
other minor leagues and clubs that have en-
joyed greater attendance records than ever be-
fore Such has been the case with the minor
leagues every year for the last rs years. The
main of minor league financial trouble
has not been so much in lack of attendance as
in paying too high salaries for players. The
fact is in many minor league towns and cities
the attendance at bali games has increased in
the last quarter of century just as it has in
the major leagues.
IN THE colleges of the country especially in
the East. base ball has enjoyed q real re-
admitted fact that base ball had declined in
the big American colleges since the halcyon
days back in the nineties when the games
for supremacy between the Big Four excited
almost as much interest and drew nearly as
many people as their foot bali struggles. This
College Base Ball League, the game took on
new life and interest in schools all along the
Atlantic Seaboard
The college game received more space in the
metropolitan dailies and drew more people than
at any time during the last decade I quote
from Grantland Rice, the nationally known
amateur sports authority, to prove this asser-
ton about college base ball. Grantland says:
"A year or two ago Yale and Princeton played
. bau game before few hundred spectators
AT one Of their games last Spring the attend
ance was reported in the papers to be 10000
Cornell and Dartmouth played before 5000 at
the little town OF Hanover. So the game that
was slipping in the East a few years ago has
come back. 1t is too fine a college game to
be lost, having all the physical advantages of
foot bali without the overemotionalized side
TT HAS been asserted for years by those who
do not like base ball or only profess to
feel sorry to see it slipping that fewer boys
play base ball on the town lots and diamonds
of the cities each succeeding year and that,
therefore, there will inevitably come a time
when the big leagues will seek in vain for
recruits for their fading ranks CT the famous
stars
Such statements merely general and are
supported only by personal observations in GER
tain localities. The fact is that when the
American Legion started its great Americana
zation campaign for boys three years ago by
organizing the Junior base ball tournament for
the national base ball championship for boys
under Is. it called some 100000 boys into COM
petition. The next year 100000 boys took
part Last year there were about 800 900 and
this year a half million boys entered for the
Legion base ball championship.
In cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati Mil
Waukee and Detroit where amateur base ball
has a remarkably strong following, the num-
Der of boys base ball teams has increased
steadily during the Last six years aside from
the Legion competition. The competition in
their local championship events has become
keener, the interest and attendance have be-
come greater and the organization of their
various leagues has become more compact and
practical until today base ball for boys in
these cities has reached state undreamed of
by the town-lot players and spectators of
10 and 20 years ago. In Milwaukee. the smallest
of these cities, more than 5000 boys are taking
part in base ball and $4,000 spectators have
attended amateur and semi-pro games in that
city
In New York City there are hundreds of
boys base ball clubs that belong to some BUSH
ness or industrial league that are having mighty
struggles for their local and neighborhood
championships.
The pessimists point with a gloomy gesture
to the fact that base bali en the vacant lots
is passing and they deduce from this situation
that boys are not playing ball much as in
former years
Base bali on the lots has come to be almost