Posted By:
jay behrensThis was just posted on the SABR-L list today by Richard Herschberger:
It turns out that David Block got it all wrong. From
the October 31, 1875 Philadelphia Sunday Mercury:
"The game of base ball is said to be very ancient.
The earliest astronomers evidently knew it, and it
probably had its origin in shooting stars, which the
superstitious ancients looked upon as a game of the
gods hurling and batting these luminous bodies through
a space, and like many other godlike things, tried to
imitate. The game was in great favor among the
Egyptians, whose level plains afforded fine grounds
for base balling; but it was left to the Greeks to
bring the game to its earliest perfection. At first
it was a source of healthful and vigorous recreation
for this wonderful people, and furnished their first
mathematicians with illustrations of parabolic curves,
arcs and lines. It was to their fondness for the
exercise of base ball that the Spartans owed their
endurance and invincibility as fighters. But after a
time the game was allowed to go into the hands of a
few athletes, who made a business of it, and the
people forgot their manly share in the exercise in
looking on and betting upon the result. While,
therefore, Greece owed much of her greatness to base
ball, the game had an important influence in her
decline, and (though historians are reticent about the
matter) it is not at all unlikley that the Greeks,
instead of drilling and equipping their hosts to
resist the Roman legions, preferred to go out and
witness a game of base ball between the Thermopylaes
and Atticas, and leave their cities an easy prey to
the conquerors of the world. But they had their
revenge, for they introduced the game into Italy, and
so strongly did the Romans take to it that it is
related of Nero that he sent an expedition into Africa
to get a supply of lilliputian people, so that their
heads could be used by the cruel emperor in his
games--and he was said to be as famous a pitcher as he
was a singer. Rome dates her decline from the
introduction of base ball; but even in their chains
the captive Romans subdued Goths and Vandals by the
charm of the great game. Base ball has evidently
taken a fast hold upon our great republic, but we have
this in our favor that may enable us to resist its
pulling down effects. We have the vitality that is
rising superior to bad government and the dishonesty
of supreme factions. Who shall say, then, that having
survived all these, we may not hope to survive even
that gloriously demoralizing game--base ball."
My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.