Posted By:
Steve Tuttle "There is really reason to believe that baseball is gradually dying out in this country. It has been openly announced by an athletic authority that what was once called the national game is being superceded by cricket, and the records of our hospitals confirm that fewer games of baseball have been played during the past year than were played during any other single year since 1868."
This is from a NYTimes editorial dated 1881. It goes on to say that the Pilgrims! played an early form of baseball and that soon all of America's kids would be playing cricket. I stumbled over this looking for Peck & Snyder references.
One question: "The records of our hospitals confirm..."??? Did so many people get hurt playing baseball that hospitals kept records of baseball injuries?
There's another great editorial from 1870 chiding the Cincinnati Red Stockings for charging 50 cents a game and then dogging it on the field. Sound familiar?
A snippet: "...they are as much open to criticism as the performers in a circus, burnt cork artists or disciples of the sock and buskin." One player is compared unfavorably to a donkey.
What's a sock and buskin? Anybody? A burnt cork artist?
I don't post that often but must say this is the greatest bulletin board around. I read it religiously.
Steve Tuttle