Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 296, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 December 1912 — DON’T LIKE AMERICA’S GAME [ARTICLE]

DON’T LIKE AMERICA’S GAME

Bystander, English Publication, Comments on Baseball—No Use for Imported Article. President Comlskey of the Chicago White Sox may be able to introduce professions? baseball In Australia, but chances are he would have trouble convincing the sporting authorities of Great Britain, of which Australia is a province, that America’* greatest pastime is a legitimate sport. The Bystander, a London newspaper, takes this rap at America's leading pastime: “The best thing that can be. said from an English standpoint of baseball is that it jp a more sane game than American football, which is not saying very much. Like American football, baseball is a game the beauties of which can only be appreciated by an American born and bred. With the Americans It Is something more than a game. It is an obsession more widespread and compelling even than the cult of professional football over here. “It ft their national game, their own Invention, although, after all, it Is nothing but an elaboration of • the good old game of rounders, and they are so convinced of its superexcellence that they have tried to educate us up to its transcendental joys—so far without much success. There is a London baseball league, but no one ever seems to- learn whether the alleged baseball boom in Wales will come to anything. “To the university and public school man baseball has never appealed, and I doubt very much whether it ever will. There is too much rare show, about it for his tastes. No, the truth is that in England we have already as many games as we can do with, and many better games than baseball, for which we have good cause to be thankful. And as long as our home products satisfy us we have no use for the imported article.”