Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1913 — PLAYS BALL AT 65 [ARTICLE]

PLAYS BALL AT 65

Mrs. Martha Holland, a Grandma, Enjoys the Game. Declares It Is More. Fun Than Sitting Down With Cap and Glasses to . Do Knitting—Led by Doctor’s Slur. New York. —"Wear a cap and glasses and settle down to knitting just because I happened to be sixty-five and a grandmother? I don’t see why. Besides, baseball is more fun.” Bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked and full of life, little Mrs. Martha Holland drew off a heavy pair of gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of a gray sweater, which she then pulled off and tossed over the back of a chair. As she pulled a rocking chair up to the tea table a rocker struck something that fell to the floor. It was a baseball bat In the work basket on the table was a baseball. In fact, everything about Mrs. Holland’s little home at 384 Park avenue, in Weehawken, suggested a very active and sport-lov-ing young boy rather than a grandmother, Says the World. “Some people,” she Bald, “make fun of me for playing baseball with the children. Some say I am setting a bad example for the young women, and that if all grandmothers acted as Ido we would have a race of Tomboys’ for daughters. Others seem to see sense in it. “Why did I begin to play baseball? Because a man made me ashamed. Five years ago, when I was only sixty, I was certain that I was becoming a real old lady. I used to sit and crochet and have a footstool. I was a real tame sort of grandmother. Also I had my little ailments. If I couldn’t conjure up rheumatism it would be a headache or something else Then I began to think I was getting feeble and couldn’t go out of doors. “One day our old doctor was visiting me. He looked at me, shook his head and said, most snappishly: “ ‘I tell you, Martha Holland, what’s the matter with you. You are lazy—-

lazy; that’s all. When most women get to be your age they seem to think it smart to seem ill and make everyone miserable; What you women need is exercise, and plenty of it If I had my way I would put you to playing baseball with the younger ones. That’s the medicine I’d give you, and it would be all you'd need.’ “It did make me angry to be called lazy, but he didn’t care. “One day when at my daughter’s .1 saw my grandsons playing in a vacant lot with some friendß. I didn’t say a word, but Just went over to the ball game and asked them to show me how. What happened? Why, the entire family thought I had lost my mind. But ever Bince then I’ve been playing baseball with my grandsons and their little friends. “I believe that If women, especially those who begin to have fancies about being sick when they really are not, would get out and play baseball with the children they would live longer and be far happier. “Five years ago, sitting in the house and fretting about nothing, I grew thin and wrinkled. Of course, I have wrinkles now, but not like those of five years ago; they are at least happy wrinkles; those were cross on<-s just enough to make me languid twelve months in the year, and now I

have muscles that I never knew of bofore. See this? “That is what catching and pitching and batting does for one. Yes, I do all three. You would have laughed when I began, for I couldn’t hit a ball. It took time for me to learn. How the boys used to shout when grandma first threw a ball! “Another thing—when women get to “my age they need the company of younger folk.”