Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 223, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1913 — OUR INTEREST IN BASEBALL [ARTICLE]

OUR INTEREST IN BASEBALL

There Is Nothing Like It, Even Politics in National Campaign Forced to Take Back Seat. Probably there is not another example on earth to compare with, the nation-wide interest of the people of the United States in the daily record of baseball , teams. Entirely apart from the feverish anxiety of the pool-play-ing part of the population, there is in every town from Maine to and maybe to the extreme tip of the Aleutian Islands —from the lakes io the gulf a great body of people — mon and women —thoroughly familiar with the general trend of the sport, intelligently appreciative of its subtler nuances, and fairly familiar with the small army of men who play tbe games. There is nothing else like it, says the Lowell Courier-Citizen. It has the stock market lashed to the post. Politics even in a national campaign would be hull down to windward. A war would hardly command the same unwavering interest for six months. It is the national obsession, knowing neither latitude nor longitude throughout 3,000,000 square miles of plain and mountain, highland and lowland, prairie, pasture and plantation. The night reports of the great press associations carry the news of it as soberly as if it were international politics, and with the best of reasons; for it is the most universally absorbing, the most widely and. appreciatively read of all toe news that TsFalght-* ly ticked off to a waiting country. When one considers the enormous extent of the United States, this, university of interest- in a mere spurt, played by salaried experts, is amazing. What is there to compare to it? Nothing.