Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1915 — She Knew Baseball [ARTICLE]

She Knew Baseball

"Since I have become a baseball fan,” said the girl who likes to talk, ”1 know w"hat it means truly to live. "1 can’t help it if I am old-fashion-ed,” she went on. "I always romp in on a style several years after it la an accomplished fact. Years ago, when it was the style to be crazy about baseball, I had to retire to Uie background and pretend baseball was beneath me. Secretly I read everything about baseball that I could get hold of, and asked every man I know to explain the game to me, but somehow I couldn't comprehend it. 1 could make an interesting book out of the baseball explanations I got, ranging from that of my small cousin Jimmy to that of a bank president. "As I remember it, Jimmy’s remarks were so tinctured with disgust at the idea that a human being could exist who was not saturated with the fine points of the game that the explanatory part was pale In comparison. “Gee!” said Jimmy. “Don’tchu know baseball? Gee, but you’re slow! Why, the fellows on bases are always trying to skin the pitcher alive, an' the pitcher he’s trying to fool the batter, an’ the batter he gen'rully bunts the ball when they’re looking Tor a scorcher—don’t you know what i bunt is? Gee, you’re slow!' “There was a college professor who did his best, but I couldn’t tell whether he was explaining a baseball game to me or demonstrating a problem in Euclid. He enjoyed himself very much, however, and told me that it was a pleasure to explain anything to i girl who had such wonderful comprehension—so I really couldn't count that episode wasted. “The bank president complicated things. ‘My dear young woman,” he said fervently, stroking his moustache, ‘why burden your head with coarse, masculine affairs? You’d look so much nicer pouring tea or—er — sewing something, you know, or playing the piano! Why do you insist on spoiling it all?’ “It took me several years to decide that the bank president himself didn’t understand the game, and he was being diplomatic instead of complimentary ! “Still I struggled on. I always said, Oh, yes! I dote on baseball,’ If I was isked to go to a game. And I had horrible escapes. There was the awfully nice man visiting here from New York. He was the man I almost lost by asking why the ball player quit playing after he had run ail iround the field and kicked the thins they called the home plate. I said I supposed he was mad or something—• oecause they yelled at him so. And I was temporarily estranged from the best dancer in our set because I said I should think the man with the bat would hit the ball instead of whirling around in that silly way, and it was lust as well that the leader evidently jailed him back to the bench. “I do think it’s true about virtue being rewarded, because sometime ago all the mixed up kaleidoscopic baseball bits in my brain suddenly and without warning fell into a clear and beautiful pattern, and to my hysterical delight I realized that at last I knew what the men out on the diamond were trying to do. “The'man who at present insists on hanging around where I am scoffed and jeered when I confided to him my achievement. He said I might be an excellent bluffer, but never, never, did I really know what it was all about! Hadn’t he sat and writhed at games while I disgraced him before all those surrounding us by my imbecile questions? Didn’t he know? However, if he could get oft the next afternoon he’d take me to the game. “Well, I passed the whole morning downtown hunting a particular parasol that I’d had in mind for weeks,” continued the girl who likes to talk, “and I walked sixteen miles and finally found one, and I carried it delightfully to the game as a cherished possession. In the eighth inning the fieldere muffed the ball and fen «0 over themselves, and the three men on bases raced home In a hunch Oaring the excitement when nobody was noticing. “When I came to I was on my feet pounding on the floor with my new parasol and yelling like an Indian. I had smashed the handle of the pawsol! I did not realise what I was doing till my escort dragged me down Into my seat and applied soothing words and showed me the wreck in 1 my hand. j “Yes/ he admitted, aa he regarded the smashed parasol, *1 think yon ! qualify! But who weald ever have thought It" “I think, concluded the gW who likes to talk, “that it’s worth the price of a parasol to be able to realize that ‘ one understands baseball. Tm so proud over my knowledge of the game as-I would be if I’d been left $1,000,000.”