Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 72, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1918 — VISIT TO SOUTH WITH BALL CLUB [ARTICLE]

VISIT TO SOUTH WITH BALL CLUB

There Are Many Things in Life More Agreeable to the Players. PRETTY SOFT TO DUCK AWAY ' * < Get Over Notion That Training Trip Is All Joy Ride for Ball Tower— No Pleasure to Get Into Condition. Yes, it’s pretty “soft” to be able to duck away from the frigid, disagreeable weather of the North. It’s "soft” to miss the changeable weather of a Northern spring and bask in the steady sunshine of the South. It’s “soft” to linger in a fine, hospitable Southern hotel, listening to the palms sighing sweet lullabies and the pickaninnies humming in to the accompaniment of a banjo. It’s "soft” to have someone paying your expenses while you are liberally breathing in the fine of the romantic South and enjoying yourself flitting around a baseball field a couple of hours a day to wear off excess energy. Yes, it’s “soft” That’s what the folks generally say when a ball player or scribe hands out the Information that he is going South with a baseball club. It’s so soft, so pleasant so agreeable than 97 out of every 100 men sent South for baseball purposes at this time of the year envy everyone back home, even though the folks at home are forced to di*e into doorways to dodge the chilled breezes. No Bweet Joy Ride. The ball player doesn’t need sympathy. He’s pretty well provided for. But get over the notion that a training trip Is all one sweet joy ride for him. No one loves physical or mental pain. The average business man, when physically troubled, will close his desk and get away from his labors. He would feel offended if someone insisted that he should work. Getting into condition Is no sinecure. True, that’s a part of the business, but even though a man, is paid to suffer pain that’s no reason he enjoys the pain. . When a fellow is forced to continue his muscle-ripping labors when his muscles are crying out for rest that fellow isn’t exactly enjoying himself. More or Less Bunk. The South may have Its romance. But as for the impression that one gets from flowery novels on Southern there’s more or less bunk about It. The South is very fine for those who live there. But when the lust for travel dies and all a man really lives for exists in the North you may rest assured that man will take the North in preference to the South any time. Undoubtedly the same applies to men who live in the South. Southern hotels are hospitable enough if anyone ever saw a hotel which he thought really was hospita-

ble. A hotel is a good place to go when you can’t go any place else. Southern training trips are, of course necessary to baseball, but from the ball player’s point of view there are many things in life more agreeable than going through the process .of getting into condition in the South.