Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 252, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1918 — WOULD UNITE GAMES INTO SINGLE SPORT [ARTICLE]

WOULD UNITE GAMES INTO SINGLE SPORT

_ . p 1-4--Englishman conceives . Mer S >n B Cncket. English Critics Continue to Offer Suggestions and Wewail Fact That I Foul Is NolAllowed to. Figure U ■ .< There is now some talk in England, where baseball Is invading the sport domain, of a sort of compromise game which should embody some features of cricket and ; basebgjl. Nothing will probably ever come of any attempt radically to change the baseball game, as it has been evolved, any more than would any endeavor to adopt some baseball features into cricket. The two pastimes would mix about as well as oil ami water. -- But English critics of basebail continue to offer suggestions, and one of them in a recent Issue of an English periodical bewails the fact that the baseball “foul” is not allowed to figure In the' run getting. He thinks it should be as important a factor in the American game as the “snick" in cricket, to which it corresponds. Here is how he puts it: “The snick or corner stroke is undoubtedly the most spectacular hit in baseball; indeed, it is practically the only spectacular stroke, except the hit out of the ground, which occurs once in a blue moon. “It seems a Ivery great pity that this ‘corner strike’ is merely thrown away in baseball. In making the stroke the batsman hljs as usual with a horizontal bat, and getting Just under the ball sends it at a very great pace to a tremendous height behind him, and sometimes to a considerable distance.** If the baseball foul were to be treated the same as. a fair fly or grounder, the grand stand would have to be moved about as far back of the home plate as deep center field is in front of it and a “back field” that would. literally be a back field would have to be provided—two players at least, Which would bring the batsmen up to the cricket number of eleven. All the grand stand fans would have to have spyglasses, and the bleachefs never would know which way the game was going, forward or back, tne catcher would also have to have eyes in the back of his head if there were men on bases, and the batsmen should knock a nice grounder or lofty “snick” about 150 or 200 feet back of the homo plate. It Is to snicker. No, let both these fine games go along together but separately, as it were.