Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 February 1919 — AMATEUR SPORT BIG AFTER-WAR PROBLEM [ARTICLE]

AMATEUR SPORT BIG AFTER-WAR PROBLEM

Professionals Will Continue to Dominate Baseball Game. Resumption of Golf and Tennis Will Place These Sports on Footing Never Before Realized—Matches Will Be Revived. ~~ T ~ After-the-war problems confronting the sport world Include questions of what is*going to happen in the ranks of the amateurs? Amateur sports always have been divided Into two classes—amateurs which competed with-professionals and amateurs which had the field practically to themselves. In the latter class may be grouped football, basketball,- track and field games and other sdch sports. Baseball and boxing are the two most prominent ’ of the professional sports competing with amateurs and which give a wide margin to the professionals, writes H. C. Hamilton in a -New York dispatch to Chicago Evening Post. Baseball probably will continue the uneven tenor of its long and troubled existence.. The professionals w-ill continue to dominate the game. Amateur baseball .is so decidedly lacking in attractiveness to the persons who have become accustomed =to seeing highclass professionals perform that it has no hold on the nation. Ocaslonally there are games among the amateurs which produce such phenomena as that which attended a game in Cleveland where 50,000 persons were present at a game for the amateur championship. But they are rare—extremely so. The same facts hold good for boxing. Therefore, the conclusion may be drawn that, despite the popularity of sports in army and navy, the American public will continue to patronize the professionals instead of staging its own entertainment. < ( This will not hold good in golf and tennis, which, as amateur sports, have yet to be touched by the hand of the professionals to a great extent Golf enjoys its professional tournaments, which are greatly similar to its amateur tournaments. The resumption of golf probably will place that sport on a footing never before realized, while the advance of tennis since war broke out has been a remarkable addition to the history of that game. That the Davis cup matches and other brilliant fixtures of this game will be revived early is a foregone cdhclusion. ,