Baseball Season Opens

1900

The opening of the baseball season" is a phrase which implies that the season opens everywhere at once. In reality, the season opens in our big country very much as the honey season for the bees, or the season of birds' singing, or the strawberry season, opens — that is to say, not long after New Year's day in Florida, and from that date on to a period several months later in northern Maine. Now that American soldiers have introduced the American game in Havana, San Juan, Manila and Iloilo, baseball has all seasons for its own.

Although general terms upon anything dependent on climate do not fit a country which extends from the arctic zone to the tropics, the statement may be regarded as approximately accurate that "the baseball season has opened." Baseball is an excellent and manly game, not especially dangerous, interesting, strategic, and well-adapted to the development of the body and the sharpening of the wits.

No game meets, with less harm, the natural demand for an out-of-door sport to act as a means of healthy athletic competition between schools and communities. But its very popularity and adaptability have led to grave abuses. If baseball had not been so interesting, so universal, it would not have gained the discredit which has come from a system of professionalism, a traffic in players, and a frequent display of rowdyism in the field.

Yet with all the discredit, which, after all, affects but a small proportion of the baseball-playing, the game is losing none of its popularity or its real value as an athletic sport, and the reopening of the baseball season is still a matter for rejoicing. — Youth's Companion.