But if any one
can present to us a sport or pastime, a race or a contest, which can in
all its essentials of stirring excitement, displays of manly courage,
nerve and endurance, and its unwearying scenes of skillful play and
alternations of success equal our national game of ball, we should like to
see it.
What can present a more attractive picture to the lover of out door
sports than the scene presented at a base ball match between two trained
professional teams competing for championship honors, in which every point
of play is so well looked after in the field, that it is only by some
extra display of skill at the bat, that a single run is obtained in a full
nine innings game? If it is considered, too, that base ball is a healthy,
recreative exercise, suitable for all classes of our people, there can be
no surprise that such a game should reach the unprecedented popularity it
has.
THE PROFESSIONAL SEASON OF 1888.
The season of 1888, in the professional arena, was marked by several
events which placed it on record as the most noteworthy, known in the
thirteen years' history of the National League. In the first place it was
the inaugural year of the grand movement made by the President of the
Chicago Club, to extend the popularity of our national game beyond the
American continent; an event which exhibited the characteristic energy,
pluck, liberality and business enterprise of Mr.
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