LET US GO AFIELD 



trust to earn my monument, although at times 

 tempted to fall. In this way, in part by preference 

 and in part by resolution, I have built up a vast 

 ignorance regarding certain of those things over 

 which the other hundred million of our citizens an- 

 nually go mad. 



A gentleman of my acquaintance in the metropolis 

 of New York not long ago demanded of me with 

 tears in his voice why Connie McGraw ever allowed 

 Willie Collins to be sold West. I am not sure that 

 it was Connie McGraw, and it may not have been 

 Willie Collins, but Eddie Peterson. I am quite 

 clear, however, that he had been sold West, much 

 to the shame and disgrace of someone, as slaves at 

 one time were sold South. Still, I firmly explained 

 to my friend that I neither knew nor cared why 

 the said Collins, or Peterson, or whoever he was, 

 had been sold West, South, or in any other direc- 

 tion. In short, I had no baseball shrine, nor knew 

 the saints of any. 



I never cared to pay good money to see someone 

 else have a good time. I loved baseball that is, 

 I did love it when I was a boy and played it myself. 

 I decline to pay to see a hired man play it. Were it 

 not for certain damaged fingers on my hands which 

 have ever debarred me from heights in the field of 

 piano or violin joints acquired in the exultant days 



308 



