LET US GO AFIELD 



gate in Great Britain to see professional football, 

 much more than we do in this country. Out of 

 that entire assembly one man heard his country's 

 call and enlisted in the ranks. Out of a million foot- 

 ball players and football payers, you could count on 

 the fingers of one hand the total enlistments for an 

 entire week at that early time of England's greatest 

 need. 



I presume that in this country, baseball is our 

 most highly developed gate-money sport; that it is 

 more fully commercialized than any sport we ever 

 had. The shrewd advertisers of this business and 

 it is to be called a business and not a sport have 

 been fully able to hypnotize pretty much of all the 

 citizenry of this country. Some of our wisest and 

 ablest business men and professional men lawyers, 

 judges, doctors, merchants, and ministers find en- 

 joyment in watching hired men of no loyalty what- 

 ever pit themselves against a like number, of more 

 or less similar salaries and more or less similar pur- 

 poses in life. If they like it there is no law against 

 it. On the contrary, there is for it the strong law 

 of popular custom. Why, therefore, should our 

 sporting editor above mentioned take a fall out of 

 the attendants at paid games? 



He opined that he would find witnessing at a 

 baseball game more men disposed to sit on a cushion 



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