Читать книгу Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 - Various - Страница 6

The new code of playing rules, as revised by the committee of conference.

Attached to which is an official explanatory appendix, giving a correct interpretation of the new rules, also the official record of all league games and players, and the official schedule of league games for 1889, pitchers' records in victories for 1888.

Base running and throwing records of 1888, with the leading noteworthy events. Records of the veteran batsmen of the league from 1876 to 1888.

Handsomely Illustrated with Portraits and Pictures

[Illustration: Boston Grounds.]

[Illustration: CORRECT DIAGRAM OF A BALL GROUND.]

[Illustration: PHILADELPHIA GROUNDS]

The publishers of "Spalding's Base Ball Guide" present to the fraternity in the GUIDE for 1889, the model baseball annual of the period; the thirteenth annual edition of the work being in every respect the most complete baseball GUIDE ever issued. Exceeding as it does every other book of the kind in size—over two hundred pages of reading matter—as also in its new feature of pictorial illustrations, it presents an epitome of the professional history of the game for 1888, unequaled by any other work of the kind previously published. In fact, the GUIDE for 1889 has been made to conform to the very exceptional year of important events its chapters record—a year which will be remembered for a long time to come as fruitful of the most noteworthy occurrences known in the annals of our national game.

The prominent features of the GUIDE for 1889 are the complete record of the pitching in the League and American championship contests; the instructive chapters on "the lessons of the campaign," then on "team work;" the analyses of the play in the world's championship series of contests; the new tables showing the figures of the campaigns of the past eighteen years, and especially the explanatory appendix or chapter of official instructions to umpires and captains.

The great size of the GUIDE precludes the possibility of including the games record of the League campaign, as also other records of League legislation, etc., and these will be found in the "Official League Book," which contains only official League matter as furnished by Secretary Young, including the League Constitution in full.

[Illustration: CHICAGO GROUNDS.]

The American national game of base ball has reached a period in its history, when it no longer needs to be referred to as a field exercise, calling for particular mention of its peculiar merits. It is now the established favorite game of ball of the American people, and occupies a position in public estimation which no other field sport in vogue approaches. The game has attained its present position of popularity, not only from its adaptability to our peculiar national characteristics, as regards its possession of special points of attraction; but also from its value as a field sport which presents sufficient excitement in itself to draw thousands of spectators, without the extrinsic aid of betting as its chief point of interest, the latter attraction being something which pertains to nearly every other popular sport. Then, too, it should be borne in mind that base ball first taught us Americans the value of physical exercise as an important aid to perfect work in cultivating the mind up to its highest point. It is to the introduction of base ball as a national pastime, in fact, that the growth of athletic sports in general in popularity is largely due; and the game pointed out to the mercantile community of our large cities that "all work and no play" is the most costly policy they can pursue, both in regard to the advantages to their own health, and in the improvement in the work of their employees, the combination of work and play judiciously, yielding results in better work and more satisfactory service than was possible under the old rule. Thus, the game has acted like a lever in lifting into public favor all athletic sports.

A great deal is said about the special attraction of this and that leading sport of the day. The turfman thinks there is nothing approaching the excitement of a horse race, which from the start to the finish occupies but a few minutes of time. The rower regards a three mile "shell" race as the very acme of sporting pleasures; while the yachtsman looks upon all other contests as of trifling importance compared with that ending in the winning of his club regatta cup; and so on through the whole category of sports of the field, the forest and the river. 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.