But how mighty, nevertheless, is baseball!  Its fame floats through Europe as something prodigious, incomprehensible, romantic, and terrible.  After being entertained at early lunch in the correct hotel for this kind of thing, I was taken, in a state of great excitement, by a group of excited business men, and flashed through Central Park in an express automobile to one of the great championship games.  I noted the excellent arrangements for dealing with feverish multitudes.  I noted the splendid and ornate spaciousness of the grand-stand crowned with innumerable eagles, and the calm, matter-of-fact tone in which a friend informed me that the grand-stand had been burned down six months ago.  I noted the dreadful prominence of advertisements, and particularly of that one which announced “the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look,” all very European!  It was pleasant to be convinced in such large letters that even shrewd America is not exempt from that universal human naivete which is ready to believe that in some magic emporium a philanthropist is always waiting to give five dollars’ worth of goods in exchange for three dollars of money.

Then I braced my intelligence to an understanding of the game, which, thanks to its classical simplicity, and to some training in the finesse of cricket and football, I did soon grasp in its main outlines.  A beautiful game, superbly played.  We reckon to know something of ball games in Europe; we reckon to be connoisseurs; and the old footballer and cricketer in me came away from that immense inclosure convinced that baseball was a game of the very first class, and that those players were the most finished exponents of it.  I was informed that during the winter the players condescended to follow the law and other liberal professions.  But, judging from their apparent importance in the public eye, I should not have been surprised to learn that during the winter they condescended to be Speakers of the House of Representatives or governors of States.  It was a relief to know that in the matter of expenses they were treated more liberally than the ambassadors of the Republic.

They seemed to have carried the art of pitching a ball to a more wondrous degree of perfection than it has ever been carried in cricket.  The absolute certitude of the fielding and accuracy of the throwing was profoundly impressive to a connoisseur.  Only in a certain lack of elegance in gesture, and in the unshaven dowdiness of the ground on which it was played, could this game be said to be inferior to the noble spectacle of cricket.  In broad dramatic quality I should place it above cricket, and on a level with Association football.