Clipping:Rumors the Red Stockings were going to sell the game

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Date Monday, August 30, 1869
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[Haymakers vs. Cincinnati 8/26/1869] Very many inspired devotees of the noble game predicted a sell out on the part of the “Red Stockings,” or if not by the club entire, at least two or three members would “throw off.” The result of the game demonstrated considerable misapprehension on the part of these individuals. New York Daily Tribune August 30, 1869, quoting the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer

baseball and cricket and American and British national characters

The game of cricket being an English game, and the base ball being American, we should expect to find in the national differences of character an explanation of the differences in the two national amusements. And we should expect this all the more because the basis of both games is the same. Both games rest, first, upon the desire of the Anglo Saxon--(we do not say Caucasian or Aryan, because we like to be exact)--upon the desire of the Anglo-Saxon to arm himself with a stick and drive a small round body with it and, secondly, upon the desire of any other Anglo Saxon who happens to be in the way to stop this body, deprive the other of his stick and bat himself. In these fundamental instincts may be clearly seen the terms of the two games of cricket and base ball. Lest there be, instead, of two men, two sides, one of which has the bat while the others function is to stop the ball and let the rude violence of nature be restrained and regulated by law, and yet have at once a game of all. As the methods of striking and stopping or “batting” and “fielding” vary you obtain now cricket, now base ball. It is the fundamental similarity of the two games then, which enables us to say that their superficial differences are the result of national differences of character. If the difference between the favorite amusement of English and American boys were something intrinsic, the case would be changed. Suppose that English boys found their highest amusement in surf swimming like the boys of the Sandwich Islands, while the sport most keenly enjoyed by American boys was vivisection—it would certainly be difficult to say how far such wide differences could be accounted for by analysis of national tendencies. But in the actual case the generative principles of both games between the same, the investigator is confident at once that the explanation of what diversity exists must be found in the diversity of the character of the two nations.

Now, in two points, at least, is may be said with certainty that the American character differs from the English—in being less brutal, and in being more fond of novelty, of change, of the excitement which novelty and change produces. And to any one who carefully watches the two national games it becomes evident that they also differ in the same way—cricket being the more brutally dangerous and also affording the least excitement of the two. … Cincinnati Commercial August 30, 1869, quoting the Nation

Source New York Daily Tribune
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Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Origin Initial Hershberger Clippings

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