1859.99

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No It Isn't! Yes It Is!

Salience Peripheral
Tags Newspaper Coverage
Location Greater New York City
City/State/Country: NYC, NY, United States
Game Base Ball
Immediacy of Report Contemporary
Text

Harper's Weekly: "In New York, it is well known, there are several base-ball clubs which play periodically. the same thing is true of Boston, Philadelphia, and perhaps one or two other cities. But is base-ball so popular that it is a regular and well-understood diversion in most of the counties of most of the States of the Union?...We see no evidence that either base-ball or any other athletic game is so generally practiced by our people as to be called a popular American game."

A reader wrote in to disagree:

"Now, sir, even you are mistaken. For twenty years (as long as I can remember about it) base-ball has been a 'popular game' wherever I have lived; and from careful inquiry, and knowledge obtained by personal observation, I can assure you that the game is a popular one...Who that has attended country 'raisings' does not know this...Though among us we have not regularly organized clubs, yet it is by no means difficult to find enough who are desirous of engaging in so healthful and agreeable an exercise...It is the game at our district schools during intermission hours, and often engaged in by youths of both sexes.

                                                                     Truly, F. H. GUTWITS

                                                               Avoca, Steuben Co., N. Y.

Sources

Harper's Weekly, Oct. 15 & Nov. 5, 1859

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