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.

In short, I at once became an enthusiast for baseball. For nine innings
I watched it with interest unabated, until a vast purple shadow,
creeping gradually eastward, had obscurely veiled the sublime legend of
the 3-dollar hat with the 5-dollar look. I began to acquire the proper
cries and shouts and menaces, and to pass comments on the play which I
was assured were not utterly foolish. In my honest yearning to feel
myself a habitue, I did what everybody else did and even attacked a
morsel of chewing-gum; but all that a European can say of this singular
substance is that it is, finally, eternal and unconquerable. One slip I
did quite innocently make. I rose to stretch myself after the sixth
inning instead of half-way through the seventh. Happily a friend with
marked presence of mind pulled me down to my seat again, before I had
had time fully to commit this horrible sacrilege. When the game was
finished I surged on to the enormous ground, and was informed by
innerring experts of a few of the thousand subtle tactical points which
I had missed. And lastly, I was flung up onto the Elevated platform,
littered with pieces of newspaper, and through a landscape of slovenly
apartment-houses, punctuated by glimpses of tremendous quantities of
drying linen, I was shot out of New York toward a calm week-end.

Yes, a grand game, a game entirely worthy of its reputation! If the
professional matador and gladiator business is to be carried on at all,
a better exemplification of it than baseball offers could hardly be
found or invented. But the beholding crowd, and the behavior of the
crowd, somewhat disappointed me. My friends said with intense pride that
forty thousand persons were present. The estimate proved to be an
exaggeration; but even had it not been, what is forty thousand to the
similar crowds in Europe? In Europe forty thousand people will often
assemble to watch an ordinary football match. And for a "Final," the
record stands at something over a hundred thousand. It should be
remembered, to