per sport for the patronage of ladies. Gradually, however, this
illusion has been dispelled, until now at every principal contest they
are found present in large numbers. One game is generally enough to
interest the novice; she had expected to find it so difficult to
understand and she soon discovers that she knows all about it; she is
able to criticize plays and even find fault with the umpire; she is
surprised and flattered by the wonderful grasp of her own understanding,
and she begins to like the game. As with everything else that she likes
at all, she likes it with all her might, and it is only a question of a
few more games till she becomes an enthusiast. It is a fact that the
sport has no more ardent admirers than are to be found among its lady
attendants throughout the country.

Whoever has not experienced the pleasure of taking a young lady to her
first game of ball should seize the first opportunity to do so. Her
remarks about plays, her opinions of different players and the umpire,
and the questions she will ask concerning the game, are all too funny to
be missed. She is a violent partisan and at once takes strong sides, and
if her favorite team fails to bat well she characterizes the opposing
pitcher as a "horrid creature;" or when the teams have finished
practicing she wants to know, with charming ingenuousness, "which won."
But as she gets deeper into the principles of the game her remarks
become less frequent and her questions more to the point, until her
well-timed attempts to applaud good plays and the anxious look at
critical points of the game indicate that she has at last caught the
idea.

Unfortunately, some men are not able to intelligibly explain the theory
of base-ball, while others are so engrossed with the game that they do
not care to be disturbed. For the benefit of those ladies whose escorts
either cannot, or will not, answer their questions, I will attempt to
set forth as clearly as possible the fundamental principles of the game.

There are always two opposing teams of nine players each, and they play
on a field laid out in the shape of a diamond, as seen in time diagram
on the following page.

At each corner of the diamond is a base, and these are known
respectively as home base, first base, second base, and third base. One
of the teams takes "the field," that is, each of its nine players
occupies one of the nine fielding positions shown in the diagram, and
known as pitcher, catcher,