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, too, in forming the comparison, that many people in the Eastern States frequent the baseball grounds because they have been deprived of their horse-racing. Further, the New York crowd, though fairly excited, was not excited as sporting excitement is understood in, for instance, the Five Towns. The cheering was good, but it was not the cheering of frenzied passion. The anathemas, though hearty, lacked that religious sincerity which a truly sport-loving populace will always put into them. The prejudice in favor of the home team, the cruel, frank unfairness toward the visiting team, were both insufficiently accentuated. The menaces were merely infantile. I inquired whether the referee or umpire, or whatever the arbiter is called in America, ever went in danger of life or limb, or had to be protected from a homicidal public by the law in uniform. And I was shocked by a negative answer. Referees in Europe have been smuggled off the ground in the center of a cocoon of policemen, have even been known to spend a fortnight in bed, after giving a decision adverse to the home team!... More evidence that the United States is not in the full sense a sporting country!
Of the psychology of the great common multitude of baseball "bleachers," I learned almost nothing. But as regards the world of success and luxury (which, of course, held me a willing captive firmly in its soft and powerful influence throughout my stay), I should say that there was an appreciable amount of self-hypnotism in its attitude toward baseball. As if the thriving and preoccupied business man murmured to his soul, when the proper time came: "By the way, these baseball championships are approaching. It is right and good for me that I should be boyishly excited, and I will be excited. I must not let my interest in baseball die. Let's look at the sporting-page and see how things stand. And I'll have to get tickets, too!" Hence possibly what seemed to me a superficiality and factitiousness in the excitement of the more expensive seats, and a too-rapid effervescence and finish of the excitement when the game was over.
The high fever of inter-university football struck me as a more authentic phenomenon. Indeed, a university town in the throes of an important match offers a psychological panorama whose genuineness can scarcely be doubted. Here the young men communicate the sacred contagion to their elders, and they also communicate it to the young women, who, in turn, communicate it to the said elders—and possibly the indirect method is the surer! I visited a university town in order to witness a match of the highest importance. Unfortunately, and yet fortunately, my whole view of it was affected by a mere nothing—a trifle which the newspapers dealt with in two lines.
When I reached the gates of the arena in the morning, to get a glimpse of a freshmen's match, an automobile was standing thereat. In the automobile was a pile of rugs, and sticking out of the pile of rugs in an odd, unnatural, horizontal way was a pair of muddy football boots. These boots were still on the feet of a boy, but all the rest of his unconscious and smashed body was hidden beneath the rugs. The automobile vanished, and so did my peace of mind. It seemed to me tragic that that burly infant under the rugs should have been martyrized at a poor little morning match in front of a few sparse hundreds of spectators and tens of thousands of unresponsive empty benches. He had not had even the glory and meed of a great multitude's applause. When I last inquired about him, at the end of the day, he was still unconscious, and that was all that could be definitely said of him; one heard that it was his features that had chiefly suffered in the havoc, that he had been defaced. If I had not happened to see those muddy football boots sticking out, I should have heard vaguely of the accident, and remarked philosophically that it was a pity, but that accidents would occur, and there would have been the end of my impression. Only I just did happen to see those muddy boots sticking out.
THE SENSE OF A MIGHTY AND CULMINATING EVENT SHARPENED THE AIR
When we came away from the freshmen's match, the charming roads of the town, bordered by trees and by the agreeable architecture of mysterious clubs, were beginning to be alive and dangerous with automobiles and carriages, and pretty girls and proud men, and flags and flowers, and colored favors and shoutings. Salutes were being exchanged at every yard. The sense of a mighty and culminating event sharpened the air. The great inn was full of jollity and excitement, and the reception-clerks thereof had the negligent mien of those who know that every bedroom is taken and every table booked. The club (not one of the mysterious ones, but an ingenuous plain club of patriarchs who had once been young in the university and were now defying time) was crammed with amiable confusion, and its rich carpets protected for the day against the feet of bald lads, who kept aimlessly walking up-stairs and down-stairs and from room to room, out of mere friendly exuberance.
And after the inn and the club I was conducted into a true American home, where the largest and most free hospitality was being practised upon a footing of universal intimacy. You ate standing; you ate sitting; you ate walking the length of the long table; you ate at one small table, and then you ate at another. You talked at random to strangers behind and strangers before. And when you couldn't think of anything to say, you just smiled inclusively. You knew scarcely anybody's name, but the heart of everybody. Impossible to be ceremonious! When a young woman bluntly inquired the significance of that far-away look in your eye, impossible not to reply frankly that you were dreaming of a second helping of a marvelous pie up there at the end of the long table; and impossible not to eat all the three separate second helpings that were instantly thrust upon you! The chatter and the good-nature were enormous. This home was an expression of the democracy of the university at its best. Fraternity was abroad; kindliness was abroad; and therefore joy. Whatever else was taught at the university, these were taught, and they were learnt. If a publicist asked me what American civilization had achieved, I would answer that among other things it had achieved this hour in this modest home.