In many a friendly bout.
Baseball Arrives
The allusion to rough play is not an isolated mention; John Bull is shown protesting in the same month (October, 1888) against "this brutal sort of thing," in a cut in which the players are arrayed in knee-breeches and long stockings; and a year later two football players, after losing the match, are shown carrying off the referee in a bag. Lacrosse was already acclimatized in England in the early 'eighties, and the visit of the Toronto Club in 1888 gave impetus to a fine game which has never seriously threatened the popularity of cricket and football.
The American baseball team who came over in the spring of 1889 not only failed to impress Punch, they excited him to hostile and unsympathetic comment on a game which he didn't understand and didn't want to. Still, he had the grace to admit that he was a prejudiced spectator; also that the players were as agile as cats and threw like catapults. He had not the vision to foresee a time when "baseball results" would be a daily feature of the tape and an Exalted Personage would be credited with the confession that he thought it was a better game to watch than cricket, adding, however, "for goodness' sake, don't say that I said so, or there might be a Revolution."
"NOUVELLES COUCHES SOCIALES!"
"I say, Uncle, that was Young Baldock that went by—Wilmington Baldock, you know——!"
"Who the dickens is he?"
"What! Haven't you heard of him? Hang it! He's making himself a very first-rate position in the Lawn-Tennis world, I can tell you!"
Lawn Tennis v. Golf