“Of course,” he went on, “the game has improved a great deal, like everything else. The pitching is better now. My, how those old timers used to bat the pitchers all over the lot! You don’t see any scores of two hundred runs in a game these days.”
“Two hundred runs!” exclaimed Fred. “You don’t mean to say that any team ever made as many as that?”
“Not often, I’ll admit,” smiled the other. “Still, the Niagaras of Buffalo won a game once by 201 to 11.”
“Whew!” ejaculated Tom, who had been sitting on the arm of the seat, listening to the talk. “There must have been some tired outfielders when that game was over.”
“I’d have hated to be the scorer,” laughed Fred.
“Of course that was unusual,” said the other, “but big scores were a common thing. The first game between college teams was won by 66 to 32.
“There was a time,” he continued, “when a man could make two or three home runs on a single hit. The diamonds were only vacant lots as a rule and the ball would get lost in the high grass. Then the runner, after reaching the plate, could start round the bases again and keep on running until the ball was found or until he was too tired out to run any longer. Of course that was in the very early days of the game. We used to put a man out then by throwing the ball at him and hitting him with it.”
“I’d hate to have one of them catch me between the shoulders nowadays!” exclaimed Tom.
“The ball was soft then and didn’t hurt much,” explained the other. “Oh, the game is better now in every way. We didn’t know anything about ‘inside stuff’ as you call it, ‘the squeeze play,’ ‘the delayed steal’ and all that.”
“I’ll bet you got just as much fun out of it though as we do now,” said Fred.