Baseball prospects in the Long Island League are bright. The St. Paul team, which won the championship last year, is almost the same again this spring. Starrs, Goldsborough, Baker, Hall, and Mortimer are back again in school. Adelphi has excellent material in Brooks, Graff, Crampton, Corbett, Forney, Langdon, and Baucher; while almost all of the High-School team of last year are on hand to play again this season. Poly. Prep. has as good a pitcher as any school in the League, and plenty of athletic material to pick from, and the Latin-School players promise to develop a strong nine. Baseball practice in New York has not begun in earnest yet, but it is probable that the average of the teams will be stronger than they were last spring, as there seems to be a renewal of interest in the national game, which has led a pretty precarious existence here for the last two seasons.
The interscholastic contests that are being held from time to time in the gymnasium of the New Manhattan Athletic Club are excellent things, and will serve to develop a good many young athletes who would not otherwise have a chance to show what there is in them. A strong incentive to energetic effort is afforded in the way of a trophy for the school that shall have earned the greatest number of points when the series of games has ended. This prize will be of small intrinsic value, but as a trophy it will be worth the having. These games will also develop a better spirit among the lads who follow athletics, for they are looked after by the N.M.A.C.'s new athletic manager, Mr. Cornish, who is as strict an enforcer of the amateur laws and the amateur spirit as can be found anywhere. Mr. Cornish can have a very strong influence for good over this rising generation of athletes if he cares to. His strongest hold upon the young men's confidence is that he knows his business, and if he now compels them to walk the straightest of straight lines, they will do so all the more cheerfully because they know that he has the right of the question on his side, and intends to stand by his principles.
Readers of this Department will remember that I urged the New York Athletic Club almost a year ago to show some interest in the sports of the rising generation, to cultivate the young men, and to encourage their efforts. I cited the Boston Athletic Association as an example, and spoke of how that organization holds meetings for scholastic contests, and helps the younger men with advice and suggestion. In fact, the meetings of the Boston Inter-scholastic Association's committees are held in the B.A.A. Club-house. The New York A.C., however, did nothing as an organization to advance the interests and promote the welfare of the boy athletes. Some of its members as individuals have done a great deal for the young men, but most of their work has been in the nature of acting as officials at meetings conducted by the schools.
The New Manhattan Athletic Club, however, after having stagnated in a mire of unclean sportsmanship, finally gets an injection of new and healthy blood, and realizes that from the boys of to-day are to be drawn the athletes of to-morrow. The Club thereupon sets out to do all it can to promote and encourage scholastic sports. It offers the services of its gymnasium and of its athletic instructors, it organizes a large in-door meeting and shoulders the entire financial and executive responsibility, and does everything, in fact, that a club can do under the circumstances.
Of course all this is done with the ultimate object of making the N.M.A.C. a successful and prosperous organization. But with all this aim there is a great deal more unselfishness about the movement than selfishness. The Club is not by any means trying to secure control of scholastic sports. I feel confident of this from what I know of the men in control. What the club is trying to do is to help the young men interested in sport by relieving them, as far as possible, from the business part of athletics, and thus to make sport purer; and after this has been successfully accomplished, the N.M.A.C. will be very glad to see all these honest young sportsmen competing as members of its organization—an organization which, I hope, will stand for cleanliness in sport just as prominently as at one time it stood for the very opposite.
The gymnasium work of the Trinity School has developed a new game there. The sport was originated and first played in New Orleans, I believe, and is called "The Newcomb." The boys of Trinity School were perhaps the first to play it in this section of the country, and they have found it to be exceedingly interesting. The game is on the order of basket-ball, which was spoken of in this Department last week. A line is drawn in the centre of the gymnasium; then another line is drawn on either side of this, and about eight feet from it. These are called the "base-lines." The distance may vary, it depending on the size of the room. Two sides are chosen by captains, the number playing depending upon the available space and number of boys present. Twelve or fifteen on a side is a good number. The teams then take their positions between the base-line and wall, so that they face each other, and are separated by the distance between the two base-lines. A basket-ball or football may be used. The referee, standing out of the way, throws the ball to one of the sides. The object of the boy who catches it is to throw it toward his opponent so that it will touch the floor behind the base-line. If he succeeds in doing this it counts as three points for his side.
The player on the side to which the ball is thrown must try to keep it from touching the floor, and if he succeeds in doing so he must immediately throw it back to his opponent's side. This passing to and fro is kept up until a touch-down is made. If the ball is thrown and touches the floor between the base-lines, one point is scored against the side making the throw. The principal rules are that the ball may be thrown with one or both hands, but the person must not throw it while he is down or on his knees. He must not run with the ball, and he must not step over the base-lines. Breaking any of the above rules counts as a foul, and one point is given in each case to the side not at fault. The length of game is decided upon by the captains of the teams and the referee before play is started, and the side having the most points at the end of the allotted time is the winner. Two halves of twenty-five minutes each, with a ten minutes' rest, are usually played.
At the annual in-door games of the Hotchkiss School, at Lakeville, Connecticut, four of the school records were broken—R. B. Hixon established a new school record in the fence vault of 6 ft. 11 in.; C. D. Noyes in the high kick of 9 ft. 1 in.; H. H. Wells in the standing broad jump of 10 ft. 3¾ in., and J. P. Goodwin in the running high jump of 5 ft. 5 in. The first two records are most creditable for scholastic athletes, and are better, unless I am mistaken, than the Yale records for the corresponding events. Hotchkiss School made such a strong showing at the annual games of the Connecticut H.-S.A.A. at Hartford last spring that they must be counted as dangerous opponents at any future meeting. They are unfortunately at too great a distance from New York to send representatives to the N.M.A.C. meet.
The Graduate.