For outdoor exercise the club has admirable facilities. The big tract of ground which the club controls has very little, comparatively, of its area taken up by the club-house, and one standing on the big second-floor balcony which extends over the billiard-room on the lower floor, will notice that the turf that stretches in front of him for a furlong is cut up for a diversity of uses. The running track is the most noticeable feature. It is a quarter of a mile from start to finish, was laid out by the noted trainer of the Brooklyn Club, Jack McMaster, and was built from his designs. It is 16 feet in width at all points except on the finishing stretch and the 220-yards straightaway. This latter takes in the south side of the quarter-mile track as far as it goes and has a width of twenty feet. The track was laid last spring, is cinder-packed to the depth of a foot and has a clay foundation, all of which will combine to make it an ideal running-course in time. There was some disappointment with it at first, as it was feared it would be a trifle slow, but the rains and rolling have eliminated its spongy qualities and made it perfect, so that fast time can be expected upon it.
Within the circle formed by the track the two baseball diamonds are laid out. To the north of the track, and in shelter, are the tennis courts, four of them being “skin” courts, the rest, half a dozen, being the turf courts which are not so much in favor. The field is a fine one for cricket and football, both of which games are cultivated. Far down in the extreme corner there looms up during the summer a skeleton-like structure, which unjoints itself with the advent of winter, and forms a toboggan slide with an incline and a slide over an eighth of a mile long. Another corner is devoted in winter to a curling rink, where the royal Scotch game is played by its admirers with the greatest zest. The Detroit Curling Club has many members in the athletic club, and for their benefit a rink was set apart for the jolly Scotchmen and their besoms and curling-stones last winter. So pronounced was the success of the experiment that it will probably be repeated this coming winter.
The readers of OUTING will not be amazed, then, to know that with such facilities, the club’s membership kept growing as fast as applications could be investigated and applicants admitted. The personnel of the management was drawn from the young-man class of active workers. The president, Frank W. Eddy, had been the originator of the more modest Amateur Athletic Association, as he was of its successor, the present organization; and to him and half a dozen close associates the major part of the success of the club is attributable. Mr. Eddy was also one of the promoters of the movement for the Amateur Athletic Union of the United States, of which he is vice-president and one of the strongest backers. The first meeting of the union took place in the grounds of the Detroit Club in September. Mr. Eddy’s work was supplemented by that of a faithful set of directors, and between them they have managed to run the membership pretty close up to its permanent limit of five hundred.
IN THE BOWLING ALLEYS.
THE GYMNASIUM.
It must not, however, be for a moment believed that all these, or even a liberal percentage of them, are practised athletes. The membership of the club is mainly drawn from the class of young men between 18 and 25 years of age, in that period of life where sedentary careers are apt to tell hardest on constitutions however vigorous. There are many members, it is true, who had been accustomed to gymnasium work in the period of the boating excitement, but besides these, and the nucleus drawn from the old Amateur Athletic Association, it is fair to say that nine out of ten of the members were novices when they entered the club. There had been no such thing in Detroit as the cultivation of general athletic sports until this organization took hold, and whatever was cultivated was usually run to death. The private gymnasia were the first to break the ice; but even in these men undertook to rival Samson or Hercules in a week’s time, and, straining themselves, very often discouraged others as much as they caused injury to themselves. The private gymnasia were ephemeral affairs which were unsatisfactory, for the most part, and they never afforded the opportunity for long-continued training. Their prices, usually from ten to fifteen dollars for a two or three months’ term, were rather too much for young men of moderate means, and even where these drawbacks were eliminated there was no facility for outdoor work during the summer season under the direction of a proper tutor. The new club’s dues of twelve or fifteen dollars a year, at most, had an advantage from the standard of economy, and the price at which shares were sold early in its history made it possible for many to join it at a comparatively slight expenditure of money, taking into consideration the advantages gained. The novices took hold with a will, the advantage of a good instructor being very great, and under direction they have shown that there is much to be hoped for.
The instructor of the club is John Collins, a young man of twenty-five. He has also devoted some time to training in the gymnastic department of the Catholic Club and the local branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association. He has been five or six years in the business now, and is acknowledged to be the best all-round athlete in the city to-day. His special points of excellence are the grace and science of his boxing, and the expertness with which he handles the foils. He is self-trained, and during his career has boxed and sparred with most of the great men in the business, having stood up with Jack Burke, Pat Killen, Dennie Kelleher, “Reddy” Gallagher, Jack King, and others of equal fame. His earliest aspirations were in the direction of a private tutorship, and he was picked up first by the proprietors of some of the private gymnasia, where his methods and skill attracted so much attention as to secure him his present place. He is lightly built, quick and active, and has the necessary amount of patience with his pupils to qualify him for the difficulties of teaching. So far he has proved popular and profitable to the members of the club.
