If the athletic committee won any favor with the undergraduates by their successful regulation of track and field athletics, it was all lost by this baseball regulation. The step was taken with the idea of drawing a strongly marked line between amateurs and professionals, thus effectually preventing the professional tendency from increasing in college athletics; and also to prevent the game from becoming a monopoly played by a few skilled players, instead of being participated in by the whole college. It was a measure passed with a good aim, but nevertheless one which has flown wide of its mark, for its only practical result has been to heavily handicap the Harvard nine.
When any game in any branch of athletics is successfully played by a university team, experience shows that greater interest is always aroused throughout the entire college in that particular sport; that more “scrub” teams are formed, and a larger number of undergraduates practise the game, than when they have only a weak, defeated university team as a model. A higher standard of ’varsity play may, perhaps, lessen the number of candidates for the team; but these candidates form only a very small proportion of the number who incidentally play the game, while the greater enthusiasm aroused largely increases the number of mediocre players. Thus this prohibition, besides weakening the nine, besides enforcing more work on the captain and the team, really defeats the very aim that the committee had in view, and lessens rather than increases the number of men who play the game for general recreation.
As regards the anti-professional reason, it is impossible to say what would be the status of the Harvard nine if this rule had not been passed. Judging from the other college nines who annually play professionals for practice, there would be but little difference from what now exists. The difference, so difficult to discover on the ball field, exists chiefly in the minds of men whose knowledge of baseball is derived principally from discussions in the college Faculty meetings. Although it is difficult to surmise how even there such a discriminating distinction can be drawn between local unrestrained, would-be-but-couldn’t-be professionals, and the disciplined league players; the former eager by any means fair or foul, to score a point against the “college boys,” the latter playing a practice game simply as a business matter. The Harvard Faculty, it is presumed, do not approve of professional sparring as an avocation for students, but they have not yet forbidden undergraduates to take lessons of competent teachers, even although the latter may have occasionally fought a prize-fight; and such lessons are deemed even less contaminating, from a professional point of view, than would be friendly and unpaid bouts with celebrated locals who hoped in the future to enter the ring.
The position of the committee towards college football has been unique. Football in this country is a game still in a state of development, and the Harvard athletic committee have taken an active part in developing it in the right direction. In November, 1883, the attention of the committee was first called to a serious consideration of football. The game as played that fall was one of the roughest ever played in the country; and of a kind of roughness where brutality and unfair play were put at a premium. On Thanksgiving Day, Harvard was scheduled to play the final championship game with Yale on the Polo Grounds, New York. Imagine the chagrin and astonishment of the undergraduates when, on November 22, a letter was received from the committee by R. M. Appleton, the captain of the eleven, stating that Harvard would not be allowed to play any more intercollegiate games, until substantial changes in the rules were made. Some of these rules appeared to the committee “to allow of no other inference than that the manly spirit of fair play is not expected to govern the conduct of all players, but on the contrary, that the spirit of sharpers and roughs has to be guarded against. The committee believes that the games hotly played under these rules have already begun to degenerate from a manly, if rough, sport, into brutal and dangerous contests. They regard this as a serious misfortune in the interest of the game, which, if played in a gentlemanly spirit, may be one of the most useful college sports as a means of physical development. They regret that they did not give earlier attention to the character of these rules, and thus earlier come to the conclusion which they have now reached, namely, that the Harvard eleven cannot be allowed to take part in any further intercollegiate match games until substantial changes in the rules have been made.” The objectionable rules were:
Rule 19. The referee shall disqualify any player whom he has warned twice for intentional off-side play, intentional tackling in touch or intentional violation of Rule 28.
Rule 28. No kicking, throttling, butting, tripping-up, tackling below the hips, or striking with closed fists shall be allowed.
Rule 38. No players shall intentionally lay hands upon or interfere with an opponent unless he has the ball.
In other words, a man could intentionally knock down another player with a straight blow from the shoulder; he could do it again if he wished, but not until he had done it the third time could he be disqualified. It was to this and its practice that the athletic committee objected. Most of the New York papers sneered at it as “Harvard delicacy;” while a scatter-brained undergraduate, in an open letter in the Crimson, abused the committee for obliging our eleven to break its agreement, for robbing the Yale team of some $1,500, its expected share in the gate-money, and ended by solemnly declaring, “We sincerely hope that the time will sometime come when our feelings of honor will have some weight with the Faculty in its decisions.”
That the athletic committee, however, were not irredeemably lost to all consideration of the honor of the students and were not quite as prudish or unreasonable as the New York press represented them, was soon shown by their allowing the game to be played when the respective captains of the Harvard and Yale teams informed them that the objectionable rules had been changed. The important changes were that the referee was allowed to disqualify a player without any previous warning, and that no more than two disqualified men on either side should have their places filled by substitutes; also that no player should lay hands on or interfere with an opponent unless he had the ball. The game was played, and, as was expected, Harvard was beaten. The football of the succeeding year was fully as bad as it had been in 1883, and consequently there was a large body among the students ready to support the athletic committee when, at the close of the season, they announced that they considered the game as then played to be brutal and demoralizing, and on this account should request the Faculty to prohibit Harvard from playing it against other colleges. A short delay was granted before presenting this report in order to give the students a chance for a hearing; but no satisfactory results came from the delay, and in January, 1885, Harvard was forbidden to engage in any more intercollegiate football contests.
So much has been said and written about this action of the athletic committee, so much abuse has been heaped by the newspapers on the “Harvard dudes,” and so much misrepresentation has been spread abroad concerning the so-called “Harvard daintiness,” that it is only fair, even at this late date, to consider, for a few moments, what it was that influenced the committee in their action, and whether this Harvard daintiness was the result of an unmanly avoidance of the roughness of the game, or whether it was actuated by a feeling that no sport encourages true manliness when it has such an alloy of brutality and unfair play as football had at that period.