Evening Star Newspaper, September 14, 1930, Page 97

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SEPTEMBER 14, BASE BALL'S Greatest Year Uttendance Count at Major League Games Indicates Record Season, While Interest in Minor Leagues and American Legion Junior Championship Shozvs Little Cause for Pessimism About the Future of the National Game. S THE 1930 base ball season wanes, those who know and love the game hail it as the greatest sea- son that base ball has ever known. Now, if this be true those prophets who looked through a glass last Fall and Winter and viewed the future of the national game with dubiously wagging heads must feel considerably abashed. Let us first consider the grounds upon which the base ball folks pick this as the greatest year of the game. Only once in the last 30 years have the two major leagues touched the 10,000,000 mark in attendance and that was in 1927. They will surely cross that mark again this year. While some of the minor league clubs have not done so well this year as in past seasons and there have been a few cases of leagues and clubs being disbanded this year, there are other minor leagues and clubs that have en- joyed greater attendance records than ever be- fore. Such has been the case with the minor © leagues every year for the last 25 years. The main cause of minor league financial trouble has not been so much in lack of attendance as in paying too high salaries for players. The fact is, in many minor league towns and cities the attendance at ball games has increased in the last quarter of a century just as it has in the major leagues. IN THE colleges of the country, especially in the East, base ball has enjoyed a real re- naissance this year. It was a well known and admitted fact that base ball had declined in the big American colleges since the halcyon days back in the nineties, when the games for supremacy between the Big Four excited almost as much interest and drew nearly as many people as their foot ball struggles, This year, with the reorganization of the old Eastern College Base Ball League, the game took on new life and interest in schools all along the Atlantic seaboard. The college game received more space in the metropolitan dailies and drew more people than at any time during the last decade. I quote from Grantland Rice, the nationally known amateur sports authority, to prove this asser- tion about college base ball. Grantland says: “A year or two ago Yale and Princeton played a ball game before a few hundred spectators. At one of their games last Spring the attend- ance was reported in the papers to be 10,000, Cornell and Dartmouth played before 3,000 at the little town of Hanover, So the game that was slipping in the East a few years ago has come back. It is too fine a college game to be lost, having all the physical advantages of foot ball without the overemotionalized side.” I'l' HAS been asserted for years by those who do not like base ball or only profess to feel sorry to see it slipping that fewer boys play base ball on the town lots and diamonds of the cities each succeeding year and that, therefore, there will inevitably come a time when the big leagues will seek in vain for recruits for their fading ranks cf the famous Such statements are mertely general and are supported only by personal observations in cer- tain localities. The fact is that when the American Legion started its great Americani- zation campaign for boys three years ago by organizing the junior base ball tournament for the national base ball championship for boys under 186, it called some 100,000 boys into com- petition. The next year 200,000 boys took part. Last year there were about 300,000 and this year a half million boys entered for the Legion base ball championship. In cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, Mil- waukee and Detroit, where amateur base ball has a remarkably strong following, the num- ber of boys’ base ball teams has increased steadily during the last six years aside from the Legion competition. The competition in their local championship events has become keener, the interest and attendance have be- come greater and the organization of their various leagues has become more compact and practical, until today base ball for bhoys in these cities has reached a state undreamed of by the town-lot players and spectators of 10 and 20 years ago. In Milwaukee, the smallest of these cities, more than 5,000 boys are taking part in base ball and 50,000 spectators have attended amateur and semi-pro games in that city. In New York City there are hundreds of boys’ base ball clubs that helong to some busi- ness or industrial league that are having mighty struggles for their local and neighborhood championships. The pessimists point with a gloomy gesture to' the fact that base ball en the vacant lots is passing and they deduce from this situation that boys are not playing ball as much as in former years. Base bali on the lots has come to be almost Playground diamonds and “play” streets have supplanted to a large degree the vacant lots of yesteryear as ball grounds for boys living in the great cities. a thing of the past. But the reason is as simple as it is strong. There are almost no vacant lots upon which to play! But the cities of the country have provided reguiar diamonds on public playgrounds for the boys. The playing fields are better than the old town lots. "The boys play by rules and under some league organization. They play better ball and better players are being - developed. I sent a gquestionnaire to 40 park commis- sioners of cities throughout the Nation regard- ing the demand for base ball diamonds and the supply. Every answer but one stated that the demand far exceeded the supply and that new diamonds were being added each year. I was amazed at the number of regulated base ball diamonds in some of these cities. One of the most conclusive tests of the present love of base ball among boys generally is found in the American Legion enroliment for the base ball campaign for boys this Sum- mer, One million boys responded—more than it can care for. It is hardly fair to judge the strength or weakness of base ball among the boys of the land by the response of the boys of a certain preparatory school or small college to the call for enroilment on that school's sport teams. A slide for the home sack in a college game. 1930. ¥ & This sphere of base ball, especially in the East, has enjoyed a real rencissance this year. Many of the boys attending such a school ate the sons of rich or well-to-do parents. They have been brought up to play tennis, golf, foot ball and track games. To them base ball has little appeal. Anybody can play base ball, anywhere and under any circumstances. So most of these boys respond to the calls for track, tennis and the more collegiate game of foot ball. But for the boy who can never hope to go to college, base ball is the game of games. Other sports have taken many fans away from base ball. So has the automobile. But there is still an unmecasured wealth of playing material to draw from in every State in the Union, as the Legion games have shown. Every new game and pastime has its first flourish, its growth, bloom and decadence through the stern test of the years. We Americans turn eagerly and wholeheartedly to new things, and then we tire of them and wurn to others. But consider: The first base ball game was played in Cooperstown, N. Y., in 1839 and was originated by Abner Doubleday, afterward a major general in the United States Army. That was nearly a century ago. The first league was organized in 1843. The game had its ups and downs in the 60 years up to the beginning of this century. Big leagues as well as minor leagues had to change their franchises for lack of interest and attendance. Detroit, now one of the best base ball cities in America, was dropped by the National League some 30 years ago because of poor attendance, as was Washington, Cleveland and St. Louis. Baseball went throuwgh every stage of popular fancy, coldness and enthusiasm. It stood tne test of time. It has lived and grown through four generations of national life. It has now become too deeply implanted in the national mind to perish. Ninety-one years is a real test. BACK in 1908 base ball was nearly 70 years old and was thought to have reached its peak when the two major leagues engaged in world series play. In that series, between two of the most famous teams in the history of the game-—Jennings’ Detroit Tigers, with Ty Cobb, and Chance’s Chicago Cubs with Tinker, Evers and Three-fingered Brown—the attend- ance was only 62,000. For one game of that series the attendance was as low as 6,000. That was 20 years ago, when base ball was supposed to be in its heyday. We still talk of the great pitchers and mighty batsmen of that pe:i-1 and the 1-0 games, and sigh for the vanisheu super-player. Eightcen years later in these al- leged decadent base ball times, the attendance at the St. Louis-Yankee series of 1926 was more than 300,000. At one game of this series the attendance was more than 63,060, which was more than the attendance for the entire Chicago-Detroit series of 1908. . In the world series of last year between the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Athictics the former club, with a park seating 50,000, had to turn away 50,000 persons for every game, and the latter club, with a park seating only 30,000, had to return the checks of 50,000 disappointed fans for every game. These figures show more strongly than any argument or assertion the deep and lasting hold that base ball has on the Nation. Today there are many argumments over the drawing power of Cobb &s compared to that great modern magnet Babe Ruth. No one will ever know ihe answer, because it is hard (o say whether Cobb attracted a greater or less percentage of the fans in his prime than Ruth did in his. As far as quantity goes, however, Ruth wins, because more fans are going to games today, as had been pointed out, than went 20 years ago. To me it is always most interesting that the two stars have been typical of the type of ball played during their primes: Cobb,” the flash on the bases, the man of the trigger brain and the hitter of such consistency; Ruth, the powerful slugger, the driver of so many home runs, bringing thrills and joy to the hearts of the fans. The passing of Cobb frcm his zenith of power brought us Ruth and the home run. The game changed with his coming. I often wonder if there will be another great star who will equal them in fame and provide still a third type of play to equal theirs in popularity, Here are some figures that would have ap- peared as an impossible and astounding dream to the most optimistic kase ball men of 20 years ago: During the y:ars 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930 the two major leagues alone drew a 40,000,000 gate, which is to say, about 16,- 900,000 each year. The National League broke into the 5,000,000 attendance mark for the first time in 1927. It fell a little below that mark during the next two years, but this season it will again enter that mighty and magic circle, ALTHOUGH Hartford, of the Eastern League, closed the gates of its lall park because of lack of interest and attendance, it is also true that Selma, Ala., of the Southeastern League, a town of only 20,000 population, is having such a great year that it outdraws cities of 100,000 in that same league and is having the banner year of its base ball history. Topeka, Kans,, had to give up its franchise in the Western League because of poor attendance some 15 years ago, when base ball was supposed to rule the sports world without a rival. Yet two or three years ago Topeka, then back in the league, enjoyed the greatest attendance record in ail its base ball history. It is true that golf and tennis and track meets and many other amateur and profes~ sional sports activities are now riding high on a wave of popularity, and they have grown amazingly in public favor in recent years, but it seems only fair that they ought to stand the test of 50 or 75 years of wear and tear in the Nation's sports arena before being hailed as the national game. (Copyright, 1930.) Burleigh Grimes, veteran hurler, now with the St. Louis Cardinals, giving a groip of California youngsters some inside tips on pitching.