Part 4 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[9] See, _e.g._, ”Ad Familiares,” 5, 18.

[10] This was written just after President Cleveland's p.r.o.nunciamento in regard to Venezuela, and thus long before the outbreak of the war with Spain.

[11] This paragraph was written before the outbreak of the Spanish-American war; but the events of that struggle do not seem to me to call for serious modification of the opinion expressed above.

[12] Sir George Campbell, in ”Black and White in America.”

VII

Sports and Amus.e.m.e.nts

In face of the immense sums of money spent on all kinds of sport, the size and wealth of the athletic a.s.sociations, the swollen salaries of baseball players, the prominence afforded to sporting events in the newspapers, the number of ”world's records” made in the United States, and the tremendous excitement over inter-university football matches and international yacht-races, it may seem wanton to a.s.sert that the love of sport is not by any means so genuine or so universal in the United States as in Great Britain; and yet I am not at all sure that such a statement would not be absolutely true. By true ”love of sport”

I understand the enjoyment that arises from either practising or seeing others practise some form of skill-demanding amus.e.m.e.nt for its own sake, without question of pecuniary profit; and the true sport lover is not satisfied unless the best man wins, whether he be friend or foe. Sport ceases to be sport as soon as it is carried on as if it were war, where ”all” is proverbially ”fair.” The excitement of gambling does not seem to me to be fairly covered by the phrase ”love of sport,” and no more does the mere desire to see one's university, state, or nation triumph over someone else's university, state, or nation. There are thousands of people who rejoice over or bewail the result of the Derby without thereby proving their possession of any right to the t.i.tle of sportsman; there is no difference of quality between the speculator in grain and the speculator in horseflesh and jockeys' nerves. So, too, there are many thousands who yell for Yale in a football match who have no real sporting instinct whatever.

Sport, to be sport, must jealously shun all attempts to make it a business; the more there is of the spirit of professionalism in any game or athletic exercise the less it deserves to be called a sport. A sport in the true sense of the word must be practised for fun or glory, not for dollars and cents; and the desire to win must be very strictly subordinated to the sense of honour and fair play. The book-making spirit has undoubtedly entered far too largely into many of the most characteristic of British sports, and I have no desire to palliate or excuse our national shortcomings in this or other respects. But the hard commercial spirit to which I have alluded seems to me to pervade American sport much more universally than it does the sport of England, and to form almost always a much larger factor in the interest excited by any contest.

This is very clearly shown by the way in which games are carried on at the universities of the two countries. Most members of an English college are members of some one or other of the various athletic a.s.sociations connected with it, and it cannot be denied that the general interest in sport is both wide and keen. But it does not a.s.sume so ”business-like” an air as it does in such a university as Yale or Princeton. Not nearly so much money is spent in the paraphernalia of the sport or in the process of training. The operation of turning a pleasure into a toil is not so consistently carried on. The members of the intercollegiate team do not obtain leave of absence from their college duties to train and practise in some remote corner of England as if they were prize-fighters or yearlings. ”Gate-money” does not bulk so largely in the view; in fact, admission to many of the chief encounters is free. The atmosphere of mystery about the doings of the crew or team is not so sedulously cultivated. The men do not take defeat so hardly, or regard the loss of a match as a serious calamity in life. I have the authority of Mr.

Caspar W. Whitney, the editor of _Forest and Stream_, and perhaps the foremost living writer on sport in the United States, for the statement that members of a defeated football team in America will sometimes throw themselves on their faces on the turf and weep (see his ”Sporting Pilgrimage,” Chapter IV., pp. 94, 95).[13] It was an American orator who proposed the toast: ”My country--right or wrong, my country;” and there is some reason to fear that American college athletes are tempted to adapt this in the form ”Let us _win_, by fair means or foul.” I should hesitate to suggest this were it not that the evidence on which I do so was supplied from American sources. Thus, one American friend of mine told me he heard a member of a leading university football team say to one of his colleagues: ”You try to knock out A.B. this bout; I've been warned once.” Tactics of this kind are freely alleged against our professional players of a.s.sociation football; but it may safely be a.s.serted that no such sentence could issue from the lips of a member of the Oxford or Cambridge university teams.

Mr. E.J. Brown, Track Captain of the University of California, a.s.serted, on his return from a visit to the Eastern States, that Harvard was the only Eastern university in which the members of the athletic teams were all _bona fide_ students. This is doubtless a very exaggerated statement, but it would seem to indicate which way the wind blows. The entire American tendency is to take amus.e.m.e.nt too seriously, too strenuously. They do not allow sport to take care of itself. ”It runs to rhetoric and interviews.” All good contestants become ”representatives of the American people.” One serious effect of the way in which the necessity of winning or ”making records” is constantly held up as the _raison d'etre_ of athletic sports is that it suggests to the ordinary student, who has no hopes of brilliant success in athletics, that moderate exercise is contemptible, and that he need do nothing to keep up his bodily vigour. Thus, Dr. Birkbeck Hill found that the proportion of students who took part in some athletic sport was distinctly less at Harvard than at Oxford. Nor could I ascertain that nearly so large a proportion of the adult population themselves played games or followed athletics of any kind as in England. I should say, speaking roughly, that the end of his university career or his first year in responsible business corresponded practically for the ordinary American to the forty-fifth year of the ordinary Englishman, _i.e._, after this time he would either entirely or partially give up his own active partic.i.p.ation in outdoor exercises. Of course there are thousands of exceptions on both sides; but the general rule remains true. The average American professional or business man does not play baseball as his English cousin does cricket. He goes in his thousands to see baseball matches, and takes a very keen and vociferous interest in their progress; but he himself has probably not handled a club since he left college. No doubt this contrast is gradually diminis.h.i.+ng, and such games as lawn tennis and golf have made it practically a vanis.h.i.+ng quant.i.ty in the North-eastern States; but as one goes West one cannot but feel that baseball and other sports, like dancing in China, are almost wholly in the hands of paid performers.

The national games of cricket and baseball serve very well to ill.u.s.trate this, as well as other contrasts in the pastimes of the two nations. In cricket the line between the amateur and the professional has. .h.i.therto been very clearly drawn; and Englishmen are apt to believe that there is something elevating in the very nature of the game which makes it shed scandals as a duck's back sheds water. The American view is, perhaps, rather that cricket is so slow a game that there is little scope for betting, with all its attendant excitement and evils. They point to the fact that the staid city of Philadelphia is the only part of the United States in which cricket flourishes; and, if in a boasting mood, they may claim with justice that it has been cultivated there in a way that shows that it is not lack of ability to s.h.i.+ne in it that makes most Americans indifferent to the game. A first-cla.s.s match takes three days to play, and even a match between two teams of small boys requires a long half-holiday. Hence the game is largely practised by the members of the leisure cla.s.s. The grounds on which it is played are covered with the greenest and best-kept of turf, and are often amid the most lovely surroundings.

The season at which the game is played is summer, so that looking on is warm and comfortable. There is comparatively little chance of serious accident; and the absence of personal contact of player with player removes the prime cause of quarrelling and ill-feeling. Hence ladies feel that they may frequent cricket matches in their daintiest summer frocks and without dread of witnessing any painful accident or unseemly scuffle. The costumes of the players are varied, appropriate, and tasteful, and the arrangement of the fielders is very picturesque.

Baseball, on the other hand (which, _pace_, my American friends, is simply glorified rounders), with the exception of school and college teams, is almost wholly practised by professional players; and the place of the county cricket matches is taken by the games between the various cities represented in the National League, in which the amateur is severely absent. The dress, with a long-sleeved semmet appearing below a short-sleeved jersey, is very ugly, and gives a sort of ruffianly look to a ”nine” which it might be free from in another costume. The ground is theoretically gra.s.s, but practically (often, at least) hard-trodden earth or mud. A match is finished in about one hour and a half. In running for base a player has often to throw himself on his face, and thereby covers himself with dust or mud. The spectators have each paid a sum varying from 1s. or 2s. to 8s. or even 10s. for admission, and are keenly excited in the contest; while their yells, and hoots, and slangy chaff are very different to the decorous applause of the cricket field, and rather recall an a.s.sociation football crowd in the Midlands. As a rule not much sympathy or courtesy is extended to the visiting team, and the duties of an umpire are sometimes accompanied by real danger.[14] Several features of the play seem distinctly unsportsmanlike. Thus, it is the regular duty of one of the batting team, when not in himself, to try to ”rattle” the pitcher or fielder by yells and shouts just as he is about to ”pitch” or ”catch” or ”touch.” It is not considered dishonourable for one of the waiting strikers to pretend to be the player really at a base and run from base to base just outside the real line so as to confuse the fielders. On the other hand the game is rapid, full of excitement and variety, and susceptible of infinite development of skill. The accuracy with which a long field will throw to base might turn an English long-leg green with envy; and the way in which an expert pitcher will make a ball deflect _in the air_, either up or down, to the right or left, must be seen to be believed. A really skilful pitcher is said to be able to throw a ball in such a way that it will go straight to within a foot of a tree, _turn out for the tree_, and resume its original course on the other side of it!

The football match between Yale and Princeton on Thanksgiving Day (last Thursday in November) may, perhaps, be said to hold the place in public estimation in America that the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race does in England. In spite of the inclement season, spectators of either s.e.x turn out in their thousands; and the scene, except that furs are subst.i.tuted for summer frocks, easily stands comparison with the Eton and Harrow day at Lord's. The field is surrounded in the same way with carriages and drags, on which the colours of the rival teams are profusely displayed; and there are the same merry coach-top luncheons, the same serried files of noisy partisans, and the same general air of festivity, while the final touch is given by the fact that a brilliant sun is not rarer in America in November than it is in England in June. The American game of football is a developed form of the Rugby game; but is, perhaps, not nearer it than baseball is to rounders. It is played by eleven a side. American judges think that neither Rugby nor a.s.sociation football approaches the American game either in skill or in demand on the player's physical endurance. This may be so: in fact, so far as my very inexpert point of view goes I should say that it is so. Undoubtedly the American teams go through a much more prolonged and rigid system of training, and their scheme of tactics, codes of signals, and sharp devices of all kinds are much more complicated. ”Tackling” is probably reduced to a finer art than in England. Mr. Whitney, a most competent and impartial observer, does not think that our system of ”pa.s.sing” would be possible with American tacklers. Whether all this makes a better _game_ is a very different question, and one that I should be disposed to answer in the negative.

It is a more serious business, just as a duel _a outrance_ is a more serious business than a fencing match; but it is not so interesting to look at and does not seem to afford the players so much _fun_. There is little running with the ball, almost no dropping or punting, and few free kicks. The game between Princeton and Yale which I, s.h.i.+vering, saw from the top of a drag in 1891, seemed like one prolonged, though rather loose, scrimmage; and the spectators fairly yelled for joy when they saw the ball, which happened on an average about once every ten or fifteen minutes. Americans have to gain five yards for every three ”downs” or else lose possession of the ball; and hence the field is marked off by five-yard lines all the way from goal to goal. American writers acknowledge that the English Rugby men are much better kickers than the American players, and that it is now seldom that the punter in America gets a fair chance to show his skill. There are many tiresome waits in the American game; and the practice of ”interference,” though certainly managed with wonderful skill, can never seem quite fair to one brought upon the English notions of ”off-side.” The concerted cheering of the students of each university, led by a regular fugle-man, marking time with voice and arms, seems odd to the spectator accustomed to the spa.r.s.e, spontaneous, and independent applause of an English crowd.

An American football player in full armour resembles a deep-sea diver or a Roman retiarius more than anything else. The dress itself consists of thickly padded knickerbockers, jersey, canvas jacket, very heavy boots, and very thick stockings. The player then farther protects himself by s.h.i.+n guards, shoulder caps, ankle and knee supporters, and wristbands. The apparatus on his head is fearful and wonderful to behold, including a rubber mouthpiece, a nose mask, padded ear guards, and a curious headpiece made of steel springs, leather straps, and India rubber. It is obvious that a man in this c.u.mbersome attire cannot move so quickly as an English player clad simply in jersey, short breeches, boots, and stockings; and I question very much whether--slugging apart--the American a.s.sumption that the science of Yale would simply overwhelm the more elementary play of an English university is entirely justified. Anyone who has seen an American team in this curious paraphernalia can well understand the shudder of apprehension that shakes an American spectator the first time he sees an English team take the field with bare knees.

Certainly the spirit and temper with which football is played in the United States would seem to indicate that the over-elaborate way in which it has been handled has not been favourable to a true ideal of manly sport. On this point I shall not rely on my own observation, but on the statements of Americans themselves, beginning with the semi-jocular a.s.sertion, which largely belongs to the order of true words spoken in jest, that ”in old English football you kicked the ball; in modern English football you kick the man when you can't kick the ball; in American football you kick the ball when you can't kick the man.” In Georgia, Indiana, Nebraska, and possibly some other States, bills to prohibit football have actually been introduced in the State Legislatures within the past few years. The following sentences are taken from an article in the _Nation_ (New York), referring to the Harvard and Yale game of 1894:

The game on Sat.u.r.day at Springfield between the two great teams of Harvard and Yale was by the testimony--unanimous, as far as our knowledge goes--of spectators and newspapers the most brutal ever witnessed in the United States. There are few members of either university--we trust there are none--who have not hung their heads for shame in talking over it, or thinking of it.

In the first place, we respectfully ask the governing body of all colleges what they have to say for a game between youths presumably engaged in the cultivation of the liberal arts which needs among its preliminaries a supply on the field of litters and surgeons? Such preparations are not only brutal, but brutalising. How any spectator, especially any woman, can witness them without a shudder, so distinctly do they recall the duelling field and the prize ring, we are unable to understand. But that they are necessary and proper under the circ.u.mstances the result showed. There were actually seven casualties among twenty-two men who began the game. This is nearly 33 per cent. of the combatants--a larger proportion than among the Federals at Cold Harbor (the bloodiest battle of modern times), and much larger than at Waterloo or at Gravelotte. What has American culture and civilisation to say to this mode of training youth? ”Brewer was so badly injured that he had to be taken off the field crying with mortification.” Wright, captain of the Yale men, jumped on him with both knees, breaking his collar bone. Beard was next turned over to the doctors. Hallowell had his nose broken. Murphy was soon badly injured and taken off the field on a stretcher unconscious, with concussion of the brain. b.u.t.terworth, who is said nearly to have lost an eye, soon followed. Add that there was a great deal of ”slugging”--that is, striking with the fist and kicking--which was not punished by the umpires, though two men were ruled out for it.

It may be laid down as a sound rule among civilised people that games which may be won by disabling your adversary, or wearing out his strength, or killing him, ought to be prohibited, at all events among its youth. Swiftness of foot, skill and agility, quickness of sight, and cunning of hands, are things to be encouraged in education. The use of brute force against an unequally matched antagonist, on the other hand, is one of the most debauching influences to which a young man can be exposed.

The hurling of ma.s.ses of highly trained athletes against one another with intent to overcome by mere weight or kicking or cuffing, without the possibility of the rigid superintendence which the referee exercises in the prize ring, cannot fail to blunt the sensibilities of young men, stimulate their bad pa.s.sions, and drown their sense of fairness. When this is done in the sight of thousands, under the stimulation of their frantic cheers and encouragement, and in full view of the stretchers which carry their fellows from the field, for aught they know disabled for life, how, in the name of common sense, does it differ in moral influence from the Roman arena?

Now, the point in the above notice is that it is written of ”gentlemen”--of university men. It is to be feared that very similar charges might be brought against some of the professionals of our a.s.sociation teams: but our amateurs are practically exempt from any such accusation. The climax of the whole thing is the statement by a professor of a well-known university, that a captain of one of the great football teams declared in a cla.s.s prayer-meeting ”that the great success of the team the previous season was in his opinion due to the fact that among the team and subst.i.tutes there were so many praying men.” The true friends of sport in the United States must wish that the football mania may soon disappear in its present form; and the Harvard authorities are to be warmly congratulated on the manly stand they have taken against the evil. And it is to be devoutly hoped that no president of a college in the future will ever, as one did in 1894, congratulate his students on the fact ”that their progress and success in study during the term just finished had been _fully equal_ to their success in intercollegiate athletics and football!”.[15]

I have, however, no desire to pose as the British Pharisee, and I am aware that, though we make the better showing in this instance, there are others in which our record is at least as bad. The following paragraph is taken from the _Field_ (December 7th, 1895):