|
The very symbol, the outward and visible expression
of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing,
booming nineteenth century!
- speech at Delmonico's, 8 April 1889 |
 AI image created by R. Kent Rasmussen |
| It was a project of mine to replace the tournament with something which might furnish an escape for the extra steam of the chivalry, keep those bucks entertained and out of mischief, and at the same time preserve the best thing in them, which was their hardy spirit of emulation. I had had a choice band of them in private training for some time, and the date was now arriving for their first public effort. |  |
| This experiment was baseball. In order to give the thing vogue from the
start, and place it out of the reach of criticism, I chose my nines by rank,
not capacity. There wasn't a knight in either team who wasn't a sceptered
sovereign. As for material of this sort, there was a glut of it always around
Arthur. You couldn't throw a brick in any direction and not cripple a king.
Of course, I couldn't get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn't
do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that
a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would
do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor
made of my new Bessemer steel. Their practice in the field was the most
fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of
the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the
bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards sometimes.
And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to
his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port. At first I appointed
men of no rank to act as umpires, but I had to discontinue that. These people
were no easier to please than other nines. The umpire's first decision was
usually his last; they broke him in two with a bat, and his friends toted
him home on a shutter. When it was noticed that no umpire ever survived
a game, umpiring got to be unpopular. So I was obliged to appoint somebody
whose rank and lofty position under the government would protect him....The
first public game would certainly draw fifty thousand people; and for solid
fun would be worth going around the world to see. Everything would be favorable;
it was balmy and beautiful spring weather now, and Nature was all tailored
out in her new clothes. - A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
Illustration by
Homer Davenport in
Albert G.Spalding's America's
National Game
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