Platzoff

“ Suppose each of you take a sheet of paper and write down the names of, say, twenty-five of the men you think to be the most likely competitors for places on the nine. Then we will compare our lists, and if we find that we have agreed upon twenty men we will post their names in the gymnasium and on the bulletin board in Burke Hall, with a formal request that they present themselves without delay if they desire to compete for the vacant positions.”
“And how about the others?” I asked. “Do you suppose there will be any offense taken by any one at being excluded from the competition?” ”

“ I am not advocating ‘playing to the gallery,’ merely for the sake of bringing off a showy stroke, but playing out on purpose to try for position. There is, of course, a time for everything. In a match involving a stake, or when competing in a club handicap, a player should throw no chance away, and play carefully and cautiously, especially near the end of the game with the lead. But in an ordinary game he should play out and try whatever comes. ”

“ You are watching one of your team do the pole vault, for instance, and are so much absorbed in his performance and so desirous for him to succeed that you identify yourself with him to a degree. He is rising to clear the high bar, and the thought of his clearing it, monopolizing your mind and leaving no room for the inhibitory thought that the performer is down there in the field and you up here in the stand, causes you to make an incipient leg movement as if you yourself were vaulting. ”

“ Are they loose in a drawer or on a shelf, or are they in a covered box or dish of metal or earthenware? Sometimes uncovered matches are ignited by the sun's rays shining through a lens-forming bubble in a window-pane.
Do you carry matches on your person? A child should never be allowed to do this. He may be careful, but some careless child may ask him for a match. Always be on the safe side. A grown person should never permit himself to carry loose matches in his pocket. The State Fire Marshal of Iowa says:
Some men, especially smokers, are in the habit of carrying matches around with them. ”

“ SAY! have you ever lived in a town of twelve thousand population (according to the census; 25,000 according to the local Chamber of Commerce) that had the baseball fever and an almost-pennant-winning team? If you haven't, invade one some day along toward the end of the season when a crucial series is under way—but no! you've got to get the spirit of the thing or it's no go. ”

“ Talking about the old Players' Union, it reminds me that at one meeting we had, a player stated that if a club had a horse they wanted to part with, some one would have to find the horse in fodder until the negotiations were finished. A player is during that time between the devil and the deep blue sea, and has to entirely support himself during that period, and I have known many excellent players give up the game for this reason. ”

“ These ill-tempered fellows are not only death to necessary discipline, but they are sure to find occasions to form cliques in a team, which war against the best interests of the club at large, and are obnoxious in the extreme to the pennant winning rule of playing for the side, a rule as important to the success of a club team in a pennant race, as the reserve rule is to the life of the professional club business at large. ”

“ When a player pitches the potsherd into the wrong division or on a line, he is out.
When a player kicks into the wrong division or on a line, he is out. In the next turn he must play from taw. When the turns of the others come they must begin at the division in which they failed.
CHAPTER XIX HOW TO CAMP OUT—THINGS EVERY CAMPER SHOULD KNOW Camping out is not in itself a game, but it would be hard to imagine a more delightful way for the boy or the man who has still something of the boy in him to spend a vacation. ”

“ But things are far worse than even that in the game as actually played in Europe. What shall we say of rules which decide dogmatically that one set of players are hereditarily entitled to be always batting, while another set, less lucky, have to field for ever, and to be fined or imprisoned for not catching? What shall we say of rules which give one group a perpetual right to free lunch in the tent, while the remainder have to pick up what they can for themselves by gleaning among the stubble? ”

“ Doubtless many men were severely injured by the splendid co-operative efforts of their own team mates in such activity. Such a game meant pounding—pure, unadulterated, gruelling pounding—until the selected spot, groggy and exhausted, gave way and the opponents swept through to victory or a substitute leaped in to fill the breach. ”

“ You must be on your toes every second, ready to follow the other fellow’s shift. Your duty is to find out where the play is coming, and be ready to meet it. You’ll get fooled at first, I guess, for some shifts are used simply to pull you and the other backs away from the play. Only experience can teach you when a shift is just a fake.”
“The next thing is to watch the ball, Crail, from the instant it goes into play. ”

“ And her players on their own backyard are scrappers who can take a lot of beating and still win out. Then there's another thing that's no small factor in their strength: They are idolized by the students, and rooting at Place is a science. They have a yell that beats anything you ever heard. It'll paralyze a fellow at a critical stage. But that yell is peculiar in that it rises out of circumstances leading to almost certain victory. That is, Place has to make a strong bid for a close, hard game to work up that yell. ”

“ But if you lose your team, and break your pole, and spoil your loading when you’re on a long overland trip, how are you to help your mates or any other chap that’s bogged when they want you to double-bank? ”

“ But he who cannot or will not play according to the rules of those who are making the game is disqualified. He should go elsewhere. Hitherto in my life I had followed the code of a smaller game, in which we seldom pressed an advantage to the limit or cut our pound of flesh from out a vital part. Now I had voluntarily associated myself with other men in a venture I believed was big, fair, and square, and I was learning that the rule of their game was thumbs down—give nothing—take everything. ”

“ If, however, the ball falls into Zero, the croupier gathers in every stake on the table, only paying those who have backed Zero. The stakes, if they have been made on even chances, are put, as they say, 'in prison' until the next throw, when they will be returned to the player if the throw is favourable to them, but if not, then they lose them. But a player can take such stakes out of prison by paying half their value. ”

“ Added to this, the entire camp, having now no games to play and nothing particular to occupy itself with, began to take notice of things to which they had been blind hitherto; and an embarrassing number of enquiries—most secretly and impressively conducted, but embarrassing withal—began to be made as to the progress of the unmentionable thing. Certain people all at once discovered that they could in future only support existence if buoyed up by the hope of escape, and began to ingratiate themselves accordingly in the proper quarter. ”

“ I’m just crazy about camp! I like the life! But I’ll tell you what makes me tired. It’s these little common guys running around fussing 84 about their jobs and trying to get a lot of pull to get into some other place. Now there’s an instance of that in our company, a man from my home town, no account whatever and never was, but he’s got it in his head that he’s a square peg in a round hole and he wants to be transferred. ”

“ The bearers of the burden stagger, utter loud cries, retreat, advance once more, and, as though crushed by a resistless force, they pretend to sink beneath its weight. While this is going on, the bystanders shout loudly, exciting and steadying this human team. ”

“ The system of reserve having proven beneficial, both to clubs and players, the reserve list was increased to eleven, and then to fourteen, or an entire team. Under this rule the game has steadily grown in favor, the salaries of players have been more than trebled, and a higher degree of skill has been obtained. ”

“ A man crouched there—ragged, bone-gaunt, grey as the shattered walls at his back. He clutched a club in one claw-like hand, and the strain of utter panic, despair, stood out in every taut, harsh-drawn line. ”

“ Then come the plays of contest and competition, when the child, now of school age, matches himself against his companions in speed or strength. This is the period of running games. Imitation has ripened into the kind of rivalry which helps the individual to realize his personal powers. Following competition comes the period of team play, in which social union with some of one’s companions is combined with contest against others. ”

“ Four times in the course of a league it encounters a mill, leaps and foams, then resumes its course, hurried and stealthy; during two leagues we have its company, half hid among the trees that it nourishes, and breathing the freshness it exhales. ”

“ When the number of players is reduced to two, they can, if they possess an equality of lives, as two each, or one each, divide the stake; or they may by agreement play out the game for the entire pool. ”

“ With the advent of the professional player the game in the larger towns took on a new lease of life, but in the smaller places where they could not afford the expense necessary to the keeping of a first-class team it ceased to be the main attraction and interest was centered in the doings of the teams of the larger places. ”

“ Every disputable point is settled by a division, a bell rings, there is shouting and running, the members come blundering into the chamber and sort themselves with much loutish shuffling and shoving into the division lobbies. They are counted, as illiterate farmers count sheep ”

“ For gamblers are reckless, abandoning wife and relations, fearless, sleeping at the foot of trees and in other exposed places, like ascetics.' "When the king gave this order to his ministers, they instructed to this effect the superintendent of the asylum, and he is now on the lookout for some brave man who may come there to reside awhile. Now you are gamblers, and if you, Śrídarśana, feel able to accomplish the undertaking, I will take you to-day to that asylum. ”

“ So the pageant of power passed into a garden-party, and nothing remained to show the hand-grip which had made that garden out of a wilderness, to tell of the tireless effort to solve the problem, the ceaseless striving to be just, which underlay all the quips and cranks, the foibles and follies, of the great camp, save the premature baldness of a few heads, as their owners fought desperately at badminton ”

“ She was playing for high stakes, using only hundred-franc chips and winning with a consistency that attracted the inevitable cortege about her chair, the jackals who try to follow a winner or steal a system by peering over one’s shoulder. ”

“ Field was a short meagre man, one of those starveling figures whose dimensions of capacity seem hopelessly inadequate to the strain put upon them, and who yet can absorb a Gargantuan repast without a sign, moral or physical, of inconvenience. ”

“ The Cheapsides 'prentices, of whom we have spoken, were a turbulent and unmanageable element of the community, keeping their clubs at hand in the shops, to be ready at any moment to rush out and join a fray, and many a broken head they gave and got in these fights, which generally arose, not so much out of malice as from pure love of contention for mastery, which then developed itself in this rough way as it now displays itself in games of cricket and athletic sports. ”

“ Needless to say, however, this plan presents no particular advantage to the player. If he has backed a high number, and the high numbers are closed against him, it is evident that he cannot possibly cause the ball to enter the division he requires, do what he may. ”

“ It is only where the stakes are small that the leisurely players, idly fingering the fallen cards, return in fancy to certain points—to this trick trumped or that chance missed, playing the game over again. But when the result is great it overshadows the game, and all men's thoughts fly to speculation on the future. How will the loser meet his loss? ”

“ To save two, a good man may stand a very long way off on hard ground, and reduce the hardest cuts to singles. But a common fault is, "standing nowhere," neither to save one nor to save two. Remember not to stand as sharp when fast bowling is replaced by slow. Cover is the place for brilliant fielding. Watch well the batsman, and start in time. Half a spring in anticipation puts you already under weigh, and makes yards in the ground you can cover. ”

“ Of course one looks with jealousy at every such game of chance, and I was inclined to think at first that the croupier was in league with two women, one spectacled, who sat steadily at one end of the players, playing in partnership, and seeming to win oftener than any of the others ”

“ In that ditch we used to fight half of our scrimmages, and in that ditch the Normals concentrated their strategy and strength. In massive formation, the ball in the midst, protected by the fence on one side and by a moving stockade of stout legs and sturdy shoulders on the other, down the ditch they would drive, sweeping away our lighter fellows like leaves as they went, on and on, to what seemed an inevitable goal. ”