Baseball Slipping

Hard upon the heels of a report that baseball, "The Great American Game," is widely popular in Japan (TIME, Jan. 11), comes another report, that baseball is no longer "The Great American Game."

Major John L. Griffith of Chicago found it out. He made a survey of baseball for the National Amateur Athletic Federation. He questioned 10,000 athletic directors of elementary schools, high schools, colleges, welfare organizations; questioned sporting editors, coaches, sporting-goods manufacturers, and the Young Idea itself. He found that little Tatterbreeches of the fifth grade and gawky Longpants of first-year high school no longer aim to be Ty Cobbs and Walter Johnsons when they grow up. Their aspirations, in order of prevalence, are to Red Grangeship, fame as a basketball player and Paavo Nurmidom. Baseball comes fourth.

Major Griffith was conducting his survey with a preconceived notion. Representative of a body devoted to the defense of amateur ideals in sport, his purpose was to show how professionalism in a sport hurts that sport. His summary of the case was: "Baseball is no longer the national sport for amateurs." A not unreasonable conclusion and certainly a salutary one, but one that appeared to leave out of the reckoning other possibilities.

With the building of huge football stadia and the higher organization of all college athletics, football and basketball may well have superseded baseball in popular favor purely through being more spectacular. The movement to engage all schoolboys and college men in some form of athletics, the wide publicity given to the Olympic Games of 1920 and 1924 (after the hiatus 1912-1920) and to Paavo ("Flying Finn") Nurmi when he visited the U. S. after those Games, may well have been factors making track and field sports momentarily more popular than baseball. The crowded condition of many city playgrounds was cited as a contributing cause for the decline. The great numbers of new country clubs might have been cited as another cause, taking ball-players from the sandlots to the golf links not only as players but as caddies. With prosperity have come automobiles, wherein infant Sislers, Lajoies, Heinie Zims tour the block instead of the bases.

None the less, the fact of baseball's decline was clearly shown. Instances were cited of major league Solons offering their co-operation to amateur agencies for reviving the sport, of professionalism feeling the pinch of a player famine. And dislike of professionalism was evident in the refusals with which these offers met.

Figures showed the extent to which baseball is still played by little Tatterbreeches and gawky Longpants (the numbers represent nines supervised by municipal recreation departments):

Cleveland ..........................................858 New York .................................................. 408 Detroit ....................................................363 Buffalo ....................................................357 San Francisco ..............................................277 Boston .....................................................200 Portland, Ore .......................................... ...180 St. Louis ..................................................135