A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. AnsonAnson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
History
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson
Anson, Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine)
Baseball
In responding to the toast, "The Influence of the Manly Sports," the
Hon. Daniel Dougherty made a brilliant address in favor of outdoor
games, after which President Spalding paid a compliment to the excellent
conduct and ball-playing abilities of the two teams, and Captain Ward
and myself made the briefest of remarks. Chairman Mills then introduced
"Mark Twain," speaking of him as a native of the Sandwich Islands, which
brought out the following address:
"Though not a native, as intimated by the chairman, I have visited the
Sandwich Islands, that peaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off
home of profound repose and soft indolence, and dreamy solitude, where
life is one long slumberous Sabbath, the climate one long, delicious
summer day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but
fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another. And these boys have
played base-ball there; baseball, which is the very symbol, the outward
and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of
the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century. One cannot realize it,
the place and the fact are so incongruous; it is like interrupting a
funeral with a circus. Why, there's no legitimate point of contact, no
possible kinship between base-ball" and the Sandwich Islands; base-ball
is all fact, the Islands are all sentiment. In base-ball you've got to
do everything just right, or you don't get there; in the Islands you've
got to do everything all wrong, or you can't stay there. You do it wrong
to get it right, for if you do it right you get it wrong; there isn't
any way to get it right but to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it
the righter it is.
"The natives illustrate this every day. They never mount a horse from
the larboard side, they always mount him from the starboard; on the
other hand, they never milk a cow on the starboard side, they always
milk her on the larboard; it's why you see so many short people there,
they've got their heads kicked off. When they meet on the road they
don't turn to the right, they turn to the left. And so, from always
doing everything wrong end first, it makes them left-handed and
cross-eyed; they are all so. In those Islands, the cats haven't any
tails and the snakes haven't any teeth; and, what is still more
irregular, the man that loses a game gets the pot. As to dress, the
women all wear a single garment, but the men don't. No, the men don't
wear anything at all; they hate display; when they wear a smile they
think they are overdressed. Speaking of birds, the only bird there that
has ornamental feathers has only two, just only enough to squeeze
through with, and they are under its wings instead of on top of its
head, where, of course, they ought to be to do any good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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