Whoever has not experienced the pleasure of taking a young lady to her first game of ball should seize the first opportunity to do so. Her remarks about plays, her opinions of different players and the umpire, and the questions she will ask concerning the game, are all too funny to be missed. She is a violent partisan and at once takes strong sides, and if her favorite team fails to bat well she characterizes the opposing pitcher as a "horrid creature;" or when the teams have finished practicing she wants to know, with charming ingenuousness, "which won." But as she gets deeper into the principles of the game her remarks become less frequent and her questions more to the point, until her well-timed attempts to applaud good plays and the anxious look at critical points of the game indicate that she has at last caught the idea. Unfortunately, some men are not able to intelligibly explain the theory of base-ball, while others are so engrossed with the game that they do not care to be disturbed. For the benefit of those ladies whose escorts either cannot, or will not, answer their questions, I will attempt to set forth as clearly as possible the fundamental principles of the game. There are always two opposing teams of nine players each, and they play on a field laid out in the shape of a diamond, as seen in time diagram on the following page. At each corner of the diamond is a base, and these are known respectively as home base, first base, second base, and third base. One of the teams takes "the field," that is, each of its nine players occupies one of the nine fielding positions shown in the diagram, and known as pitcher, catcher, first base, second base, third base, short stop, left field, centre field, and right field; the other team goes to "the bat" and tries to make "runs." A run is scored in this way: One of the nine batting players takes his position at the home base and endeavors to hit the ball, thrown to him by the opposing pitcher, to some part of the field where it can neither be caught before touching the ground, nor thrown to first base before the batter himself can run there; if he can hit it far enough to allow him to reach not only first base, but second or third or even home, so much the better, for when he has made the complete circuit of the bases his side is credited with one run. If he cannot make home on his own hit he may be helped around by the good hits of succeeding batsmen, for each one of the nine takes his regular turn at the bat. This batting and running goes on until three of the batting side have been "put out," whereupon the batting side take the field and the other team comes in to take its turn at bat and make as many runs as possible. When three of a batting side have been "put out," that side is said to have had its "inning," and each side is entitled to nine innings.