The work accomplished by the Joint Rules Committee of the National League and the American Association at their meeting in New York in November, 1888, ranks with the best on record in the revision of the playing rules of the game, and the successful results achieved in improving the code was largely due to the marked efficiency evinced by the chairman of the Committee, Mr. Chas. H. Byrne, the president of the Brooklyn club, who was indefatigable in doing the large amount of revisory work which was thrown upon the committee. In the face of a very noisy and sensational demand for radical changes in the rules governing the game, the committee, as a whole, manifested a wise conservatism in several respects, which cannot help but be of material assistance in advancing the welfare of the game at large. In the first place, by reducing the powers of the attack nearer to an equality with those of the defence--which result was accomplished when they reduced the number of called balls from five to four--they not only adopted a rule which will moderate the dangerous speed in delivering the ball to the bat, but they thereby afforded the batsman an additional chance for more effective work at the bat. This latter point, too, has been aided by reducing the number of outs the batsman has hitherto been unfairly subjected to. The rule which puts batsmen out on catches of foul balls, which, since the game originated, has been an unfair rule of play, has seen its best day; and this year the entering wedge to its ultimate disappearance has been driven in, with the practical result of the repeal of the foul tip catch. This improvement, too, is in the line of aiding the batting side, as it gets rid of one of the numerous ways of putting the batsman out. The argument brought to bear in favor of the elimination of outs from foul balls from the code was in the main as follows: When the batsman hits a fair ball, while at the same time that he gives the fielders a chance to put him out, he himself is also given an equal chance of making a base or of scoring a run; but when he hits a foul ball, while he affords the fielders an opportunity to catch him out, no such compensating advantage is given him in the way of earning a base or a run as in the case of a fair hit ball; and it is in this that the working of the foul ball rule becomes so palpably unjust. It is sufficient punishment for hitting a foul ball that he, as batsman, be deprived of making a base, without adding the unjust penalty of an out. This one sided condition of things, too, is increased when a double play is made on the catch of a foul ball, for not only is the batsman unfairly punished, but also the base runner who may have made the base by a clean hit.