A great deal of bosh has been written--mostly by the admirers of "fungo" hitting--about sacrifice hitting being something that should not be in the game, just as these fungo-hitting-advocates try to write down _bunt_ hitting--the most difficult place hit known to the game. This class of writers think that the very acme of batting skill is the home run hit, a hit which any muscular novice in batting on amateur fields can accomplish without difficulty, and where more home runs are made in a single season than in two seasons by the best managed professional teams. The effort to make home runs leads to more chances for catches by outfielders in one game than there are home runs made in fifty. The exhaustion which follows a home run hit, with its sprinting run of 120 yards at full speed, is entirely lost sight of by the class of patrons of the game who favor home runs. One season, a few years ago, the tail-end team of the League excelled all its rivals in scoring home runs, while the pennant-winning team took the honors and the prize solely on account of its excellence in team-work at the bat. The mere record of the best averages in scoring base hits in batting seems to be regarded by the majority of "cranks" in base ball as the only sound criterion of good batting. This is one of the fallacies of the game, as such a record is unreliable. The only true criterion of good batting is the record which shows the players who excel in the batting which forwards runners; and this record the existing scoring rules, up to 1895, did not admit of, the champion batsman being regarded as the one who excels in his base-hit average, without regard to the runners his base hits forwarded. For instance, one batsman in a game will make three three-baggers, and forward but a single runner by his three hits, while another batsman by a single base hit, a good "bunt" hit and a telling "sacrifice hit," will forward _four runners_; and yet by the existing scoring rules the record batsman carries off all the honors in the score, and the team-worker at the bat does not get the slightest credit for the effective batting he has done. SACRIFICE HIT RECORD. The following is the record of the players in the League teams of 1894 who led in sacrifice hits last season. The names are given in the order of bases stolen, as recorded in the official average tables made up by Mr. Young. The percentage figures would, of course, materially change the order.