Confidence in the ability of the team led to the first Eastern trip in 1890, which resulted in a close and exciting 2 to 1 victory over Cornell at Ithaca, May 16. From this time on Cornell and other Eastern colleges appeared with fair regularity in the schedule. Games with Harvard and Yale were arranged in 1891, and every candidate was pledged to strict training after February first under Peter Conway, a famous National League pitcher. The trip resulted in a creditable record; and although the game with Yale was lost 2 to 0, only three hits were scored off the pitcher, Codd, '91, a record for the Varsity almost as welcome as a victory. The game with Harvard, won 4 to 3, was peculiarly satisfying to the tired team, which had already played six games, and had had, in the words of Captain Codd, "as hard a course of training as any University team had, up to that time, ever undergone.... We had given our Eastern antagonists a pretty good 'practice game,'" (the Harvard manager's term). Conditions were reversed the following year when Yale was defeated 3 to 2, but Harvard won 4 to 2. Michigan returned to her Western rivals in 1893 and was almost uniformly successful for several years. An Eastern trip in 1894 was less fortunate, for it resulted in an unbroken series of defeats from Vermont, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. The spell with Cornell was broken, however, in 1895, when Michigan won a decided victory 11 to 0, at Detroit, and had some revenge for previous defeats. E.C. Shields, '94, '96_l_, center field and captain of the team that year, has described the winning of this game as the "most satisfactory moment" of his athletic career; the team was the best Michigan had ever had, and the game after the first few innings became a successful struggle on the part of the pitcher, Sexton, '98_m_, and his team-mates to make it a "shut-out." Since that day Michigan has more than broken even in her games with Cornell. Baseball at this time was genuinely popular; all of the classes in the Literary Department as well as many in the professional schools had their own teams, which not only gave the Varsity good practice but played in a league among themselves, while the fraternities also had a league of some years' standing. This popularity of the national game was soon to pass, however, with the increasing vogue of football, and it has never regained the pre-eminent place it held in student favor during the period which ended in 1900, though, it has always had many enthusiastic followers.