1897

In this topsy-turvy world with elections coming up and a half-war going on, our college presidents are being disturbed by high costs and college drinking and difficulty with parking spaces for the college boys' cars, and our women are having to balance budgets and to make a safe bet on how far crinoline will go and whether the college girl ought to go to the fraternity house party as a blind date. There are lots of worries about the boy with his hot-rod urge, fearing this activity will take first place in sports.

In these times older men of our vintage try to see through the tumblings and turnings of things and ideas and to find something that still stands firm and sound. I want to present one thing that I think is secure and stable. It is the home run fence. No responsible sports writer forgets to note the home run of the night or day game, and no boy who is a fan can eat his Wheaties till he finds out if his hero had one. I think it is time that this solid, stable barrier of ours the home run fence comes to its full usefulness in helping to steady us in these strange times.

Let's take a little squint at the Little League Baseball Movement, with its spontaneous onrush towards the great force of our American game baseball. Hardly a village or a small city is now without a private field with a 60 ft. diamond and 180 ft. home run fence. 175,000 boys are already dreaming of hitting the ball over one of these fences. These boys, aged 8 through 12, are dreading the day when they will become 13 and too old to play on the Little League Team.

The force of the movement that has grown out of Little League Baseball is rolling up like a snowball. Let's add up just a little, 175,000 boys already play and 300,000 brothers and sisters of the boys are already tagged with interest in the baseball activities. Any movement that touches a half million boys 8 to 15 years old and a half million mothers and fathers and the girls who are also interested, is a force that needs most careful attention of our business men and our scholars and perhaps our great group of retired men too old to keep on the high speed of the industrial machine age. Say men after 75. I think this force can and soon will bang on the doors of our colleges.

I believe that Dartmouth College with little effort might become an ideal place for a tournament of the Junior Baseball movement for an area within 100 miles of Hanover.

I have developed a set of specifications with drawings for correct building of fields for the various ages 8 to 15 years, including back stops, dugouts, bleacher screens and proper field house. I have a set of suggestions for raising money to support the movement including the home run fence.

The coaches of our 30 teams have formulated rules for play suited to the boys in the older group and the Little League Inc. has thoroughly developed drawings and regulations for the younger boys in the Farm Teams.

The training that the boys receive under fine coaches, playing under strict discipline, is stimulating these boys with ambition to go on, and many of them are thinking of going to college. I think the colleges over the country can furnish ideal facilities for the various tournaments over the country, with a great service to the boys and a financial advantage to the colleges.

Secretary and Treasurer 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.