THE ETERNAL MUCKER
The baseball series for the world’s championship between the winners in the National and American Leagues has ended in a fashion unexpected by dopesters, both professional and amateur. Most of the wise gentlemen who edit the sporting columns of newspapers had predicted a victory for the New York Yankees. The triumph, however, perched upon the banners of the New York Giants in four straight games. It is a hard world, particularly for those who have to depend for a living largely upon their records as prophets. The victory of the Giants was unexpected but there was another feature of the series which, we are sad to say, was unforeseen but which could readily be expected from the average American baseball crowd.
The second game of the series was called on account of darkness, when the score was tied in the tenth inning. Those who attended the game differ as to the necessity for this act. Christy Mathewson, whose record for good sportsmanship and fairness cannot be questioned, states that the umpires were correct in their judgment. The howling fans, however, believed otherwise. With the intelligence usually displayed by a mob, they proceeded to vent their wrath upon Judge Landis and his wife. Judge Landis, who resigned an honorable position on the bench to become the arbiter of baseball ethics, had a signal exhibition of the ethics of baseball fans when he attempted to leave the grounds at the conclusion of the game. There seems to have been no one present who was quite fool enough to hurl the traditional pop bottle at Judge Landis’s head, but the fans apparently stopped short of little in the way of verbal missiles. The American likes to consider himself a good sportsman. He has not earned this title by his acts on the bleachers surrounding American diamonds.
The criticism that the game was called .to insure the necessity of additional lucrative contests has been silenced by the gift of the receipts of the game to charities. Half of them ought to have gone to a Society for the Suppression of the Eternal Mucker.
Source: The Outlook, 18 October 1922
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