In cricket the wicket-keeper, who, like the baseball catcher, is
protected, although he has no mask, is the most difficult man to obtain,
because he has the hardest time and the least public approbation; in
baseball the catcher is a hero and every boy aspires to his mitt.
In cricket no player makes more than three hundred pounds a season,
unless it is his turn for his one and only benefit, when he may make a
thousand pounds more. But most players do not reach such a level of
success that a benefit is their lot. But baseballers earn enormous sums.
If a match could be arranged between eleven cricketers and eleven
baseballers, the cricketers to be allowed to bowl and the baseballers to
pitch, the cricketers to use their own bats and the baseballers their
own clubs, I fancy that the cricketers would win; for the difficulty of
hitting our bowling with a club would be greater than of hitting their
pitching with a bat. But their wonderful fielding and far more accurate
and swifter throwing than ours might just save them. Such throwing we
see only very rarely, for good throwing is no longer insisted upon in
cricket, much to the game's detriment. That old players should lose
their shoulders is natural--and, of course, our players remain in first-
class cricket for many years longer than ball champions--but there is no
excuse for the young men who have taken advantage of a growing laxity in
this matter.
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