,

ITS BASKE
The Game Tha

READING TIME
10 MINUTES 25 SECONDS

ASEBALL is the na-

5, tional game,” the base-

ball fan «said. “ You
can’t deny that.”

“‘T do deny it.”

Then we were off.

What is a national game?

Soccer football is — in
more nations than any other
game. And cricket is in
some. And curling in
others. And baseball, ac-
cording to sports writers,
is An ours... But, ag: me.
Roosevelt is so fond of say-
ing, they are “thinking in
the past.”

Don’t be misled by the
big baseball-attendance fig-
ures in less than half a
dozen big cities. The rest
of the major-league clubs
are dying at the turnstiles.
Most minor leagues would
disband tomorrow if it
weren’t for financial first
aid from the few moneyed
majors. College baseball in-
curs an annual deficit of
$250,000. And don’t take
my word for it.

Ask the man whose busi-
ness it is to sell bats and
balls, mitts and masks. He
knows... Ask the baseball
magnates themselves.

They are so scared about
what is going to happen to
them when a generation
grows up that knows not
baseball that they are re-
sorting to all kinds and
methods of artificial respi-
ration intended to pump new
life into a dying pastime.

Baseball schools, movies,
pep talks, exhibition games
in small towns, free admis-
sion for school children,
radio interviews with stars,
subsidies to semi-pro and semi-amateur outfits—all have
been tried without any appreciable increase in the num-
ber of people who play the game, as distinguished from
the big-city crowds that just watch it.

Meanwhile, between now and spring, 80,000,000 Amer-
icans will watch 60,000 teams pldy 1,500,000 games of
basketball.

On the attendance side, this is 30,000,000 more than
see baseball games, 40,000,000 more than see football
games, 50,000,000 more than see horse races or boxing
matches.

This in spite of the fact that most basketball games
are played in school, college, and Y gyms, where fans
have to ease themselves in between the punching bag
and the rowing machine and sit on the parallel bars.

In auditoriums where there are seats by the thousand,

NOVEMBER 5, 1938

  
    

80 million fans can’t be wrong on one.
a game that outdraws baseball!

BY YANKEE STADE

iL huw
as Everything —

thousands fill them. In In-
diana, where the game is
hottest, crowds of 7,500 fre-
quently converge on villages
of 750. In New York, where
basketball is just getting
established, crowds of 15,000
to 18,000 in Madison Square
Garden are the rule.

If the time comes when the
game is played under flood-
lights in baseball stadia, the
late Abner Doubleday,
founder of baseball, will
emerge from his dugout and
throw away his bat. By the
same token, if the game is
regularly played in all movie:
theaters between features—
as it already is played in some
—show business will enjoy
one of its biggest years.

Where basketball has it all
over its rival games, how-
ever, is in the number of peo-
ple who play it. Sixty thou-
sand teams are rated good
enough to play in public ex-
hibitions. How many more
teams there must be that
play privately for their own
amusement—and how many
more unattached individuals
who pick up an hour or two
at the baskets, just as the
golfer or the tennis player
picks up a game on the fair-
ways or the courts!

It is safe to say that the
number of people who ac-
tually play basketball out-
strips the number of people
who play any other game in
America by at least three to

Basketball’s climb to the
popularity tops would seem
to be based chiefly on the fun
that is inherent in the sport
itself. This goes for players
and spectators both.

Basketball has everything:
the sharp physical contact of
football and the prize ring, the mental and manual co-
ordination of baseball, the intricate beauty of ice hockey,
and the exciting speed of the horse race.

The last-named quality stands out.

“Heaving Hank” Luisetti, the “ Slinging Sammy ”
Baugh of intercollegiate basketball—who hails from San
Francisco—frequently scores a point a minute; in one
game he made twenty-four points in eleven minutes.
Not much chance for boredom, for players or watchers,
in a game that goes as fast as that!

The conclusion is inescapable that more people play
basketball, and more people pay to see it played, because
they get more enjoyment out of it than they do out of
any other athletic pastime. In short, basketball is the
American national game.

It is, in fact, (Continued on third page following)