From the classic storytelling book of 20th century baseball, Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times: The Story Of The Early Days Of Baseball Told By The Men Who Played It.
Think those old-timers from the turn of the century were all hayseeds and illiterate drunkards? Negative. Check out Hall of Famer "Wahoo Sam" Crawford:
Heck, I don't even buy a newspaper. Nothing but trouble in it. Just spoils your day. You get up in the morning, feel pretty good, get hold of a paper, and what do you see? Nothing but trouble. Big headlines about bombs and war and misery. It ruins the day. That's the way I look at it, anyway. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.
So you're doing a book about baseball in the old days. Why does a young fellow like you want to spend his time on something like that? Do you remember what Robert Ingersoll used to say? "Let the dead past bury its dead." That's what he used to say. Robert Ingersoll, remember him? A great man. I always admired him. He was a very famous lecturer in the late 1800's. Very famous and very controversial. He was supposed to be an atheist, but he wasn't really. More a skeptic, more an agnostic, than an atheist. You should read his Lectures some time. Very interesting. Now he's forgotten. Hardly anybody even remembers his name any more. That probably proves something, but I'm not sure what.
Anyway, those days are all back in the past. We're going to spend the rest of our lives in the future, not the past: "Let the dead past bury its dead." On the other hand, Santayana said: "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." So maybe there are two sides to this matter. But I don't think we'll ever repeat the old days in baseball. They'll never come back. Everything has changed too much."
Tags: The Glory of Their Times, Lawrence Ritter, Sam Crawford, Baseball
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