University of Vermont - Ariel Yearbook (Burlington, VT)

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14 THE ARIEL, 1908 attaining a high grade of intellectual efficiency if he leave athletics aside. But he is wanted for a managership, and must content himself with a lower grade if he accepts. Here is another who is hovering on the verge of failure in his course, and is sure to fail if he goes off now and again with his team. No man is wanted on a team, or deals fairly with it, who does not put a great deal of heart into it. Once in a great while a specially brilliant fellow can put a large afnount of enthusiasm into athletics and not appear to suffer thereby. The student of average ability cannot. College records are strewn with wrecks from this cause. VT. This brings us back to the point from which we started. Athletics- and especially intercollegiate athletics-have had an abnormal development. The present condition is-or the recently past condition was-one of feverish inten- sity. VVe are working toward a stage in which we can keep all the undeniable good we have gained, and disencumber ourselves of the attendant evils, which we believe to be incidental and detachable. By outlawing professionalism- which has been the chief bane and the source of most others-we shall have made a brave beginning. That accomplished, and the mercenary motives put out of the held, there is left pure sport, with all its healthy rivalry, all its exulta- tion in the consciousness of physical prowess, all its incentives to bodily training and mental alertness, with no undue excitement, no -blunting of moral percep- tions and no suppression of gentlemanly instincts, and with vigor unimpaired- heightened perhaps-for the serious work of college life. They are foolsf' says I-lesiod, who know not that the half is more than the whole. XVhen devotion to athletics has become fanaticism, halve it and you get enthusiasm, which is saner, and more continuous, and longer lived, and far more sure to win all that is worth winning. -- ..: .1- i 1 7

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THE ARIEL, 1908 13 But probably no game of football is ever played of which the same can be said. A certain amount of brute force, which it is difhcult if not impossible to restrain within the bounds of fair play, seems to be of the essence of the game itself. But so long as there is a certain amount of unregenerate brutality in every body of young men, it may be best to regulate and exhaust it by a rough game like football, rather than to let it End its own outlet in more reprehensible ways. This is not denying that there is room for both science and fair-play in football, or that gentlemen may and do play the game. It has possibilities as a vigorous, manly game waiting to be realized. TV. A serious, but thoroughly alien element which has entered into the problem, is professionalism. But this element, because it is alien, can be ex- truded. The student body in our American colleges can exclude from their corporate life anything which they seriously wish to exclude. Wfhat the law calls the police power they can exercise with a thoroughness unknown to any other community. They have all the agencies at their command-the detective, the punitive, the expulsive. The remedy for professionalism is a sound esprit dc 601725-a profound collegiate self-consciousness, a distinct and pronounced social pride, which resents the intrusion of personalities or policies which are below grade, or of other than collegiate grade. If the university guild does not feel the stigma put upon it by the presence in its membership of men hired to assume the academic garb, to simulate the speech of scholars, to flaunt the hon- ored name of Alma Mater, the situation is more serious than any mere matter of athletics. It affects vitally the total morale of student community life. But we do not believe in the existence of any such moral defect in our student bodies. F or the time being the situation needs more thorough exposure. The sounder party, of college sentiment needs reenforcement from a maturer constituency. And the severely critical and wholly unsympathetic judgment of certain extrem- ists may be safely ignored while the reform is going on. V. The most serious consideration yet remains, namely, the tendency to sacrifice higher interests to the exaggerated claims of athletics. Taking the long look ahead, which every young man should take, and which the prevailing influences of college life should induce him to take, is a student justified in giving to athletics an amount of energy which subtracts materially from the intellectual and moral power which he came to college mainly to acquire? Let us not obscure the question by any side issue respecting marks, Has the student body the right to require of the captain or manager of a team that he sacrifice himself for the sake of its pleasure or pride? Here is a man capable of

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THE ARIEL, 1908 15 Tlllbe Beginnings of Zlntereullegiate Baseball in the GH. Til. . HY LYMAN ALLEN, M. D. HE early history of baseball as an intercollegiate sport i11 the Univer- sity of Yermont makes rather amusing reading, as found 111 the issues of the 'lCynic. ln 1884 a tie game with Middlebury was about the only game played, and in 1885 there seems to have been no contest with any other college team. In 1886 the Vermont Intercollegiate Baseball League was formed with Middlebury and Norwich, and we captured the pennant tif there was onej and also played games with Dartmouth fllosing II-OJ and with several town teams, such as Rutland, Plattsburg, Bethel, etc., besides the local High School and St. Josephs College teams. Up to this time we had no inclosed held and all games were played on the campus without gate receipts. In 1887 Athletic Park was used and a few games played with Middlebury and Norwich, which latter college won the baseball pen- nant. ln 1888 we 1'CC21pllll1'CCl this and played a few other games, winning most of them, but being overwhelmed by Dartmouth. Eighteen eighty-nine saw the last of the Vermont Intercollegiate League, for the other two colleges insisted that only academieal students be eligible for o11r team, and we refused the condition. Dartmouth beat us again this year Q12-2, and we lost a series of two out of three games to St. Josephs College. This very strong Catholic college team proved a most important supply of base- ball material for our teams of succeeding years, and the fact that the Burlington l-ligh School also had an unusually large number of athletes at this time was another factor in our later successes. In the spring of 1890 the first systematic training of the team began. There being no cage or gymnasium, the room under the chapel was used for winter baseball work and all the candidates trained in the Y. M. C. A. gymnasium. To B. VV. Abbey, 791, more than to any other one man, is due the credit of putting baseball upon a proper footing. An enthusiastic lover of the game and a st11dent of it also, he directed the training, and was coach and captain in one. He was our first really great pitcher and made a good record in the big league and other professional leagues after leaving college. It is remarkable that a