Old-Timey Baseball

In the spirit of recent baseball debates about the scientific method of people like Billy Beane and Bill James versus the old-time scouts, I thought I'd share an article that I just came across in the Bandon (OR) Recorder from April 14, 1904 lamenting the passing of old-time baseball. Like 80% of newspapers 100 years ago, this was reprinted from another paper, in this case the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.

The article begins, "Time will not turn back in its flight, but the mind can travel back to the days before baseball was so well known and before it had become so scientific." Among the ways which the game had become too scientific: baseballs were standardized instead of the old days when you wound a pair of socks around a hard center like a bullet; there were now 4 bases instead of 6 or 7, depending on whatever the players in the game wanted; and when you wanted to throw someone out you literally threw the ball at them and if you hit them they were out.