Too Much Base Ball Coverage in the Newspaper?

"For the last fifteen years every boy in St. Louis who was but half a boy learned to play and love baseball. Where are those boys now? They are in the stores, the counting houses, the banks, the courts, the professions, the newspapers...They constitute probably two-thirds of the newpaper reading class. Manhood and its cares have imposed labor on them which prevents them from longer indulging in the game, but at the mere mention of it, their finger ends tingle as of old, and they greedily devour every scrap of news which appears on the subject, and not withstanding the press of business, they will manage to steal away from it, once in a while, long enough to witness a crack game."

"...we want to know all about the muffs and fouls, hot ones, daisy cutters, etc., of each and every player...we shall continue to have a warm spot in our hearts for this game of games, until we are far grayer headed than you are now, and we count much upon the pleasure of telling our grandchildren and great grandchildren our exploits away back in the infancy of the national game."

These words appeared in the St. Louis Republican on March 26, 1875 and were in response to an elderly gentleman who had written the paper to complain about all the baseball coverage in the newspaper. The writer of this article went on to say that "(we) are only doing just what you would now be doing if your boyhood had been timed anytime between 1859 and 1875, instead of forty years before that."