Baseball Is Violent, Dangerous, And Tiresome?

Now that...base ball season is over, we would suggest, in order that the muscle developing process may not lie dormant during the long winter months, that the base ball athletics turn their attention to sawing up the wood piles of widows and sick people during the winter. The exercise is fully as healthful, is not so violent, dangerous nor tiresome as base ball, and we are sure the results will gratify a curious public fully as much, and we would prefer to give the score of a wood sawing class to that of a base ball club in our columns. Therefore, those of our friends and readers who aspire to have their names emblazoned high upon the roll of fame as champion wood-sawyers will have an opportunity to blaze as such through the columns of this paper.

-Alton Telegraph, November 3, 1871