Sportswriters, Hark!

This outstanding piece of sports journalism from The Quincy [Illinois] Herald is reprinted in Vol. V, pp 20-21 of Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor, ed. T. L. Masson (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1904):

The glass-armed toy soldiers of this town were fed to the pigs yesterday by the cadaverous Indian grave-robbers from Omaha.

The flabby, one-lunged Reubens who represent the Gem City in the reckless rush for the baseball pennant had their shins toasted by the basilisk-eyed cattle-drivers from the West. They stood around with gaping eyeballs like a hen on a hot nail, and suffered the grizzly yaps of Omaha to run the bases until their necks were long with thirst.

Hickey had more errors than Coin’s Financial School, and led the rheumatic procession to the morgue.

The Quincys were full of straw and scrap-iron. They couldn’t hit a brick-wagon with a pickax, and ran bases like pall-bearers at a funeral. If three-base hits were growing on the back of every man’s neck they couldn’t reach ‘em with a feather duster.

It looked as if the Amalgamated Union of South America Hoodoos was in session for work in the thirty-third degree.

The geezers stood about and whistled for help, and were so weak they couldn’t lift a glass of beer if it had been all foam. Everything was yellow, rocky and whangbasted, like a stigtossel full of doggle-gammon.


The game was whiskered and frost-bitten.

The Omahogs were bad enough, but the Quincy Brown Sox had their fins sewed up until they couldn’t hold a crazy quilt unless it was tied around their necks.

(You'll love it even more when The British Printer gets up on its high horse about the unashamed use of the American language.)

[Thanks to Mickey and Ramona.]