Noted Base Ball Man S. Strasburg Would Not Have Lasted a Moment in My Day!

Yester day I was flabbergasted to overhear members of my house staff discussing contests of athletic prowess, despite my stringent ban on making eye contact or speaking in my presence. Before firing them on the spot to be replaced by yet more desperate immigrants from the old world, I was able to ascertain that the contest in question concerned a certain “S. Strasburg”, a base ball man employed by the Nationals of Washington D.C., a team which I can only assume, due to its proximity to the seat of the federal government, is poorly run and stuffed to the gills with nincompoops and their incessant nincompoopery.

I have had my new, less ethnic, staff thoroughly research Mr. Strasburg and, after but a moment of internal debate, I present my verdict on him thusly: unfit! Unfit for the hallowed game of base ball!

S. Strasburg’s weakling nature is evident to the keen eyes of J. M. Rutherford and any other man of experienced and precise opinions on sporting events. In my days on the Yale base ball team we relied on our own steely resolve to compete. If an athlete found himself to be injured he wouldn’t run whimpering to a “trainer” who would give him an “iced pack” to heal, he’d take another bolt of whiskey and strychnine powder and return, screaming, to the struggle!

Strasburg knows nothing of these hardy virtues. He only knows the dubious advantages and pampered life of a modern sportsman. He is given his own locked box in which to store his personal possessions and is allowed a ridiculous five days in between sessions of base ball playing. Not in my day! My team mates V. Livingstone Haverty and G. S. DeForest pitched eight consecutive shut outs against Harvard and were fresh as daisies for the championship game the next Tuesday! In that game C. Bryant Howes bunted in H. Dickinson Webb III to score the pennant-winning run despite the pair’s obvious physical shortcomings (Irish ancestry and a peg leg, respectively).

S. Strasburg, coddled as he is, would probably have refused the on-field surgery that Webb demanded after being struck by a passing locomotive while attempting to retrieve a fouled ball in the 15th inning.

Even worse: due to a new scad of “safety regulations,” there are no longer any locomotives operating in close enough proximity to modern base ball parks to test the mettle of current players!

How, I ask you, dear readers, can S. Strasburg hope to outshine the deeds of my sporting contemporaries when he cannot bear the risk of serious injury, railway-related or otherwise, with every trip to the pitching mound or foul territory? The answer, of course, is that he cannot, and would therefore have floundered in my base balling days.