Base-Ball and Cricket.

Longman's Magazine gives the following account of some English cricketers who watched a game of base-ball at Philadelphia recently, and then proceeded to form a somewhat poor opinion of the batting qualities of the base-ball players. Cricketers are apt to despise what is called a full-pitched ball - that is, one which does not touch the ground before it reaches the bat. The cricketer can have but a poor eye, in fact, he must be but a poor player, who cannot hit such a ball; and though if he is careless about it, he may readily hit a catch, yet with a moderate amount of care he can hit a full-pitched ball not only easily, but safely. Now the English cricketers saw none but full-pitched balls thrown in the base-ball game they were watching, and yet to their astonishment quite a considerable proportion of these balls were missed! Here were the members of two trained teams, missing again and again a kind of ball which an English schoolboy would be ashamed to miss once in a score of trials.

When the game was over, and, which is more, decided (for base-ball has at least one great advantage over cricket, it very seldom ends in a draw), the English cricketers were asked their opinion of the play, and were obliged to admit that so far as they could judge the batting seemed very weak. "That is a compliment at any rate to the pitchers," they were told. "But to say the truth," one of them replied, "the bowling - or what you call 'pitching' - seemed weak too. Every ball was full pitched, and any one can hit a full-pitched ball; yet your fellows often missed them." A smile passed round among the base-ball players and their friends. "Any one can hit a full-pitched ball, can he? What do you say to that, Fothergill? Can any one hit one of your curves?" Fothergill rather thought not; and considering that an income about ten times as large as an English curate's is paid a first-class pitcher in America, it will be readily understood that if any one could knock their pitching about at pleasure, they would be rather costly at that price. The Englishmen, however, though they may have begun to suspect that there must be more in base-ball pitching than met the eye, could not but maintain their opinion that even with base-ball bats, the bowling, or rather throwing, of the best pitcher ought to be easily met.

They then made some attempts at hitting some curved balls and were disgusted with their desperate batting at the air.

The article goes on to say that

"It would be difficult to decide whether base-ball or cricket is the more scientific so far as the relations of the batsman and the bowler or pitcher are concerned. I note that so far as the actual contest between ball and ball is concerned, the two games seem fairly equal. Though in base-ball pitching, a more difficult scientific problem is involved, it cannot be said that the play to meet the curving ball is more difficult than the play to meet the, varying pitch and break of well-bowled balls at cricket. In base-ball curves there is no room for chance to come in; at least we may neglect such slight differences as may arise from local peculiarities of atmospheric density. It would be perhaps worth inquiring how far the effectiveness of a pitcher's curving would be affected by the barometric pressure. Imagine the captain of a base-ball team warning the nine before play began that they must allow a little more than usual for X's curves because the barometer is unusually high! Yet undoubtedly the air must more effectively deflect a spinning ball when the barometer is at thirty inches than when it is at twenty-nine inches. At cricket, even with the most perfect wickets, the break must be notably affected by accidental peculiarities of the ground. We have all of us seen the champion step forth from his place, while the ball was dead, to pat the ground where the ball was likely to pitch, and we have even occasionally seen him apparently successful in discovering some small stone or lump of hard earth which he has incontinently thrown away. (It has been said by the scoffing herd that the missile is not always seen to fall; but that is a detail.) Now a very slight irregularity where the ball pitches will affect the course which the ball afterwards follows; a ball which would break strongly if the ground were smooth where it fell, may have the break quite taken off by a slight irregularity, or, on the other hand, the break may be doubled.

That the 'break' at cricket is fully-as hard to meet as the 'curve' at base-ball, was shown at Philadelphia on the very same occasion when our cricketers made such poor play with Fothergill's curves. For Mr. Buckland's bowling proved altogether too much for the best of the base-ball batsmen. Again and again did these players, keen to track the ball curving through the air, fail to follow the break of the ball from the ground, nearly every ball going past the bat, though it had seemed to them that with such a bat and no curving in the air, it would be impossible to miss the ball."