Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/371

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AMERICA'S NATIONAL GAME
339

ican League, Detroit, Philadelphia and New York led, Detroit finishing first.

In 1910 Chicago and New York were at the front, the Cubs winning the National pennant, and in the American League the Philadelphia Athletics won from New York.

It was in April, 1908, that Henry Chadwick, for more than fifty years connected as a writer on Base Ball matters with publications of New York and Brooklyn, died at his home in the latter city.

From the time of his arrival in America, at the age of thirteen years, Henry Chadwick was closely identified with our national game. As a lad, he saw it played by its earliest exponents. He was personally acquainted with members of the first Base Ball club ever organized. He knew all the members of the two famous quartets of clubs in New York and Brooklyn. He attended and made records of games played before the first Association of Base Ball Players was formed. He devised the first system of scoring and recording contests on the ball field.

In young manhood he became an authority on the playing of the game, and was personally instrumental in the working out of many improvements in the game itself. Aside from his acknowledged gifts as a writer of pure and forceful English, Mr. Chadwick possessed a peculiar penchant for statistics. To this attribute of Mr. Chadwick more than to any other source is attributable the perfectly accurate records covering the entire professional field and for which the game is to-day indebted.

But it was not to Mr. Chadwick's love for Base Ball,