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Show Old Fan Roasts Modern Rooters Says Baseball Enthusiasts Are Not Nearly ns Witty as They Used to Be. "It doesn't seem to me as If the rooters root-ers are as witty or orlglWal as they ufted to be, " said the grizzled baseball zealot and fnr.atlc. "I've been to every game on the home grounds this season, and to some games on foreign grounds, and I haven't heard rr.oro than half a dozen genuinely funny remarks from the rooters' sections. I'm a bleacherlte, or sun god, too, occasionally and' It was In the bleachers where the fun used to he, you'll remember. Some days I go Into the grand stand and some on the bleachers, but, as I say, there's nn absence ab-sence of such enough witty cracks from the rooters nowadays that I deplore greatly. It used to bo as good as the game to listen to the shrewdy whimsical, whimsi-cal, really and truly funny things that fellow fans would hae to say to tho players. Some of their sayings were as good as the best things you d hear In tho theater at a humorous show. The chaps who got these things off did not set themselves deliberately to the task of being funny for the entertainment of the crowd, but their remarks ros Involuntarily Invol-untarily to their lips, and they were often so telling that they'd often all but break up the game, while all hands, Including In-cluding the. players themselves rocked with the enjoyment of the quips "But nowadays the alleged funny fallows fal-lows at the ball games appear to Just lay themselves out to be funny, and consequently, they're not the least bit entertaining. In fact, most of them ore Simply nuisances and bores, and they get on the nerven of everybody within tho sound of their voices. No man m be deliberately and determinedly and persistently funny for it whole afternoon after-noon at a ball game, and when you observe ob-serve out of the tail of your eye that such a chap Is Just exuding hla noise for the sake of making a hit why along toward the middle of the game you feel like hitting him with a bat "It can't bo that all of the good thlnp-? fronr the rooters' bem In s have bi said yet. nnd that's one of tho reasi why I can't explain the utter lack Of spontaneity of the rooters' cracks at tils day and date e. "There's a big voiced 'Well, well, well,' man who spoils the w hole effect of his yawp by repeating It tlmo and again, until people become Pick and tlrr.L of It. The Old tlmo 'Well, wdl Well,1 mnn used to get off his gigantic I howl only a couple of times during tie-course tie-course of the game, and then only at the opportune points, o that there I OS. actual meat for mirth In his huge note of amazement. "There seems too, to be a good den) less patience and a heap more bitterness among the fans nowadays than there tised to be. The 'take him out people begin their unreasonable shout the b -stant a player of the homo nine makes the slightest kind of art error, and then tho player loses his nerve, and hai all he can do to scramble through the game. It doesn't make any difference, apparently, to the present) generation of fans whether a irrnn of the team I IS been sent, in a pinch, to cover a position posi-tion tliat he Is entirely nw to. If he exhibits the most natural nnd unci' nble break In his playing of the now position po-sition they get at him with their wild demands that he be 'taken out,' and the result Is always disastrous upon the player's game Tlmo was when a player play-er had to make a number of bad breaks, and clearly show that he was out of form and In no Phape to go nhad 1 -fore the 'take him out' shriekers got busy, "The rooters of todny- too. seem to me to be a good deal too personal In their remarks to players, nnd I am not surprised sur-prised that It has happened ;everal times this season that players Insulted in this manner have climbed Into the stand and slugged their tormentors The old-tlmo rooter wa.s funny without being bitter or mean. He was too good-humored good-humored and Rtellow and alive to the r ights of others to make an allusion, for Instance, to the how legs of a player, or to the ugliness of his face, or to some Other physical characteristic that Is liable lia-ble to be a sore spot with the man In uniform. The rooters of today, I am bound to soy, are wholly ungenerous and Inconsiderate in their way of pointing point-ing out thec things' and In harping and chewing on them throughout the length of a long game or a double header. head-er. It Isn't square. I don't blame tho ball players for resenting it. I could mention several renowned' actors who are extremely bow legged, but tho gallery! gal-lery! tee don't bawl that fact at them when tho nctoi-M are giving their performances. per-formances. And I can't sec why it Isn't lust as mean and common to allude to tho physical defects or peculiarities of ball players ns it would be to hurl such remarks at actors on the stage "I never was an audible rooter myself. my-self. At an early ntage of my life I reached the conclusion that 1 wasn't a little bit funny, and I've never tried to be funny since I made up my mind that way. I wish some of the fellows who attend tho ball games would achieve a belated reform In the name direction. It's neer too late to mend." |