Clipping:Riot and revelry of Sunday baseball
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| Date | Monday, May 20, 1889 |
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| Text | [reporting a meeting of the Sunday Observance Association of Kings County] Very careful attention has been given to the subject of Sunday base ball games. No regular games of base ball are played in Kings County on Sunday, but at Ridgewood Park, just over the line, in Queens County, games are played regularly. However, all the demoralizing effects and influences of this fact are visited upon our people as well. The law and order societies of Queens county and the New York Sabbath Committee joined forces with this association and visited the law officers of that county. Some redress was promised but none has as yet come. Sunday, in the neighborhood of Ridgewood Park, has become a day of riot and revelry. The persistence with which the local base ball club managers continue to defy the laws of the State, public sentiment and the moral and religious rights of the people, and interests of the community, reflects great discredit upon them. The neglect of the officials of Queens County to arrest these law breakers and punish them ought to be sufficient to rouse the law and order elements of that county to support only such candidates for district attorney and sheriff as will stamp out this defiance of law. Efforts will be made to rouse such public sentiment in that direction. Public meetings will be held throughout that county on this subject. ... While expressing no opinion upon base ball as a sport, we desire in all candor to ask the patrons of this sport in this city whether they should continue their patronage of a club the managers of which so wantonly and openly continue to knowingly violate the laws of the commonwealth. Your patronage of the sport on week days the managers doubtless consider an indorsement of the general management of club interests. Those who believe in maintaining Sunday and have respect for law should refuse their patronage to the local club until the management rectify this public abuse. Brooklyn Eagle May 20, 1889 By the way, the Mail and Express recently stated that “Sunday in the neighborhood of Ridgewood Park has become a day of riot and revelry.” There never was a greater falsehood uttered by that paper. During the past two seasons the immense base ball gatherings at Ridgewood Park have been as orderly as any seen either at the Polo Grounds or Washington Park. The patrons of Ridgewood know well enough that any disorder there by the crowd would cause the Brooklyn Club to stop their games there, and in self protection and to insure the continuance of their Sunday recreation in watching these contests they form themselves into a sort of committee of the whole on police and keep excellent order. Not even under the exciting conditions of the Athletic row last month at the park was there either rioting or disorder, the vast assemblage being a model one in the good humor they preserved under the circumstances. ... In its rabid partisanship the Mail and Express goes beyond the bounds of truth. Whatever may be the opinion of Sunday ball playing in general, there is neither truth nor justice in the Mail’s charge about riot and disorder, as the Brooklyn Club would not countenance it for a moment. Brooklyn Eagle June 1, 1889 |
| Source | Brooklyn Eagle |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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