SPORTS OF THE FIELD.

Not many weeks ago, a company of young gentlemen came here, calling themselves “The Athletic Base-Ball Club of Phildelphia.” They met in friendly combat other companies of young gentlemen around New-York, and after defeating them went home. Perhaps the quietness of this provincial invasion and defeat, or the more attractive hanging of a woman in Washington, prevented us from feeling as badly over the event as might have been expected. Certainly the “Athletic” gentlemen did not receive the credit they deserved; for since their departure our young men are rushing out to the fields and playing base-ball. To have attracted our boys and young men from taverns and billiard saloons and counting-rooms, from Broadway and Wall-st., to the lawns beyond the river, is a great achievement. Perhaps it is a mania, and will soon pass away, very much as the chess mania introduced by Mr. Morphy, or the billiard mania of M. Berger. Still we like the manias that set our young people wild after fresh air and romping. The visit of the eleven brawny gentlemen from England some years ago, who came to show us what science there was in cricket, did good; but cricket does not seem to nationalize. We have several clubs; but they are mostly patronized by English citizens. Our American game seems to be base-ball. We had an illustration of its popularity over the river Thursday, when twenty thousand men and women assembled in the head of a midsummer’s day to witness the contest between the champion Atlantic and the Mutual, the two best clubs, we believe, in America. Gentlemen who claim to be familiar with the mysteries of those games, give cricket much prominence over base-ball, like those adepts who regard chess as fashionable and checkers as vulgar. Chess is the more fascinating, but at the same time more tedious and time-exhausting. Beyond the mental exhilaration of the moment, chess is no better than an hour or two spent over books or ledgers. The clerk who goes from his desk to the chess-club and spends the evening over a table, moving small pieces of wood or ivory, may have a great deal enjoyment, but he will probably return to his desk next morning stupid and dull. The prominence of base-ball over cricket lies in its simplicity, just as the skipping-rope and the hoop hold their own against the pleasant game of croquet. Where a game has intricacies and laws, and is so much progressive that to one class of men it will be a science as absolute as engineering or navigation, while to another class it will be a mystery, it can never become popular. We are too busy in America to make chess or cricket a profession, and therefore so many give their leisure evening hours to checkers and their play hours during the day to base-ball.

With all its simplicity, however, base ball has many elements of science and skill. In latter years, its friends have organized and systematized it, and written its laws, and formed local and national associations. Much of the credit belonging to this work of nationalizing base ball should be given to Col. Thomas Fitzgerald, a journalist and leading politician of Philadelphia. Our readers will be more likely to remember Col. Fitzgerald for his great tour through Northern and Western Pennsylvania, when he did so much toward holding that State true to Lincoln and Johnson. He is the President of the Athletic, and by his energy and enthusiasm has made the game national. Base ball comes home to the American, as its characteristics are eminently American. The main requisites are strength and precision in &dlquot;batting,&rdquot; activity in “fielding,” quickness and energy in throwing and catching. In cricket, the requisites are skill and swiftness in “bowling,” and watchfulness in “batting.” A good game of base ball presents few “runs,” while a good game of cricket has many. While cricket is full of interest and has many points of admiration, the professional quality of a few expert cricketers is apt to centralize and narrow the interest of the game. In base-ball, no such danger exists. The difference between a good player and a bad one is not much more than that between a school girl expert with the skipping-rope and the Miss who steps daintily over it for fear of tripping. Any clerk may go into the field with his ball and bat, and, if his muscles are strong enough for him to run and jump, and his fingers are supple enough to keep the ball from striking them, he may in a little time become a player as good as the members of our champion Atlantic, or the Mutual and Athletic. The easy method of learning base-ball makes it popular, and in results it is as good as cricket.

We trust some of our people will do for field-sports generally what Col. Fitzgerald has done for base-ball. That seems to be the rage now—and it will probably run its time and be forgotten like last Spring’s bonnet, or the champion of an old Derby race. Whether it is cricket or base-ball, boating or running, foot-ball or &ldquot;shinny,&rdquot; whatver sort of amusement or sensation, take our pale-faced, sodden-eyed, stoop-shouldered, flacid young men out into the open air and make them run, jump and pull, is a blessing. The girls should have unlimited skipping-rope, hoop and croquet. In this as in other things, our universities should do the work. We like gymnasiums, but theya re only partly efficient. A gymnasium in a back street and up three pairs of stairs will do when nothing else can be obtained; but we want fresh air, and sunshine, and the green grass growing under our feet. Let us, therefore, encourage cricket-clubs and ball-clubs, yacht-clubs and boat-clubs—and let the best “bowler” in cricket, or the best “batter” in base-ball, or the best oarsman in the boat, stand up among his fellows on Commencement-day and receive as nice a medal or diploma as his pale-faced classmate, who studied Horace until he was sent to the hospital with strange symptoms in his head. We shall have better preaching and better pleading at the bar, and more careful diagnosis in medicine, and clearer and more earnest editorials in the journals, if the men who preach and speak and physic and write come from the universities with hard hands and ruddy faces, and clear, glistening eyes, full of the lusty beauty of manhood. Leave prize-fighting to the rowdies, horse-racing to the gamblers and jockeys, and bird and beast-slaying to the butchers—let our field sports be more innocent and useful. In the end, we shall be a better people, and our children will bless us that the blood coursing in their veins is free from typhus and scrofula and the wasting taint of consumption.