Judge, 1919-10-18 · page 11 of 36
Judge — October 18, 1919 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis **The Cartoon and Story:** This is a humorous commentary on social bores and obsessive sports fans. The illustration shows two men—one gesturing animatedly with a megaphone while discussing baseball, the other appearing resigned—embodying the text's theme. **The Point:** Walt Mason's poem satirizes grown men who monopolize conversation with endless, tedious details about sports (baseball, boxing, golf) and athletes (Jim Blitzen, Corbett, Dempsey, Jake Kilrain). The narrator tries repeatedly to discuss his own interests—his car's performance, a successful drive from Rochester to Troy—but is consistently ignored because listeners are too absorbed in rehashing games and fighters. **The Satire:** The joke targets the shallow enthusiasm and social rudeness of sports fans whose obsession makes them deaf to anything else. Mason presents this as a form of madness—"forty thousand dippy words that no sane man would use"—making fans appear foolish and tiresome rather than passionate. The illustration's exaggerated gesture reinforces this mockery of overwrought fan behavior.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Fans By Watt Mason Illustration by Raveu Barton ¥ friends come drilling from the links, tired out, at close of day; and each one tells me what he thinks about the other’s play. Oh, there is talk to charm the birds, as all these cranks enthuse, and forty thousand dippy words that no sane man would use. In vain I seck a chance to tell of how my car performs, how it goes chugging, passing well, through mud and rain and storms. T start to tell how yesterday it climbed a tree on high; but none will list to what I say, and still the golf words fly. The baseball fans now take their seats beneath the sunsot tree, and grow excited o’er the feats of players two or thr The way Jim Blitzen soaked the pill was something simply grand; Jones sent a homer up the hill, and ran to beat the band. The umpire robbed us of the game, one angry neighbor said, and some one ought to climb his frame and lacerate his head. That southpaw skate was on the bum, he'll never do, at all; the catcher had a busted thumb and couldn’t hold the ball. I listen till I'm sick and sad, and then I try to tell how my old boat, when roads were bad, skinned on, through vale and dell. A dozen other cars were mired, when my car came in view; and oh, it made their drivers tired to see me waltzing through. But no one tums attentive car to anything I say; wu the fans all yawp and paw and rear, about the game today. It makes me tired when grown-up men on some fool game are gone, so they will thresh old yarns again, from gloaming until dawn, and when a man who's strictly sane would talk of choo- choo boats, they act as though they had a pain, and missed their divers goats. At dusk I sit upon the porch with other gifted cnaps, and while I smoke my five-cent torch the others talk of scraps. They talk of Willard and of cheese, of Dempsey and his poke; of many other pugs like these, while I sit by and smoke. They talk of vanished golden days, when Corbett was a peach, of Bob Fitzsimmons’ winning ways, of Peter Jackson’s reach. I listen for a weary time, while smoking eight and when their talk becomes a crime, I’d speak a while of cars. I'd like to tell of how I went from Rochester to Troy, and how that speedy journcy meant the essence of all joy. No cylinder was known to miss, and not a tire went wrong; and every verst added bliss, and life a grand, sweet song. But no one listens, and a pain shoots through my ed soul; thev talk of fat old Jake Kilrain, and all that rigmarole. I try to be a balanced man, without a foolish fad, and when I listen to a fan it makes my spirit sad.