Life, 1888-06-21 · page 4 of 18
Life — June 21, 1888 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis This page contains three satirical pieces rather than a unified cartoon: **"The Home Base"** uses baseball metaphor to mock foreigners attending games at Polo Grounds. The joke suggests an out-of-town visitor attending a baseball game will be jostled, dusty, and uncomfortable—a critique of the chaotic experience American sporting events offer. **"Our Fresh Air Fund"** section acknowledges charitable donations (listed at bottom) supporting poor urban children with summer breaks. The before/after illustrations show health improvement from fresh air exposure—earnest social commentary rather than satire. The page is primarily text-based humor and charitable acknowledgment rather than political cartooning. The satirical edge targets spectator culture and foreign visitors' unfamiliarity with American pastimes, reflecting early 20th-century attitudes toward both newcomers and baseball enthusiasm.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE HOME BASE. EN with scratches and bruises, And covered with loam, Though it’s nearest the umpire, There's ro base like home. * * RHAPS some sporadic foreigner in town would like to convince himself that baseball is really our national game. This being the case, let him start, by way of the Elevated Railroad, at the very hottest period of our hottest afternoons,. for the Polo Grounds—so called. because polo is not played there. The cars will be crowded to suffocation with others who are going to see the game, and he will stand up all the way. At 116th Street he will get out with the others and crowd with five more of his kind into the wreck of a two- seated coach, while three more ball-enthusiasts will climb up to the box-seat, the driver sitting on the foot-board, and thus he will jolt merrily over to the entrance to the grounds. He will not know by what route he came when he gets there— provided he is not killed in transit in a collision with other carriages—for he will have traveled in a cloud of dust so thick that one might drive tacks in it. Most of this dust will be on his clothes, down his back and in his eyes when he buys his ticket. U NLESS he has arrived an hour or so before the game is called he will find all the seats in the grand-stand taken, and he will go and sit out in the hot sun upon a rough board and watch from ten to fifteen thousand Americans in their shirt sleeves howl and shriek and bellow and yell as the game proceeds. He will ascertain, on his homeward journey, if he cares to enquire, that these ten or fifteen thousand people have all had a delightful time, and that there is not an upright collar, a presentable pair of cuffs, nor aclean face among them. And he will go to the next game, and the next, and the ones after that, and will regret all his life that he does not live in a country where baseball is a national institution. * * * * * * UNGRY JOE, the eminent bunco-steerer, who has just finished a two and a half year’s engagement with the State prison authorities, is in town again. The rural visitor, who meets the nephew of the president of his local bank, will confer a favor upon himself if he refrain from accompanying that nephew to the place where the $5,000 painting he drew in a lottery is stored. HE people of Moncton, New Brunswick, recognize merit when they meet it. A lady of that place, who con- ducted a saloon in violation of the excise laws, being on trial, horsewhipped the prosecuting attorney in court, whereupon the admiring citizens presented her with a diamond ring. * * * More for those who go to Jerome Park: There’s many a slip ’twixt the race and the tip. * * * " OUES, ELLIOTT, scientist ; son of Samuel Elliott Coues and Charlotte Haven Ladd Coues, b. at Portsmouth, N. H., Sept. 9, 1842; chiefly known by his numerous works on ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, bibliography, comparative anatomy, and natural philosophy—” as he informs us, per proof slip of a biographical sketch he has just completed, writes to ask LIFE to cartoon him and make him famous. Professor Coues is famous enough already as an Esoteric Buddhist and an exoteric simpleton ; but, nevertheless, if he will leave his material body in Wash- ington and come on to New York with his astral body, we will endeavor to accommodate him. We shall recognize him by the green aura. * * * HIS is the proper season of the year to construct a dynamite bomb for the man who will ask if it is hot enough for you every day for the next two months. Make it a big one that will scatter him far and wide. * * * FUND Before After OW that the warm weather is really here we doubly rejoice in the kindly spirit shown by our readers toward the suffering little prisoners of the city. Remember what three dollars will do in this direction, It means two weeks of fresh air, fresh food and fresh fun toa little being who never had it before. There are many thousands of them, and you needn't be afraid of giving too much, $127.00 10.00 10.00 10.00 Previously Acknowledged. . we F.B. HL te ts B.O.C. Fuji Yama A Reader Stuart Robson Sequsg. N.W.C. H. E. M. H.L.V. comicbooks.com