Life — September 5, 1912 — page 11: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Dorlan's Home-Walk: A Baseball Tract" This page presents a humorous baseball poem by Arthur Guiterman illustrated with action sketches. The narrative follows a player named Dorlan during a crucial ninth-inning game. The "tract" format—typically used for moral instruction—parodies religious language by applying it to baseball instead. The illustrations depict baseball action: batters, catchers, and fielders in dynamic poses. The poem describes Dorlan's dramatic at-bat and subsequent base-running, using elevated language to mock both sports enthusiasm and moralistic literature common in the era. The humor lies in treating a baseball game with the gravity usually reserved for spiritual salvation, a satire on how Americans invested emotional importance in sports while Life magazine satirized contemporary culture through such irreverent juxtapositions.