Baseball
The story of the development of baseball among Cook County schools was similar to that of football. There were several baseball leagues that were formed in the 1880s, but none of them lasted. In May and June 1889, however, there was a plethora of games reported in the Chicago Tribune, involving North Division, West Division, Manual Training, Hyde Park, and Northwest Division teams, but no league was evident. There is firm evidence of an organized league in 1890. Evanston, Englewood, Hyde Park, South Division, West Division, Manual Training, and Harvard met on February 7 and formed a conference. The person credited as being most instrumental in launching of the baseball league was Christian Miller, principal and baseball coach at Evanston High. He was an early advocate of athletic competition for schoolboys, and during the 1880s wrote such advocacy pieces for the education journals of the day. Evanston was the league champion and dominated the first several years of competition.
Read more about this topic: Cook County High School League
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“One of the baseball-team owners approached me and said: “If you become baseball commissioner, you’re going to have to deal with 28 big egos,” and I said, “For me, that’s a 72% reduction.””
—George Mitchell (b. 1933)
“Spooky things happen in houses densely occupied by adolescent boys. When I checked out a four-inch dent in the living room ceiling one afternoon, even the kid still holding the baseball bat looked genuinely baffled about how he possibly could have done it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“I’ve gradually risen from lower-class background to lower-class foreground.”
—Marvin Cohen, U.S. author and humorist. Baseball the Beautiful, Links Books (1970)