There is not the same necessity of reform in college base-ball as there is in college foot-ball, to be sure. The rules of the game are perfectly definite and are never disputed, umpires are provided for, and there is no opportunity for quarrelling about this nor as to where a match is to be played. Then, why should Harvard ask Princeton and Yale to form a separate league? The answer is ready enough: To boom college base-ball. How could the annual Yale-Princeton foot-ball game have become the paramount athletic event, that it has, if it were simply a game of a long series and played by two colleges of a large foot-ball league! Or, to draw an analogy from college boating, what is the college regatta of the year if it is not at New London, between the two university crews of Harvard and Yale? And why is this paramount to the intercollegiate regatta rowed on Lake George or Saratoga? Because the element of chance, in winning, is less. That is one reason; and another is, that the interest in the contest is more concentrated, being centred on only two crews.

And Harvard and Yale were not even the leading colleges in the Inter-collegiate Association. It was Cornell that was winning the cup year after year. So that even if it could be said of Harvard and Yale's withdrawing from the Intercollegiate Boating Association that it was with a view of enabling one or the other of them to always come in first anyhow, how can anything be said in opposition to the proposed league of Harvard, Yale and Princeton in base-ball. These colleges always lead, and one or the other of them wins the championship, and if once a league by themselves, public interest, not to say collegiate too, will concentrate on their three nines most naturally. Let this once be done and the base-ball matches between Harvard, Yale and Princeton will be what the New London race and the New York foot-ball match already are. Then and not till then college base-ball will attract greater and more exciting attention than the games of professionals.