Explore "Our Baseball Club and how it won the Championship" by Noah Brooks on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On the ridge above the town of Catalpa stands a huge building known as "The Fair Building. " When the Northern District Agricultural Fair was held in Catalpa, this structure was used for displays of mammoth squashes, women's handiwork, exhibits of flax, wheat, flour, and the other products of the fertile region of Northern Illinois. Now it was given over to desolation and neglect. The men who had helped to pay for its erection were not willing to signify by tearing it down that they had given up all hope of ever winning back to Catalpa the institution that had moved away up to the northern part of the state. Some of these days, they said, the Fair would come back to Catalpa, and then the building would be ready for the show, as of old.
The promoters of the new baseball club scheme had no difficulty in securing permission for the players to practice in the building. Accordingly, when the leisure days of winter came on, the lads betook themselves to the lonesome and barnlike structure and warmed themselves with the exercise that pitching, catching and running made needful.