Cobb's Bill of Fare by Irvin S. Cobb — Read

As I understand it, sport is hard work for which you do not get paid. / If, for hire, you should consent to go forth and spend eight hours a day / slamming a large and heavy hammer at a mark, that would be manual toil, / and you would belong to the union and carry a card, and have political / speeches made to you by persons out for the labor vote. But if you do / this without pay, and keep it up for more than eight hours on a stretch, / it then becomes sport of a very high order -- and if you continue it for a / considerable period of time, at more or less expense to yourself, you / are eventually given a neat German-silver badge, costing about two / dollars, which you treasure devotedly ever after. A man who walks / twenty-five miles a day for a month without getting anything for / it -- except two lines on the sporting page -- is a devotee of / pedestrianism, and thereby acquires great merit among his fellow / athletes. A man who walks twenty-five miles a day for a month and gets / paid for it is a letter-carrier.

Also sport is largely a point of view. A skinny youth who flits forth / from a gymnasium attired in the scenario of a union suit, with a design / of a winged Welsh rarebit on his chest, and runs many miles at top speed / through the crowded marts of trade, is highly spoken of and has medals / hung on him. If he flits forth from a hospital somewhat similarly / attired, and does the same thing, the case is diagnosed as temporary / insanity -- and we drape a strait-jacket on him and send for his folks. / Such is the narrow margin that divides Marathon and mania; and it helps / to prove that sport is mainly a state of mind.