Manly Exercises
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Manly Exercises
On looking over a list of the Base-Ball Clubs, a few days since, we were very much surprised, and equally delighted to see what a number of these excellent associations hail from Brooklyn. And of the number here, a very welcome proportion (and the largest), are evidently from the Eastern District.
This game is a new one in its popularity; it is like an old fashion, suddenly resumed and made all the rage. We remember well when "we boys" used to play it about Brooklyn regularly every Saturday afternoon; but the sporting fraternity looked upon it as a game only for children, and too slow for men. Still Base-Ball has always been a favorite pastime in the country regions. Down on Long Island it is played in a manner to make a fellow bounce! The "pitcher" sends the ball whizzing past your side, as if from a big gun; indeed it is quite an art, as they play it there, to hit it with the "bat." And then there is no running to the "base" and laying the ball on it—or touching you gently with it. It is sent at you, while you are running; and if it hits you, black-and-blue signals will be pretty sure to bear witness of the same for some days afterwards.
But, however played, there are always health and sport in this game. We commend it every way, and hope the spirit of these outdoor amusements will not be allowed to decline. Every man, especially every young man, should endeavor (and who cannot, if he only will?) to spend an hour or two, each day, in some athletic exercise. At any rate, some days of the week, it should be permitted to devote a portion of the time to them. The duties of the remaining days will be all the better performed.
The Germans understand these things well. Strength, exercise, a development of the body, are great points with them. In Turner Societies,1 how much they are doing for the next generation! Perhaps contributing to it the most valuable portion of its healthy men.
Let others not be outdone in this respect by the Germans. Why should they?
Notes:
1. The German Turners were members of the "Turnverein" (gymnastic club) movement, which consisted mainly of so-called German "Forty-Eighters" (political refugees fleeing the European revolutions of 1848) who endorsed a body politic of rigorous health and republican, liberal politics and have been suggested as a model for Whitmna’s own health theorizing in "Manly Health and Training" (Peter Riley, "'Arm, Fortify, Harden, Make Lithe, Himself': 'Manly Health,' German Turners, and Whitman's Poetics of Training," The Oxford Handbook of Walt Whitman, eds. Kenneth M. Price and Stefan Schöberlein [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2024], 225–42). Whitman had a documented interest in the movement and its members, having written about them as early as the late 1840s while editor of the New Orleans Daily Crescent. [back]