ABSTRACT
On July 22nd, the later-famous poet and classicist, Robert Graves, was reported dead in a letter sent to his mother by his commanding officer. It should be emphasized that baseball, our national pastime, has never been a class sport. The egalitarian and democratic mores of baseball have always been quite different from once-class-rooted mores of amateur football or tennis. Walter Camp and Yale dominated American football from 1876 until 1908, when Percy Haughton, a graduate of Groton School and Harvard ’99, became the first professional coach at his Alma Mater. In the Princeton class of 1914, three-fourths were educated at private schools, including fifteen graduates of St. Paul’s School. Among them was Hobey Baker, the last national sports hero to come from the inner ranks of the Eastern Seaboard, Old-Stock Establishment. An expensive sport, grew rapidly among school and college boys and girls in the affluent years following World War II.
