What’s so strange about Roosevelt’s cold war on baseball is just how lonely it was. Roosevelt acted almost as a solitary critic. The antibaseball island Roosevelt ruled had just a few cranky inhabitants. Inhabitants, ironically, like Charles Eliot, who opposed the game in a manner which seemed entirely out of touch with competitive sports. “I understand that a curveball is thrown with a deliberate attempt to deceive,” Eliot had said. “Surely this is not an ability we should want to foster at Harvard.”
