Mark Twain on Base ball

Mark Twain, who just so happens to be one of my favorite writers, gave a speech which compared the sport of baseball to the Sandwich Islands—the speech was reported by newspapers across the country. The same month that Twain was finishing up his manuscript for “Connecticut Yankee”, he took part in a banquet honoring two American baseball teams who had traveled the world from October 1888 to April 1889 hosting exhibition games and promoting the sport worldwide.

The world tour was financed and led by the new president of the Chicago National League Club, “Al” Spalding. The young Twain had crossed paths with Spalding when he watched him as a pitcher back in Hartford in 1875. The two would re-unite almost 15 years later; after the two American baseball teams had traveled to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) and on to Australia, Ceylon, Egypt, Italy, France, and England, before returning to New York. Spalding’s goal was to spread the great “American” made game of baseball to the four corners of the world and use this opportunity to expand his sporting goods empire by marketing his bats, balls, gloves, and uniforms.

When the teams sailed back to New York in April of 1889, Spalding and the players were honored with a round of celebration and speech making. Many notables were in attendance that day: the future President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, artist Frank Millet and Twain’s close friend, the Reverend Joseph Twichell. Mark Twain was introduced as a native of the Sandwich Islands—a tribute to his budding days as a traveling newspaper reporter there in the 1860s. Below is the text of his speech:

From the Boston Daily Globe, April 9, 1889, p. 1

Though not a native, as intimated by the chairman, I have visited, a great many years ago, the Sandwich Islands-that peaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off home of profound repose, and soft indolence, and dreamy solitude, where life is one long slumbrous Sabbath, the climate one long delicious summer day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another.

And these boys have played base ball there! Base ball, which is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century! One cannot realize it, the place and the fact are so incongruous; it's like interrupting a funeral with a circus. Why, there's no legitimate point of contact, no possible kinship, between base ball and the Sandwich Islands; base ball is all fact, the Islands all sentiment. In base ball you've got to do everything just right, or you don't get there; in the islands you've got to do everything just wrong, or you can't stay there. You do it wrong to get it right, for if do it you right you get it wrong. There isn't a way to get it right, but to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it the righter it is. The natives illustrate this every day. They never mount a horse from the larboard side, they always mount him from the starboard; on the other hand, they never milk a cow on the starboard side, they always milk her on the larboard; it's why you see so many short people there--they've got their heads kicked off. When they meet on the road, they don't turn out to the right, they turn out to the left.

And so, from always doing everything wrong end first, that way, it makes them left-handed-left-handed and cross-eyed. They are all so. When a child is born, the mother goes right along with her ordinary work, without losing half a day--it's the father that knocks off and goes to bed till he gets over the circumstances. And those natives don't trace descent through the male line, but through the female. They say they always know who a child's mother was. Well, that odd system is well enough there, because there a woman often has as many as six or seven husbands, all at the same time--and all properly married to her, and no blemish about the matter anywhere. Yet there is no fussing, no trouble. When a child is born the husbands all meet together in convention, in a perfectly orderly way, and elect the father, and the whole thing is perfectly fair; at least as fair as it would be anywhere. Of course you can't keep politics out; you couldn't do that in any country, and so, if three of the husbands are Republicans and four are Democrats, it don't make any difference how strong a Republican aspect the baby has got, that election is going Democratic every time. And in the matter of that election those poor people stand at the proud altitude of the very highest Christian civilization; for they know, as well as we, that all women are ignorant, and so they don't allow that mother to vote.

In those Islands the cats haven't any tails, and the snakes haven't any teeth; and what is still more irregular, the man that loses the game gets the pot. And as to dress: the native women all wear a single garment--but the men don't. No, the men don't wear anything at all. They hate display; when they even wear a smile they think they are overdressed. Speaking of birds, the only bird there that has ornament feathers has only two--just barely enough to squeeze through with--and they are under its wings instead of on top of its head, where of course they ought to be to do any good. The native language is soft, and liquid and flexible, and in every way efficient and satisfactory--till you get mad; then, there you are; there isn't anything in it to swear with. Good judges all say it is the best Sunday language there is; but then all the other six days in the week it just hangs idle on your hands; it isn't any good for business; and you can't work a telephone with it. Many a time the attention missionaries has been called to this defect, and they are always promising they are going to fix it; but no, they go fooling along and along, and nothing is done.

Speaking of education, everybody there is educated there, from the highest to the lowest; in fact, it is the only country in the world where education is actually universal, and yet every now and then you run across instances of ignorance that are simply revolting-simply degrading to the human race. Think of it--there, the ten takes the ace, but let us not dwell on such things; they make a person ashamed.

Well, the missionaries are always going to fix that, but they put it off, it off, and put it off, and so the nation is going to keep on going down and down and down till some day you will see a pair of jacks take a straight flush.

Well, it is refreshment to the jaded, water to the thirsty, to look upon men who have so lately breathed the soft airs of those islands of the blest and had before their eyes the inextinguishable vision of their beauty. No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one, no other land could so longingly and so beseechingly me, sleeping and waking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides; other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my car; I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack; I can see the spirit of its woodland solitudes; I can hear the plash of its brooks, and in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished 20 years ago.

And these world-wanderers have lately looked upon these things!--and with eyes of flesh, not the unsatisfying vision of the spirit. I envy them that! Yes, and I would envy them somewhat of the glories they achieved in their illustrious march about the mighty circumference of the earth if it were fair; but no, it was an earned run, and envy he out of place. I will rather applaud-add my welcome to the vast shout now going up, from Maine to the Gulf, from the Florida keys to frozen Alaska, out of the throats of the other 65,000,000 of their countrymen. They have carried the American name to uttermost parts of the earth--and covered it with glory everywhere.

That is a service to sentiment; but they did the general world a practical service--a service to the great science of geography. Ah! think of that! We don't talk enough about that--don't give it its value. Why, when these boys started out you couldn't see the equator at all; you could walk right over it and never know it was there. That is the kind of equator it was. Such an equator as that isn't any use to anybody; as for me, I would rather not have any equator at all than a dim thing like that, that you can't see. But that is all fixed now; you can see it now; you can't run over it now and not know it's there. And so I drink long life to the boys who ploughed a new equator round the globe, stealing bases on their bellies!