The Guthrie Daily Leader · Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory · 1901

A good, red-hot game of the national sport is assured

Guthrie meets Perry at the Island Park grounds, Sunday, June 1901. Last week's meeting went thirteen innings and ended 3 to 4, which the paper rates simply: this is good ball.

Six years before Oklahoma was a state, Guthrie had a Sunday ritual worked out: “The local nine has arranged for a game of base ball next Sunday afternoon with the Perry nine at the Island Park grounds. A good, red-hot game of the national sport is asured.” One s in asured, exactly as the compositor set it, and the promise holds either way.

Assured on evidence. The last meeting went to extras on the road: “Last Sunday the home boys played a thirteen inning game at Perry, resulting in a score of three to four.” Then the Leader files the finest one-line game review this site has yet collected: “This is good ball.”

The rematch had a marquee name too. “In the Sunday game ‘Kid’ Bevis will pitch for the Perry team. He is one of the most promising players in the territory.” Burke for the home nine, “several hundred tickets have already been sold,” and a territory capital settled in for another thirteen if it came to that. Sunday base ball was a running argument in these years, the letters column at Mexico, Missouri can testify, but Guthrie appears to have voted with its ticket money.