The Daily Leader · Madison, South Dakota · 1899

Opera House. Don't Forget the Base Ball Game To-Night

March 1899, Madison, South Dakota: a base ball game at the opera house, tonight, admission 10 cents. Twenty-one words counting the scallops, and every one of them doing its job.

The whole advertisement is eleven words: “Opera House. Don’t Forget the Base Ball Game To-Night. Admission, 10 Cents.” No teams named, no time given. Madison, South Dakota evidently knew who was playing, and if you had to ask, the answer was be there anyway.

It ran on March 16, 1899, which explains the venue. Nobody in South Dakota is playing nine innings outdoors in March. Indoor base ball had come up through armories and gymnasiums in the 1890s, and where a town had no armory, the opera house had a stage, seats and a roof, and that was that. Brookhaven, Mississippi would still be at it five years later on a ladies night, and that clipping reaches these pages this fall.

The scalloped border is the best part. The printer reached for the ornamental box normally reserved for the visiting Shakespeare company, because in this house, tonight, base ball was the show.