Somehow or other, they don’t play ball nowadays as they used to some eight or ten years ago. I don’t mean to say they don’t play it as well. … But I mean that they don’t play with the same kind of feelings or for the same objects they used to. … It appears to me that ball matches have come to be controlled by different parties and for different purposes …

…Pete O’Brien, captain of the Brooklyn Atlantics, in 1868. Article here. You know I don’t really like Grantland, but sometimes I love Grantland.