Athletics in accountancy;

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ATHLETICS IN
ACCOUNTANCY ]
Scarcely twenty years had passed since
mighty Casey had "Struck Out," and
there was still no joy in Mudville, when
an extraordinary aggregation of middle-aged
and eye-weary accountants took
the field, wearing grey baseball uni­forms
with "H&S" in blue on their
shirts and blazers, and won 8 of its 11
games against outside competition. The
year was 1907.
Every fair Saturday after work that
summer and the next, the crack of the
bat and the entreaties of loyal fans
could be heard at Williamsbri^ge, a
few miles north of where John J. Mc-
Graw's Giants were playing in the Polo
Grounds. By the end of the first sea­son,
interest in athletics was running
so high that the 13-year-old accounting
firm had built its own diamond, two
tennis courts and a croquet ground.
The new Haskins & Sells Athletic Asso­ciation,
with Mr. E. W. Sells as presi­dent,
held its first winter reunion in
Healy's African Jungle Room on De­cember
30, 1907.
The exploits of the first year of this
organization, and particularly of the
H&S baseball team, were recorded in
a volume, Athletics in Accountancy,
privately printed by Mr. Sells and writ­ten
at his request by an unidentified
friend, described simply as "an enthu­siastic
follower of out-door sports, and
an occasional contributor to its litera­ture."
"It is only within the last generation
that Americans have begun to learn
how to play," begins the author. "It is
only within the past ten years or so that
we have really discovered the country.
The country clubs and golf courses
which now surround every large city—
which every little freshwater town must
needs lay out, in some deserted cow-pasture
or across the cornfields where
houses stop and the prairie begins—are
all of the most recent history."
The chronicle continues: "Of the
various sorts of workers in this sophisti­cated
modern Babel [New York City]
few, certainly, more acutely need the
rest and refreshment that comes from
enjoyable out-of-door exercise than
those engaged in the profession of ac­countancy.
This work requires intense
concentration, it has few of the allevi­ating
distractions of many other occu­pations—
the physician's, the journal­ist's,
the lawyer's, for instance—it is es­sentially
impersonal, dispassionate and
precise."
The volume then proceeds to repro­duce
the text of Athletic Bulletin No. 1,
which was tacked up on the office bul­letin-
board early in the month of June.
This bulletin, "now possessing some­thing
of the prestige and dignity of a
Magna Charta or a Declaration of Inde­pendence,"
lists those members of the
staff of Haskins & Sells who had organ­ized
a baseball team. Among the 33
names listed appear those of Mr. Sells,
to whose umpiring there were no ob­jections,
and two of his three partners:
C. S. Ludlam, who played first base,
and D. S. Fero, one of four or five pitch­ers
for the H&S nine. Four others
whose names appear on the list subse­quently
became partners of the Firm.
Mr. Sells promptly expressed his in­terest
in the budding movement with a