New York is gettin’ to be a big sportin’ city. A wonderful change has taken place in this respect durin’ the last thirty years. Twenty-five years ago there wasn’t one professional athletic club in the city of New York. Now there are scores of ‘em.
The first movement in this direction was in the foundin’, about twenty years ago, of the New York Athletic Club, as people in those days didn’t take much stock in out door sports, unless it was horse racin’, cricket or baseball. The two founders of the club, Buermayer and W. B. Curtis, had to carry the club awhile and a long while, almost by ‘emselves–they two were the club.
In the course of the year or two they got others to be of their way of thinkin’, and finally they took to givin’ games, but these games didn’t amount to much in ‘emselves, and the attendance was small, so small that some of the members wanted to give up the club altogether. But Curtis and his friend wouldn’t listen to this, and kept on and on and on till at last the public began to take some stock in ‘em, seeing they took such stock in ‘emselves.
In less than five years the New York Athletic Club took hold of the town and became a leadin’ institution in its way.
The success of the New York Athletic Club soon started imitations and some of these got to be even better than the original article. The Manhattan club in fact soon beat it at its own game.
In ten years the Manhattan membership rose from the original twenty to nearly two hundred, and every one of the two hundred is an athlete, and no humbug, most of the two hundred have been workers, and they have made a record for the club and for ‘emselves.
Myers has been their big man, and has proved himself one of the best athletes in the world.
The Manhattan had always big ideas, and started with a big place on Eighth avenue near the Central Park. But their ideas grew and they got a second and bigger place about a mile and a half further uptown, near the park. The new grounds are about the finest in the country and covers a whole block.
Charles Rowell helped to get up a benefit for this Manhattan Club. By the by Rowell and Myers are what you would call “little men, at least neither of ‘em are “big.” It ain’t “quantity” that makes an athlete, but quality, not size but sinew and strength, not greatness but grit.
Then there is the American Athletic Club. This sprung from the Young Men’s Christian Association, and is about as good a thing as the Young Men’s Christian Association has produced. And the American Athletic Club has produced young Baird, who has proved himself a first class athlete and walker.
Then there is the Gramercy Club, which is “wild” on “runnin’.” It swears by its “boss” runner, Golden, formerly of the Union Baseball Club of Morrisania, who, if he was to turn professional, would have a “golden” fortune in his legs.
Then they started a “Pastime” Club and three tip-top athletes joined, in fact, made this club. There was Lambrecht, for one, the champion of the heavy weight amateur athletes, and a man called Nason, of an eccentric turn, who devoted himself to “sack racin’, of which odd sport he is held to be “the champion,” and a man called Connolly, who in his day did some fine boxin’. Through the efforts of these three men a capital place was secured for the club on the East River, and here the “Pastime” boys have had many a “pasttime.”
In the course of time Bill Meek, the long-distance walker, got the club startin’ fever and turned himself into the West Side Athletic Club. And so the clubs kept increasin’, and haven’t stopped increasin’ yet.
The suburbs of New York soon caught the fever, and had it bad, or rather good. Jack McMasters, the trainer, started a club in Williamsburg, and within a few years this club had over two hundred members, most of ‘em smart. Somebody in this club invented a new sort of a walkin’ track, which is topped outside up, just like the curve in the railroad track. It is as much as one’s life is worth to say anythin’ against that track in the hearing of a member of that club.
Meanwhile over in Staten Island the two old boat clubs, the Neptune and the Harbor clubs, merged ‘emselves into a Staten Island Athletic Club, which soon became a swell affair, and has already swelled into over two hundred members.
All sorts of athletic clubs soon started all over and around New York, cricket and bicycle; and as for rowin’ clubs they have increased from three to over thirty, embracin’ the New York Rowing Club, the Nassau, the Atlanta, the Columbia, the Stock Exchange Rowing Club, the Metropolitan, the Dauntless, the Arganaut, the Palisades, etc. The canoe clubs have increased from one to seven. Then there is the “crack” sportin’ and athletic club, the Rocquet, which has sprung up durin’ the last few years. Skatin’ clubs have increased in number, while fishin’ clubs have more than doubled. And what with gun clubs, rifle clubs, bowlin’ clubs, I was calculatin’ with a friend there must be at least three hundred clubs devoted to over twenty-one varieties of sport in and about New York City–all sprung up in the last twenty years, and all goin’ to prove that New York is fast gettin’ to be the sportin’ metropolis of the world.
