CHEERING AT BASEBALL GAMES.

With the coming of the more important baseball games next week, the old question of organized cheering will have to be settled again. Every spring we see the spontaneous applause of the earlier part of the season change into concerted cheering under the direction of numerous cheer-leaders, who drag the last breaths from the supporters of the team in a frenzied endeavor to help bring about a victory. However righteous we may pretend to be it cannot be denied that this cheering is calculated to unnerve the opposing nine as much as it is to support the university team. In the seventh inning when the score is very close, the applause at an error of the visitors is almost as great as at a clever play by the home nine. Such cheering is decidedly unfair and unsportsmanlike. We can only hope that no instances of it will occur this spring.

But as regards the value and importance of cheering in support of the University team, there is room for much difference of opinion. One view is that the game should be played by the teams with no help from the spectators except by spontaneous applause at all exhibitions of god playing. On the other hand, some say that is the business of every member of the University to do his part toward winning the game. According to them, those who cannot make the team should get together in the bleachers and by organized cheering at all times express their encouragement and hope for success. The CRIMSON believes that a middle ground can well be taken. Organized cheering is all right between the innings after a good exhibition by the home team; short cheers are an excellent means of encouraging the men when they go to bat; but the pumped cheering and confused hub-bib during an exciting moment are decidedly out of place in an amateur intercollegiate contest. Not only is such applause unfair to the visitors. It is a great question whether it does not tend to confuse and excite the University players.

The reason for the over-emphasized cheering lied apparently n an exaggerated idea of the duty owed the team by its supporters and in a frenzied desire to win at al costs. With this view in our minds, the idea of sport for sport's sake is likely to lose force, and we find ourselves seriously watching and aiding a desperate struggle for victory. It is all very well to try to win and to try hard, and it is well for every member of the University to be normally enthusiastic for the team's success. But should we go so far as to make the cheering a rather hysterical and often unfair attempt to compel victory, rather than a recognition of good playing by the teams?