Walt Whitman's baseball quote (surely not 1846!)

[Dave Wilton]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> Of Sam Clements
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 10:56 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: Walt Whitman's baseball quote (surely not 1846!)
>
>
> Barry,
>
> Nice catch.
>
> Newspaperarchive, which I'm sure you used, can only find a listing from a
> Cleveland sportswriter from 1989.
>
> Maybe, like the "sunscreen" commencement
> address wrongly attributed to Vonnegut a few years ago, it's a modern
> concoction, but sounds like something Whitman would have written.
>
> Sam Clements
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <Bapopik at AOL.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Sent: Sunday, July 11, 2004 1:55 AM
> Subject: Walt Whitman's baseball quote (surely not 1846!)
>
>
> > "I see great things in baseball.  It's our game--the American game.  It
> will take people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a large
> physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous,
> dyspeptic set.
> Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
> > ---Walt Whitman
> > Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 23, 1846
> > (NEW YORK SUN, Tuesday, 6 July 2004, page 1, col. 2.)
>

The quote is in the 1988 movie "Bull Durham" (Susan Sarandon as narrator
quotes Whitman at the end of the film), so the idea that Whitman said it is
at least a year older than what's in Newspaperarchive.

If Whitman actually said it, the "repair this losses" phrase suggests that
it dates to around the end of the Civil War, ca. 1865.

--Dave Wilton
  dave at wilton.net
  http://www.wilton.net