WHAT'S IN A NAME, ASKS ASAHI MANAGER

Japanese Ball Players Sorrowfully Discover Limitations of Liberty Park.

To America's transplanted, trans-pacific friends, the Japanese, this English language appears impossible; its mastery quite hopeless!

For if "Liberty Park" means anything to your Nipponese student of that polyglot Latin-French-Greek-Anglo-Saxon-etc. language known as English, it means -- or did mean -- that here, at Liberty Park (Fourteenth Avenue South and Jefferson Street), one was to enjoy the following: "A state or fact of being a free person; enjoying an exemption from subjection to the will of another claming ownership of the person, services or property, etc." In a word, "freedom."

Local Laws Intervene.

True, there are certain local laws, of a permanent or transitory character, that long experience has shown were a political precaution quite necessary. These the Japanese knew and recognized. In the recent influenza quarantine, for instance, they recognized such a law.

Which explains the precautions they took to govern themselves by the letter of the health commissioner's order against "public assemblage." Which explains why Harry M. Yamashita, president of the Mikado Club, took two baseball teams, composed of his club members, out to Liberty Park to settle a grudge that has been rankling ever since the baseball season closed. Also, were they obeying the official suggestion to "get out into the fresh air." So keenly alive to the situation was Manager Yamashita that he took only the bare eighteen men inside the inclosure. Then he locked the gate.

No Spectators Present.

There wasn't a spectator, inside or outside the park -- that is, not one person present who wasn't a principal. In order to cut down the size of the assemblage to the bone, the manager assumed the role of umpire. Furthermore, he took his position behind the pitcher almost midway between the mound and second base. This left only one possible point where the phrase "assemblage" might be applied; namely, at home plate, where catcher and batter were in close proximity.

The game had gone on the third inning when an audience appeared at the gate. Furthermore, the audience-of-one demanded entrance. What is more to the point, the audience was admitted; for he wore the blue and nickel of police department authority. Besides he wore a flat cap, indicating a rank higher than the ordinary beat-plodder. In a word, he was a sergeant of police -- Sergt. Ralph Olmsted.

"Orders to close you up, to stop this contest, to arrest the person responsible for this assemblage in defiance of the health commissioner's order of quarantine," said the police sergeant. Somebody, as events disclosed, had telephoned Mayor Hanson that the quarantine order was being violated by the Japanese ball players.

There wasn't any use of arguing the point. Even though the closest any two men were was several feet -- and only two of them at any one time -- hadn't he, the sergeant, seen the men running and sliding and stirring up the germ-laden dust!

The baseball impresario (about 50 years old) wouldn't have run from the scene if he could, or couldn't if he would; but that didn't go for the two baseball teams. The players sensed almost immediately what was in the air -- besides flu germs -- and they took the shortest cuts from their respective playing and bench positions to the fences of Liberty Park.

Hot Race to the Fence.

The second baseman and shortstop were undecided for a moment, but they finally followed the lead of the center fielder, his part of the fence being in the opposite direction, and away from, the figure in blue with nickel trimmings.

Manager Yamashita followed his $25 cash bail into police court. He there learned the details of the city case against him. He protested and explained and demanded liberty, justice, etc.

All of which, it appears, he is going to get; for Judge John B. Gordon "continued the case, to be reset" -- tantamount to a decision to the effect that the accused was "probably guilty but he is to have another chance." That is, he mustn't translate that word "Liberty" too liberally or too literally.