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Harvard to Yale.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., May 6, 1891.

To the Yale University Base Ball Association, New Haven, Conn.:

GOUVERNEUR CALHOUN, CAPTAIN:

The Harvard University Base Ball Association respectfully acknowledges the receipt of your communication of May 1st, 1891, to D. S. Dean Captain H. U. B. B. C., in which over the personal signature of "Gouverneur Calhoun, for Yale," you have announced your intention of not arranging Yale-Harvard ball games for the present season.

We certainly regret that the Yale sentiment is opposed to ball games with us, and that Mr. Calhoun has been obliged to inform us of your un willingness to meet our ball nine in a series of games, which has for many years been an undeniable source of pleasure to the friends of Yale and Harvard alike. We are, in a word, sorry that you have been inclined to check officially our negotiations so abruptly, and we particularly regret that you have forced our discussion so prominently before the public eye.

It is unfortunate that Harvard undergraduate representatives agreed, so far as was in their power, with your delegates to an arrangement for a series of five games under proposed conditions justly unsatisfactory to our Athletic Committee, which, we fancy, bears the same governing relation to our athletic organizations that the Yale Faculty does to yours. In our letter of April 15th, 1891, we explained to you as carefully as possible the reasons for the exceptions taken to our proposed arrangement, and we cordially asked you to meet us for the purpose of amending the arrangement for the fifth game of the series in regard to which alone there has existed any difference of opinion.

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So far as your reference to our relations with Princeton is concerned we can only say, at this time, that our agreement was made under a written condition that the proceedings of the meeting should be subject to the approval of the respective Princeton Harvard University authorities. Furthermore we are unable to realize why in the arrangement of a Yale-Harvard series there should be more justice in your stipulation that Harvard should play with Princeton than there would be in our possible demand that Yale should not play with Princeton,-and the latter, we believe, would be an extremely untenable position. We regard the arrangement of Yale-Harvard games as strictly and solely the concern of the Base Ball Associations of Yale and Harvard, and as such we desire to treat them.

After a careful reading of the existing correspondence we are unable to find any expression, on your part, of dissatisfaction in regard to any portion of our original proposition, save that which relates to a fifth game and the arrangements therefor as modified by us. In consideration of our unqualified agreement in regard to four games, as arranged, we should think it very unfortunate if we could not drop all thought of a fifth game and decide to play the four games.

It is Harvard's desire, in continuance of long established and agreeable custom, to play ball with Yale this year and we therefore, at this time, challenge the Yale University Base Ball Club to play the Harvard University Base Ball Club a series of four games, two in New Haven and two in Cambridge-the games in New Haven to be played May 16th and June 23d, and those in Cambridge on May 30th and June 18th, or on any other dates if more convenient to both.- under the conditions, etc., governing corresponding Yale-Harvard games in 1890.

We trust that you will receive our foregoing proposition in the friendly spirit of honest rivalry in which it is sent and that we shall have the pleasure of meeting your representatives at a proper time to make all arrangements, which as outlined will stand officially authorized and without question so far as Harvard is in any way concerned.

Very respectfully yours,

D. S. DEAN, Capt. H. U. B. B. A. J. W. CUMMIN, Mgr. H. U. B. B. A.

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