The Russians, who claim to have invented everything from the steam engine to radar, also originated baseball—according to the Soviet magazine Smena, a publication of the Young Communist League. Beizbol, said Smena last week, is an "imitation" of lapta* which "was played in Russian villages before the United States was on the map."
But in appropriating lapta, the capitalist U.S. perverted it into "a bestial battle, a bloody fight with murder and mayhem." Teams are called by such aggressive names as Tigrov and Piratov. A big-league player, if he is not killed in action, lasts only six or seven seasons; by that...
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