FLORIDA TOWN REPEALS OLD, FROM-OUT-OF-LEFT-FIELD BASEBALL BAN.Byline: Associated Press Like an umpire at home plate, the city commission in this tiny community bent over its dusty law books Thursday and yelled, ``Yer Out '' to a 1908 ordinance that inexplicably banned the national pastime. The law, which made it a crime to play baseball within city limits, was pitched out the window along with other ancient, rarely enforced mandates, including one that penalized residents for unsanitary un·san·i·tar·y adj. Not sanitary. outhouses and another that tried to keep hogs off the streets. ``There was never a ban against baseball in Webster, really,'' said Dennis Johnson, police chief - and chief umpire for youth baseball - in this city of 800 residents 50 miles west of Orlando. In fact, says Mayor and City Attorney Al Parsons, ``Baseball has been one of the major sports activities around here for as long as anyone can remember. We've even held tournaments for T-ball, Little League and the Babe Ruth League Babe Ruth League is a youth baseball program. The organization's headquarters are on Lawrence Township, New Jersey, United States. In 1951, a group of men dedicated to the youth of America met in a suburb of Trenton, New Jersey, and formed what became the very first Babe .'' Parsons discovered the 88-year-old handwritten hand·write tr.v. hand·wrote , hand·writ·ten , hand·writ·ing, hand·writes To write by hand. [Back-formation from handwritten.] Adj. 1. ordinance while preparing to codify the city laws. The city's sketchy records didn't yield any clues as to why the sport was banned, but Kevin McCarthy, who teaches English at the University of Florida University of Florida is the third-largest university in the United States, with 50,912 students (as of Fall 2006) and has the eighth-largest budget (nearly $1.9 billion per year). UF is home to 16 colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. and has written a history of baseball There are a number of articles about the history of baseball:
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