Jimmy Burke told The Kansas City Star, baseball was “a regular lady’s game nowadays,” in 1914.
The Star said of Burke, then a coach for the Detroit Tigers, who played for and managed the Kansas City Blues in the American Association in 1906 and 1907:
Jimmy Burke
“This veteran of the old times, when the majority of diamond performers were so tough that you could crack hickory nuts on their heads, has not easily become reconciled to the genteel behavior ad drawing-room manners of modern athletes.”
He said, “Handshaking players” were almost unknown “in his day,” but:
“The boys all act like gentlemen on and off the field now. If a man happens to make a one-handed catch of a liner he tells the victim he is sorry he robbed him of a hit, and if a pitcher ‘beans’ a guy he is so broken up that he isn’t able to continue. You bet things weren’t like this when I broke in.
“The best you got then was a curse, and the way those base runners would fling their spikes around in sliding was a caution. ‘Get out of my way or I’ll cut your blankety-blank eye out.’ Was what they used to yell at the baseman. Sand they were the boys who would do it too; don’t make any mistake about that.”
Burke said in his day, “it wasn’t considered a legal game of ball by some clubs unless there was a fist fight somewhere along the way. Battles on the diamond, in the clubhouse and in the hotels were so common that nobody paid much attention to them.”
Baseball History Daily 
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