501 Critical Reading Questions

d. was contemplating retirement.
e. had a plan to get the White Sox back to the World Series.
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501
Critical Reading Questions
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439.
The passage as a whole suggests that
a. The White Sox probably fixed the 1917 World Series, too.
b. Charles Comiskey may have been in part to blame for his play-
ers’ actions.
c. ballplayers betting on games was a highly unusual occurrence.
d. baseball never recovered after World War I.
e. Charles Comiskey often bet against his own team.
Questions 440–449 are based on the following passage.
The following passage is adapted from a magazine article entitled The
Revival of the Olympic Games: Restoring the Stadium at Athens, published
prior to the first modern Olympics.
For several months an unwonted activity has prevailed in one quarter
of Athens. Herodes Atticus Street behind the royal garden, one of the
most retired streets of the city, has resounded all day long with the rat-
tle of heavy wagons bringing blocks of marble from Pentelikon. At
sunrise and sunset crowds of workingmen are seen moving through
this street, the lower end of which opens upon a bridge across the Ilis-
sos, and on the opposite bank lies the Panathenaic Stadium, now being
lined with marble for the Olympic games which are to be held in it
early in April. The time is short, and the work is being pressed for-
ward. When the International Athletic Committee, at a session in
Paris last year, decided to have a series of athletic contests once in four
years in various countries, it is not surprising that they selected Greece
for the first contest. Although Greece now has as little of the athletic
habit as any nation of the civilized world, its past is interwoven with
athletics. Olympia is a magic word, and the committee were doubtless
swayed partly by sentimental reasons in the choice of name and place.
But some may wonder why, since the games come to Greece, they
are not to be held at Olympia, to justify the name which they have
taken. This is because the originators of the scheme, although they
have conceded something to sentiment, are no visionaries, but men of
practical common sense. Even their concession to sentiment is likely
to turn out to be a clever piece of practical management, calculated to
launch the games upon the world with more success than could have
been secured in any other way. The games also have a name which will
be just as true in 1900 at Paris, and 1904 in America, as it is this year
in Athens.
Now, however fine a thing it might be to let athletes stir real
Olympic dust, and to let runners put their heels into the very groove
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