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Copyright by L. Van Oeyen, Cleveland, Oh
PITCHING
IN A PINCH
OR
BASEBALL FROM THE INSIDE
BY
CHRISTY MATHEWSON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JOHN N. WHEELER
ILLUSTRATED
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United Sute* of America
ComicBT. 191*
BY
CHRISTOPHER MATHBW9ON
This edition is issued under arrangement with the publishers
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
Ubc imicberbochcr prese, -Rew Hot*
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCING a reader to Christy Mathewson
* seems like a superfluous piece of writing and
a waste of white paper. Schoolboys of the last
ten years have been acquainted with the exact
figures which have made up Matty's pitching
record before they had ever heard of George
Washington, because George did n't play in the
same League.
Perfectly good rational and normal citizens once
deserted a reception to the Governor of the State
because Christy Mathewson was going to pitch
against the Chicago club. If the committee on
arrangements wanted to make the hour of the recep-
tion earlier, all right, but no one could be expected
to miss seeing Matty in the box against Chance
and his Cubs for the sake of greeting the Governor.
Besides being a national hero, Matty is one of
the closest students of baseball that ever came into
the Big League. By players, he has long been
recognized as the greatest pitcher the game has
produced. He has been pitching in the Big
2052619
iv Introduction
Leagues for eleven years and winning games right
along.
His great pitching practically won the world's
championship for the Giants from the Philadelphia
Athletics in 1905, and, six years later, he was
responsible for one of the two victories turned in
by New York pitchers in a world's series again
with the Athletics.
At certain periods in his baseball career, he has
pitched almost every day after the rest of the staff
had fallen down. When the Giants were making
their determined fight for the championship in
1908, the season that the race was finally decided
by a single game with the Cubs, he worked in
nine out of the last fifteen games in an effort to
save his club from defeat. And he won most of
them. That has always been the beauty of his
pitching his ability to win.
Matty was born in Factoryville, Pa., thirty-one
years ago, and, after going to Bucknell College,
he began to play ball with the Norfolk club of
the Virginia League, but was soon bought by the
New York Giants, where he has remained ever
since and is likely to stay for some time to come,
if he can continue to make himself as welcome as he
Introduction v
has been so far. He was only nineteen when he
joined the club and was a headliner from the
start. Always he has been a student and some-
thing of a writer, having done newspaper work
from time to time during the big series. He has
made a careful study of the Big League batters.
He has kept a sort of baseball diary of his career,
and, frequently, I have heard him relate unwritten
chapters of baseball history filled with the thrill-
ing incidents of his personal experience.
"Why don't you write a real book of the Big
Leaguers?" I asked him one day.
And he has done it. In this book he is telling
the reader of the game as it is played in the Big
Leagues. As a college man, he is able to put his
impressions of the Big Leagues on paper graphi-
cally. It 's as good as his pitching and some excit-
ing things have happened in the Big Leagues, stories
that never found their way into the newspapers.
Matty has told them. This is a true tale of Big
Leaguers, their habits and their methods of play-
ing the game, written by one of them.
JOHN N. WHEELER.
NEW YORK,
March, 1912.
CONTENTS
PACK
I THE MOST DANGEROUS BATTERS I HAVE
MET i
II "TAKE HIM Our!" ci
III PITCHING IN A PINCH 54
IV BIG LEAGUE PITCHERS AND THEIR
PECULIARITIES .... 74
V PLAYING THE GAME FROM THB BENCH 93
VI COACHING GOOD AND BAD . .117
VII HONEST AND DISHONEST SIGN STEALING 140
VIII UMPIRES AND CLOSE DECISIONS . 161
IX THE GAME THAT COST A PENNANT . 183
X WHEN THE TEAMS ARE IN SPRING
TRAINING 006
XI JINXES AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO A
BALL-PLAYER .... 630
vii
Contents
PAGE
XII BASE RUNNERS AND HOW THEY HELP
A PITCHER TO WIN . . .255
XIII NOTABLE INSTANCES WHERE THE "IN-
SIDE" GAME HAS FAILED 281
Pitching in a Pinch
Pitching in a Pinch
The Most Dangerous Batters I Have Met
How "Joe" Tinker Changed Overnight from a Weak-
ting at the Plate tdjhe Worst Batter I Had to Pace
"Fred" Clarke of Pittsburg cannot be Pooled by
a Change of Pace, and "Hans" Wagner's Only
"Groove" Is a Base on Balls "Inside" Informa-
tion on All the Great Batters.
T HAVE often been asked to which batters I
* have found it hardest to pitch.
It is the general impression among baseball fans
that Joseph Faversham Tinker, the short-stop of
the Chicago Cubs, is the worst man that I have
to face in the National League. Few realize that
during his first two years in the big show Joe
Tinker looked like a cripple at the plate when I was
pitching. His ' ' groove ' ' was a slow curve over the
outside comer, and I fed him slow curves over that
2 Pitching in a Pinch
very outside corner with great regularity. Then
suddenly, overnight, he became from my point of
view the most dangerous batter in the League.
Tinker is a clever ball-player, and one day I
struck him out three times in succession with low
curves over the outside corner. Instead of getting
disgusted with himself, he began to think and
reason. He knew that I was feeding him that low
curve over the outside corner, and he started to
look for an antidote. He had always taken a
short, choppy swing at the ball. When he went
to the clubhouse after the game in which he
struck out three times, he was very quiet, so I
have been told. He was just putting on his last
sock when he clapped his hand to his leg and
exclaimed:
" I've got it."
"Got what?" asked Johnny Evers, who hap-
pened to be sitting next to Tinker.
"Got the way to hit Matty, who had me looking
as if I came from the home for the blind out there
to-day," answered Joe.
"I should say he did," replied Evers. "But if
you 've found a way to hit him, why, I 'm from
away out in Missouri near the Ozark Mountains."
The Most Dangerous Batters 3
"Wait till he pitches again," said Tinker by
way of conclusion, as he took his diamond ring
from the trainer and left the clubhouse.
It was a four-game series in Chicago, and I had
struck Tinker out three times in the first contest.
McGraw decided that I should pitch the last game
as well. Two men were on the bases and two
were out when Tinker came to the bat for the first
time in this battle, and the outfielders moved in
closer for him, as he had always been what is
known as a "chop " hitter. I immediately noticed
something different about his style as he set him-
self at the plate, and then it struck me that he was
standing back in the box and had a long bat.
Before this he had always choked his bat short
and stood up close. Now I observed that he had
his stick way down by the handle.
Bresnahan was catching, and he signalled for the
regular prescription for Tinker. With a lot of
confidence I handed him that old low curve. He
evidently expected it, for he stepped almost across
the plate, and, with that long bat, drove the ball
to right field for two bases over the head of George
Browne, who was playing close up to the infield,
scoring both runs and eventually winning the game,
4 Pitching in a Pinch
"I've got your number now, Matty!" he
shouted at me as he drew up at second base.
I admit that he has had it quite frequently since
he switched his batting style. Now the outfielders
move back when Tinker comes to the plate, for, if
he connects, he hits "'em far" with that long bat.
Ever since the day he adopted the "pole" he has
been a thorn in my side and has broken up many
a game. That old low curve is his favorite now,
and he reaches for it with the same cordiality as is
displayed by an actor in reaching for his pay envel-
ope. The only thing to do is to keep them close
and try to outguess him, but Tinker is a hard man
to beat at the game of wits.
Many a heady hitter in the Big League could give
the signs to the opposing pitcher, for he realizes
what his weakness is and knows that a twirler is
going to pitch at it. But, try as hard as he will,
he cannot often cover up his "groove," as Tinker
did, and so he continues to be easy for the twirler
who can put the ball where he wants it.
Fred Clarke, of Pittsburg, has always been a
hard man for me to fool on account of his batting
form. A hitter of his type cannot be deceived by
a change of pace, because he stands up close to
The Most Dangerous Batters 5
the plate, chokes his bat short, and swings left-
handed. When a pitcher cannot deceive a man
with a change of pace, he has to depend on curves.
Let me digress briefly to explain why a change of
pace will not make the ball miss Clarke's bat. He
is naturally a left-field hitter, and likes the ball
on the outside corner of the plate. That means
he swings at the ball late and makes most of his
drives to left field.
How is a batter fooled by a change of pace?
A pitcher gives him a speedy one and then piles
a slow one right on top of it with the same motion.
The batter naturally thinks it is another fast ball
and swings too soon that is, before the ball gets
to him. But when a man like Clarke is at the bat
and a pitcher tries to work a change of pace, what
is the result? He naturally swings late and so hits
a fast ball to left field. Then as the slow one comes
up to the plate, he strikes at it, granted he is
deceived by it, timing his swing as he would at
a fast ball. If it had been a fast ball, as he
thought, he would have hit it to left field, being
naturally a late swinger. But on a slow one he
swings clear around and pulls it to right field twice
as hard as he would have hit it to left field because
6 Pitching in a Pinch
he has obtained that much more drive in the longer
swing. Therefore, it is a rule in the profession
that no left-handed batter who hits late can be
deceived by a change of pace.
"Rube" Ellis, a left-handed hitter of the St.
Louis Club, entered the League and heard com-
plimentary stories about my pitching. Ellis came
up to bat the first day that I pitched against him
wondering if he would get even a foul. He was
new to me and I was looking for his "groove." I
gave him one over the outside corner, and he
jabbed it to left field. The next time, I thought
to work the change of pace, and, swinging late, he
hauled the ball around to right field, and it nearly
tore Fred Tenny's head off en route over first base.
Five hits out of five times at bat he made off me
that day, and, when he went to the clubhouse, he
remarked to his team mates in this wise:
"So that is the guy who has been burning up
this League, huh? We 've got better 'n him in the
coast circuit. He 's just got the Indian sign on
you. That 's all."
I did a little thinking about Ellis's hitting. He
used a long bat and held it down near the end and
"poled 'em." He was naturally a left-field hitter
The Most Dangerous Batters 7
and, therefore, swung late at the ball. I con-
cluded that fast ones inside would do for Mr. Ellis,
and the next time we met he got just those. He
has been getting them ever since and now, when
he makes a hit off me, he holds a celebration.
"Hans" Wagner, of Pittsburg, has always been
a hard man for me, but in that I have had nothing
on a lot of other pitchers. He takes a long bat,
stands well back from the plate, and steps into the
ball, poling it. He is what is known in baseball
as a free swinger, and there are not many free
swingers these days. This is what ailed the
Giants' batting during the world's series in 1911.
They all attempted to become free swingers over-
night and were trying to knock the ball out of the
lot, instead of chopping it.
In the history of baseball there have not been
more than fifteen or twenty free swingers alto-
gether, and they are the real natural hitters of
the game, the men with eyes nice enough and
accurate enough to take a long wallop at the ball.
"Dan" Brouthers was one, and so was "Cap'*
Anson. Sherwood Magee and ' ' Hans " Wagner are
contemporary free swingers. Men of this type
wield a heavy bat as if it were a toothpick and
8 Pitching in a Pinch
step back and forth in the box, hitting the ball on
any end erf the plate. Sometimes it is almost im-
possible to pass a man of this sort purposely, for a
little carelessness in getting the ball too close to
the plate may result in his stepping up and hitting
it a mile. Pitchers have been searching for Wag-
ner's "groove" for years, and, if any one of them
has located it, he has his discovery copyrighted,
for I never heard of it.
Only one pitcher, that I can recall, always had it
on Wagner, and that man was Arthur Raymond,
sometimes called "Bugs." He seemed to upset
the German by his careless manner in the box and
by his "kidding" tactics. I have seen him make
Wagner go after bad balls, a thing that "Hans"
seldom can be induced to do by other twirlers.
I remember well the first time I pitched against
Wagner. Jack Warner was catching, and I, young
and new in the League, had spent a lot of time with
him, learning the weaknesses of the batters and
being coached as to how to treat them. Wagner
loomed up at the bat in a pinch, and I could not
remember what Warner had said about his flaw.
I walked out of the box to confer with the catcher.
"What 's his 'groove,' Jack?" I asked him.
The Most Dangerous Batters 9
"A base on balls," replied Warner, without
cracking a smile.
That 's always been Wagner's "groove."
There used to be a player on the Boston team
named Claude Ritchey who "had it on me"
for some reason or other. He was a left-handed
hitter and naturally drove the ball to left field,
so that I could not fool him with a change of
pace. He was always able to outguess me in a
pinch and seemed to know by intuition what was
coming.
There has been for a long time an ardent follower
of the Giants named Mrs. Wilson, who raves
wildly at a game, and is broken-hearted when the
team loses. The Giants were playing in Boston
one day, and needed the game very badly. It was
back in 1905, at the time the club could cinch the
pennant by winning one contest, and the flag-assur-
ing game is the hardest one to win. Two men
got on the bases in the ninth inning with the score
tied and no one out. The crowd was stamping its
feet and hooting madly, trying to rattle me. I
heard Mrs. Wilson shrill loudly above the noise:
"Stick with them, Matty!"
Ritchey came up to the bat, and I passed him
io Pitching in a Pinch
purposely, trying to get him to strike at a bad ball.
I would n't take a chance on letting him hit at a
good one. Mrs. Wilson thought I was losing my
control, and unable to stand it any longer she got
up and walked out of the grounds. Then I fanned
the next two batters, and the last man hit a roller
to Devlin and was thrown out at first base. I was
told afterwards that Mrs. Wilson stood outside the
ground, waiting to hear the crowd cheer, which
would have told her it was all over.
She lingered at the gate until the fourteenth
inning, fearing to return because she expected
to see us routed. At last she heard a groan from
the home crowd when we won in the fourteenth.
Still she would not believe that I had weathered the
storm and won the game that gave the Giants a
pennant, but waited to be assured by some of the
spectators leaving the grounds before she came
around to congratulate us.
All batters who are good waiters, and will not hit
at bad balls, are hard to deceive, because it means
a twirler has to lay the ball over, and then the
hitter always has the better chance. A pitcher
will try to get a man to hit at a bad ball before
he will put it near the plate.
The Most Dangerous Batters n
Many persons have asked me why I do not use
my "fade-away" oftener when it is so effective,
and the only answer is that every time I throw the
"fade-away" it takes so much out of my arm. It
is a very hard ball to deliver. Pitching it ten or
twelve times in a game kills my arm, so I save it
for the pinches.
Many fans do not know what this ball really is.
It is a slow curve pitched with the motion of a fast
ball. But most curve balls break away from a
right-handed batter a little. The fade-away breaks
toward him.
Baker, of the Athletics, is one of the most
dangerous hitters I have ever faced, and we were
not warned to look out for him before the 1911
world's series, either. Certain friends of the
Giants gave us some "inside" information on the
Athletics' hitters. Among others, the Cubs sup-
plied us with good tips, but no one spread the
Baker alarm. I was told to watch out for Collins
as a dangerous man, one who was likely to break
up a game any time with a long drive.
I consider Baker one of the hardest, cleanest
hitters I have ever faced, and he drives the ball on
a line to any field. The fielders cannot play for
12 Pitching in a Pinch
him. He did not show up well in the first game
of the world's series because the Athletics thought
they were getting our signs, and we crossed Baker
with two men on the bases in the third inning.
He lost a chance to be a hero right there.
The roughest deal that I got from Baker in the
1911 series was in the third game, which was the
second in New York. We had made one run and
the ninth inning rolled around with the Giants still
leading, I to o. The first man at the bat grounded
out and then Baker came up. I realized by this
time that he was a hard proposition, but figured
that he could not hit a low curve over the outside
corner, as he is naturally a right-field hitter. I got
one ball and one strike on him and then delivered
a ball that was aimed to be a low curve over the
outside corner. Baker refused to swing at it, and
Brennan, the umpire, called it a ball.
I thought that it caught the outside corner of the
plate, and that Brennan missed the strike. It
put me in the hole with the count two balls and
one strike, and I had to lay the next one over very
near the middle to keep the count from being three
and one. I pitched a curve ball that was meant
for the outside corner, but cut the plate better
The Most Dangerous Batters 13
than I intended. Baker stepped up into it and
smashed it into the grand-stand in right field for
a home run, and there is the history of that famous
wallop. This tied the score.
A pitcher has two types of batters to face. One
is the man who is always thinking and guessing
and waiting, trying to get the pitcher in the hole.
Evers, of the Cubs, is that sort. They tell me
that "Ty" Cobb of Detroit is the most highly
developed of this type of hitter. I have never
seen him play. Then the other kind is the natural
slugger, who does not wait for anything, and who
could not outguess a pitcher if he did. The brainy
man is the harder for a pitcher to face because he
is a constant source of worry.
There are two ways of f ooling a batter. One is
literally to "mix 'em up," and the other is to keep
feeding him the same sort of a ball, but to induce
him to think that something else is coming. When
a brainy man is at the bat, he is always trying to
figure out what to expect. If he knows, then his
chances of getting a hit are greatly increased. For
instance, if a batter has two balls and two strikes
on him, he naturally concludes that the pitcher
will throw him a curve ball, and prepares for it
14 Pitching in a Pinch
Big League ball-players recognize only two kinds of
pitched balls the curve and the straight one.
When a catcher in the Big League signals for
a curved ball, he means a drop, and, after handling
a certain pitcher for a time, he gets to know just
how much the ball is going to curve. That is
why the one catcher receives for the same pitcher
so regularly, because they get to work together
harmoniously. "Chief" Meyers, the big Indian
catcher on the Giants, understands my style so
well that in some games he hardly has to give a
sign. But, oddly enough, he could never catch
Raymond because he did not like to handle the
spit ball, a hard delivery to receive, and Raymond
and he could not get along together as a battery.
They would cross each other. But Arthur Wilson
caught Raymond almost perfectly. This explains
the loss of effectiveness of many pitchers when a
certain catcher is laid up or out of the game.
"Cy" Seymour, formerly the outfielder of the
Giants, was one of the hardest batters I ever had
to pitch against when he was with the Cincinnati
club and going at the top of his stride. He liked
a curved ball, and could hit it hard and far, and was
always waiting for it. He was very clever at out-
The Most Dangerous Batters 15
guessing a pitcher and being able to conclude what
was coming. For a long time whenever I pitched
against him I had "mixed 'em up" literally, hand-
ing him first a fast ball and then a slow curve and
so on, trying to fool him in this way. But one
day we were playing in Cincinnati, and I decided
to keep delivering the same kind of a ball, that
old fast one around his neck, and to try to induce
him to believe that a curve was coming. I pitched
him nothing but fast ones that day, and he was
always waiting for a curve. The result was that I
had him in the hole all the time, and I struck him
out three times. He has never gotten over it.
Only recently I saw Seymour, and he said:
"Matty, you are the only man that ever struck
me out three times in the same game."
He soon guessed, however, that I was not really
mixing them up, and then I had to switch my
style again for him.
Some pitchers talk to batters a great deal,
hoping to get their minds off the game in this way,
and thus be able to sneak strikes over. But I find
that talking to a batter disconcerts me almost as
much as it does him, and I seldom do it. Repartee
is not my line anyway.
16 Pitching in a Pinch
Bender talked to the Giant players all through
that first game in the 1911 world's series, the one
in which he wore the smile, probably because he
was a pitcher old in the game and several of the
younger men on the New York team acted as if
they were nervous. Snodgrass and the Indian
kept up a running fire of small talk every time
that the Giants' centre-fielder came to the plate.
Snodgrass got hit by pitched balls twice, and this
seemed to worry Bender. When the New York
centre-fielder came to the bat in the eighth inning,
the Indian showed his even teeth in the chronic
grin and greeted Snodgrass in this way:
"Look out, Freddie, you don't get hit this
time."
Then Bender wound up and with all his speed
drove the ball straight at Snodgrass's head, and
Bender had more speed in that first game than
I ever saw him use before. Snodgrass dodged,
and the ball drove into Thomas's glove. This
pitching the first ball at the head of a batter is an
old trick of pitchers when they think a player
intends to get hit purposely or that he is crowding
the plate.
"If you can't push 'em over better than that,"
The Most Dangerous Batters 17
retorted Snodgrass, "I won't need to get hit.
Let 's see your fast one now."
"Try this one," suggested Bender, as he pitched
another fast one that cut the heart of the plate.
Snodgrass swung and hit nothing but the air. The
old atmosphere was very much mauled by bats in
that game anyway.
" You missed that one a mile, Freddie," chuckled
the Indian, with his grin.
Snodgrass eventually struck out and then
Bender broke into a laugh.
"You ain't a batter, Freddie," exclaimed the
Indian, as he walked to the bench. "You're a
backstop. You can never get anywhere without
being hit."
If a pitcher is going to talk to a batter, he must
size up his man. An irritable, nervous young
player often will fall for the conversation, but
most seasoned hitters will not answer back. The
Athletics, other than Bender, will not talk in a
game. We tried to get after them in the first
contest in 1911, and we could not get a rise out of
one of them, except when Snodgrass spiked Baker,
and I want to say right here that this much dis-
cussed incident was accidental. Baker was block-
1 8 Pitching in a Pinch
ing Snodgrass out, and the New York player had
a perfect right to the base line.
Sherwood Magee of the Philadelphia National
League team is one of the hardest batters that I
ever have had to face, because he has a great eye,
and is of the type of free swingers who take a mad
wallop at the ball, and are always liable to break
up a game with a long drive. Just once I talked
to him when he was at the bat, more because we
were both worked up than for any other reason, and
he came out second best. It was while the Giants
were playing at American League Park in 1911
after the old Polo Grounds had burned. Wel-
chonce, who was the centre-fielder for the Phillies
at the time, hit a slow one down the first base line,
and I ran over to field the ball. I picked it up as
the runner arrived and had no time to straighten
up to dodge him. So I struck out my shoulder
and he ran into it. There was no other way to
make the play, but I guess it looked bad from the
stand, because Welchonce fell down.
Magee came up to bat next, threw his hat on
the ground, and started to call me names. He is
bad when irritated and tolerably easy to irritate,
as shown by the way in which he knocked down
The Most Dangerous Batters 19
Finnegan, the umpire, last season because their
ideas on a strike differed slightly. I replied on that
occasion, but remembered to keep the ball away
from the centre of the plate. That is about all I
did do, but he was more wrought up than I and
hit only a slow grounder to the infield. He was
out by several feet. He took a wild slide at the
bag, however, feet first, in what looked like an
attempt to spike Merkle. We talked some more
after that, but it has all been forgotten now.
To be a successful pitcher in the Big League, a
man must have the head and the arm. When I
first joined the Giants, I had what is known as the
"old round-house curve," which is no more than
a big, slow outdrop. I had been fooling them in
the minor leagues with it, and I was somewhat
chagrined when George Davis, then the manager of
the club, came to me and told me to forget the
curve, as it would be of no use. It was then that
I began to develop my drop ball.
A pitcher must watch all the time for any little
unconscious motion before he delivers the ball.
If a base runner can guess just when he is going to
pitch, he can get a much better start. Drucke
used to have a little motion with his foot just be-
20 Pitching in a Pinch
fore he pitched, of which he liimself was entirely
unconscious, but the other clubs got on to it and
stole bases on him wildly. McGraw has since
broken him of it.
The Athletics say that I make a motion peculiar
to the fade-away. Some spit-ball pitchers announce
when they are going to throw a moist one by look-
ing at the ball as they dampen it. At other times,
when they "stall," they do not look at the ball.
The Big League batter is watching for all these
little things and, if a pitcher is not careful, he will
find a lot of men who are hard to pitch to. There
are plenty anyway, and, as a man grows older, this
number increases season by season.
n
"Take Him Out"
Many a Pitcher's Heart has been Broken by the Cry
from the Stands, " Take Him Out "Russell Ford
of the New York Yankees was Once Beaten by a
Few Foolish Words Whispered into the Batter's
Ear at a Critical Moment Why " Rube " Mar-
guard Failed for Two Years to be a Big Leaguer
The Art of Breaking a Pitcher into Fast Company.
A PITCHER is in a tight game, and the batter
** makes a hit. Another follows and some fan
back in the stand cries in stentorian tones:
"Take him out!"
It is the dirge of baseball which has broken the
hearts of pitchers ever since the game began and
will continue to do so as long as it lives. Another
fan takes up the shout, and another, and another,
until it is a chorus.
"Take him out 1 Take him out! Take him out!"
21
22 Pitching in a Pinch
The pitcher has to grin, but that constant cry
is wearing on nerves strung to the breaking point.
The crowd is against him, and the next batter hits,
and a run scores. The manager stops the game,
beckons to the pitcher from the bench, and he has
to walk away from the box, facing the crowd
not the team which has beaten him. It is the
psychology of baseball.
Some foolish words once whispered into the
ear of a batter by a clever manager in the crisis
of one of the closest games ever played in baseball
turned the tide and unbalanced a pitcher who had
been working like a perfectly adjusted machine
through seven terrific innings. That is also the
"psychology of pitching." The man wasn't
beaten because he weakened, because he lost his
grip, because of any physical deficiency, but
because some foolish words words that meant
nothing, had nothing to do with the game had
upset his mental attitude.
The game was the first one played between the
Giants and the Yankees in the post-season series
of 1910, the batter was Bridwell, the manager
was John McGraw, and the pitcher, Russell Ford
of the Yankees. The cast of characters hav-
41 Take Him Out " 23
ing been named, the story may now enter the
block.
Spectators who recall the game will remember
that the two clubs had been battling through the
early innings with neither team able to gain an
advantage, and the Giants came to bat for the
eighth inning with the score a tie. Ford was
pitching perfectly with all the art of a master
craftsman. Each team had made one run. I
was the first man up and started the eighth inning
with a single because Ford slackened up a little
against me, thinking that I was not dangerous.
Devore beat out an infield hit, and Doyle bunted
and was safe, filling the bases. Then Ford went
to work. He struck out Snodgrass, and Hemphill
caught Murray's fly far too near the infield to
permit me to try to score. It looked as if Ford
were going to get out of the hole when "Al"
Bridwell, the former Giant shortstop, came to the
bat. Ford threw him two bad balls, and then
McGraw ran out from the bench, and, with an
autocratic finger, held up the game while he whis-
pered into BridwelTs ear.
"Al" nodded knowingly, and the whole thing
was a pantomime, a wordless play, that made
24 Pitching in a Pinch
Sumurun look like a bush-league production.
Bridwell stepped back into the batter's box, and
McGraw returned to the bench On the next
pitch, "AT* was hit in the leg and went to first
base, forcing the run that broke the tie across the
plate. That run also broke Ford's heart. And
here is what McGraw whispered into the attentive
ear of Bridwell:
"How many quail did you say you shot when
you were hunting last fall, Al?"
John McGraw, the psychologist, baseball gen-
oral and manager, had heard opportunity
knock. With his fingers on the pulse of the game,
he had felt the tenseness of the situation, and
realized, all in the flash of an eye, that Ford was
wabbling and that anything would push him over.
He stopped the game and whispered into Brid well's
ear while Ford was feeling more and more the
intensity of the crisis. He had an opportunity
to observe the three men on the bases. He
wondered what McGraw was whispering,what trick
was to be expected. Was he telling the batter to
get hit? Yes, he must be. Then he did just
that hit the batter, and lost the game.
Why can certain pitchers always beat certain
41 Take Him Out " 25
clubs and why do they look like bush leaguers
against others? To be concrete, why can Brook-
lyn fight Chicago so hard and look foolish playing
against the Giants? Why can the Yankees take
game after game from Detroit and be easy pick-
ing for the Cleveland club in most of their games?
Why does Boston beat Marquard when he can
make the hard Philadelphia hitters look like blind
men with bats in their hands? Why could I beat
Cincinnati gamezaf ter game for two years when the
club was filled with hard hitters? It is the psy-
chology of baseball, the mental attitudes of the
players, some intangible thing that works on the
mind. Managers are learning to use this subtle,
indescribable element which is such a factor.
The great question which confronts every Big
League manager is how to break a valuable young
pitcher into the game. "Rube" Marquard came
to the Giants in the fall of 1908 out of the American
Association heralded as a world-beater, with a
reputation that shimmered and shone. The
newspapers were crowded with stories of the man
for whom McGraw had paid $11,000, who had
been standing them on their heads in the West,
who had curves that couldn't be touched, and
26 Pitching in a Pinch
was a bargain at the unheard-of price paid for
him.
"Rube" Marquard came to the Giants in a
burst of glory and publicity when the club was
fighting for the pennant. McGraw was up
against it for pitchers at that time, and one win,
turned in by a young pitcher, might have re-
sulted in the Giants winning the pennant as the
season ended.
"Don't you think Marquard would win?
Can't you put him in?" Mr. Brush, the owner of
the club, asked McGraw one day when he was
discussing the pitching situation with the manager.
"I don't know," answered McGraw. "If
he wins his first time out in the Big Leagues, he
will be a world-beater, and, if he loses, it may cost
us a good pitcher. " But Mr. Brush was insistent.
Here a big price had been paid for a pitcher with
a record, and pitchers were what the club needed.
The newspapers declared that the fans should
get a look at this "$11,000 beauty" hi action.
A double header was scheduled to be played with
the Cincinnati club in the month of September,
in 1908, and the pitching staff was gone. Mc-
Graw glanced over his collection of crippled and
"Take Him Out" 27
worked-out twirlers. Then he saw "Rube"
Marquard, big and fresh.
"Go in and pitch," he ordered after Marquard
had warmed up.
McGraw always does things that way, makes
up his mind about the most important matters
in a minute and then stands by his judgment.
Marquard went into the box, but he did n't pitch
much. He has told me about it since.
"When I saw that crowd, Matty," he said,
"I did n't know where I was. It looked so big to
me, and they were all wondering what I was going
to do, and all thinking that McGraw had paid
$11,000 for me, and now they were to find out
whether he had gotten stuck, whether he had
picked up a gold brick with the plating on it very
thin. I was wondering, myself, whether I would
make good."
What Marquard did that day is a matter of
record, public property, like marriage and death
notices. Kane, the little rightfielder on the Cin-
cinnati club, was the first man up, and, although
he was one of the smallest targets in the league,
Marquard hit him. He promptly stole sec-
ond, which worried "Rube" some more. Up
28 Pitching in a Pinch
came Lobert, the man who broke Marquard's
heart.
"Now we'll see," said Lobert to "Rube,"
as he advanced to the plate, "whether you 're
a busher. " Then Lobert, the tantalizing Teuton
with the bow-legs, whacked out a triple to the far
outfield and stopped at third with a mocking
smile on his face which would have gotten the late
Job's goat.
"You're identified," said "Hans"; "you're
a busher."
Some fan shouted the fatal "Take him out."
Marquard was gone. Bescher followed with
another triple, and, after that, the official scorer
got writer's cramp trying to keep track of the hits
and runs. The number of hits, I don't think, ever
was computed with any great amount of exacti-
tude. Marquard was taken out of the box in the
fifth inning, and he was two years recovering
from the shock of that beating. McGraw had
put him into the game against his better judgment,
and he paid for it dearly.
Marquard had to be nursed along on the bench
finishing games, starting only against easy clubs,
and learning the ropes of the Big Leagues before
Oeyen, Cleveland, O
Ty Cobb and Hans Wagner
. "An American and National League star of the first magnitude. Fans of th
nval leagues never tire of discussing the relative merits of these two great players.
Both are always willing to take a chance, and seem to do their be*t work whea
Dressed hardest."
"Take Him Out" 29
be was able to be a winning pitcher. McGraw
was a long time realizing on his investment. All
Marquard needed was a victory, a decisive win,
over a strong club.
The Giants played a disastrous series with the
Philadelphia club early in July, 1911, and lost
four games straight. All the pitchers were shot
to pieces, and the Quakers seemed to be unbeatable.
McGraw was at a loss for a man to use in the fifth
game. The weather was steaming hot, and the
players were dragged out, while the pitching staff
had lost all its starch. As McGraw's eye scanned
his bedraggled talent, Marquard, reading his
thoughts, walked up to him.
"Give me a chance, " he asked.
"Go in," answered McGraw, again making up
his mind on the spur of the moment. Marquard
went into the game and made the Philadelphia
batters, whose averages had been growing cor-
pulent on the pitching of the rest of the staff, look
foolish. There on that sweltering July afternoon,
when everything steamed in the blistering heat,
a pitcher was being born again. Marquard had
found himself, and, for the rest of the season, he
was strongest against the Philadelphia team,
30 Pitching in a Pinch
for it had been that club which restored his
confidence.
There is a sequel to that old Lobert incident, too.
In one of the last series in Philadelphia, toward
the end of the season, Marquard and Lobert
faced each other again. Said Marquard:
"Remember the time, you bow-legged Dutch-
man, when you asked me whether I was a busher?
Here is where I pay you back. This is the place
where you get a bad showing up."
And he fanned Lobert whiff ! whiff ! whiff ! like
that. He became the greatest lefthander in the
country, and would have been sooner, except for
the enormous price paid for him and the wide-
spread publicity he received, which caused him to
be over-anxious to make good. It 's the psychol-
ogy of the game.
"You can't hit what you don't see, " says "Joe"
Tinker of Marquard's pitching. ' ' When he throws
his fast one, the only way you know it 's past you
is because you hear the ball hit the catcher's
glove."
Fred Clarke, of the Pittsburg club, was up
against the same proposition when he purchased
"Marty" O'Toole for $22,500 in 1911. The
41 Take Him Out" 31
newspapers of the country were filled with figures
and pictures of the real estate and automobiles
that could be bought with the same amount of
money, lined up alongside of pictures of O'Toole, as
when the comparative strengths of the navies of
the world are shown by placing different sizes of
battleships in a row, or when the length of the
Lusitania is emphasized by printing a picture of it
balancing gracefully on its stern alongside the
Singer Building.
Clarke realized that he had all this publicity
with which to contend, and that it would do his
expensive new piece of pitching bric-a-brac no
good. O'Toole, jerked out of a minor league
where he had been pitching quietly, along with his
name in ten or a dozen papers, was suddenly a
national figure, measuring up in newspaper space
with Roosevelt and Taft and J. Johnson.
When O'Toole joined the Pirates near the end
of the season, Clarke knew down in his heart the
club had no chance of winning the pennant with
Wagner hurt, although he still publicly declared
he was in the race. He did not risk jumping
O'Toole right into the game as soon as he reported
and taking the chance of breaking his heart.
32 Pitching in a Pinch
Opposing players, if they are up in the pennant
hunt, are hard on a pitcher of this sort and would
lose no opportunity to mention the price paid for
him and connect it pointedly with his showing,
if that showing was a little wobbly. Charity
begins at home, and stays there, in the Big Leagues.
At least, I never saw any of it on the ball fields,
especially if the club is in the race, and the only
thing that stands between it and a victory is the
ruining of a $22,500 pitcher of a rival.
Clarke nursed O'Toole along on the bench for a
couple of weeks until he got to be thoroughly
acclimated, and then he started him in a game
against Boston, the weakest club in the league,
after he had sent for Kelly, O'Toole's regular
catcher, to inspire more confidence. O'Toole
had an easy time of it at his Big League d6but, for
the Boston players did not pick on him any to
speak of, as they were not a very hard bunch of
pickers. The Pittsburg team gave him a nice
comfortable, cosy lead, and he was pitching along
ahead of the game all the way. In the fifth or
sixth inning Clarke slipped Gibson, the regular
Pittsburg catcher, behind the bat, and O'Toole
had won his first game in the Big League before he
"Take Him Out" 33
knew it. He then reasoned I have won here.
I belong here. I can get along here. It isn't
much different from the crowd I came from, except
for the name, and that 's nothing to get timid
about if I can clean up as easily as I did to-day.
Fred Clarke, also a psychologist and baseball
manager, had worked a valuable pitcher into the
League, and he had won his first game. If he
had started him against some club like the Giants,
for instance, where he would have had to face a
big crowd and the conversation and spirit of
players who were after a pennant and hot after it,
he might have lost and his heart would have been
broken. Successfully breaking into the game an
expensive pitcher, who has cost a club a large
price, is one of the hardest problems which con-
fronts a manager. Now O'Toole is all right if he
has the pitching goods. He has taken his initial
plunge, and all he has to do is to make good next
year. The psychology element is eliminated from
now on.
I have been told that Clarke was the most
relieved man in seven counties when O'Toole came
through with that victory in Boston.
"I had in mind all the time," said Fred, "what
34 Pitching in a Pinch
happened to McGraw when he was trying to
introduce Marquard into the smart set, and I was
afraid the same thing would happen to me. I had
a lot of confidence in the nerve of that young
fellow though, because he stood up well under fire
the first day he got into Pittsburg. One of those
lady reporters was down to the club offices to meet
him the morning he got into town, and they always
kind of have me, an old campaigner, stepping
away from the plate. She pulled her pad and
pencil on Marty first thing, before he had had a
chance to knock the dirt out of his cleats, and said :
"'Now tell me about yourself.'
"He stepped right into that one, instead of
backing away.
'"What do you want me to tell?' he asks her.
"Then I knew he was all right. He was there
with the 'come-back.'"
But the ideal way to break a star into the Big
League is that which marked the entrance of
Grover Cleveland Alexander, of the Philadelphia
club. The Cincinnati club had had its eye on
Alexander for some time, but " Tacks " Ashenbach,
the scout, now dead, had advised against him,
declaring that he would be no good against ' ' regular
" Take Him Out " 35
batters." Philadelphia got him at the waiver
price and he was among the lot in the newspapers
marked ' ' Those who also joined. ' ' He started out
in 191 1 and won two or three games before anyone
paid any attention to him. Then he kept on
winning until one manager was saying to another:
"That guy, Alexander, is a hard one to beat."
He had won ten or a dozen games before it was
fully realized that he was a star. Then he was so
accustomed to the Big League he acted as if he
had been living in it all his life, and there was no
getting on his nerves. When he started, he had
everything to gain and nothing to lose. If he
did n't last, the newspapers would n't laugh at him,
and the people would n't say:
" $n, ooo, or $22,500, for a lemon." That's
the dread of all ball players.
Such is the psychology of introducing promising
pitchers into the Big Leagues. The Alexander
route is the ideal one, but it 's hard to get stars
now without paying enormous prices for them.
Philadelphia was lucky.
There is another element which enters into all
forms of athletics. Tennis players call it nervous-
ness, and ball players, in the frankness of the game,
36 Pitching in a Pinch
call it a "yellow streak." It is the inability to
stand the gaff, the weakening in the pinches It
is something ingrained in a man that can't be
cured. It is the desire to quit when the situation
is serious. It is different from stage fright,
because a man may get over that, but a "yellow
streak" is always with him. When a new player
breaks into the League, he is put to the most
severe test by the other men to see if he is "yellow."
If he is found wanting, he is hopeless in the Big
League, for the news will spread, and he will
receive no quarter. It is the cardinal sin in a ball
player.
For some time after "Hans" Wagner's poor
showing in the world's series of 1903, when the
Pittsburg club was defeated for the World's
Championship by the Boston American League
dub, it was reported that he was "yellow. " This
grieved the Dutchman deeply, for I don't know
a ball player in either league who would assay less
quit to the ton than Wagner. He is always there
and always fighting. Wagner felt the inference
which his team mates drew very keenly. This
was the real tragedy in Wagner's career. Not-
withstanding his stolid appearance, he is a sensi-
' Take Him Out" 37
tive player, and this hurt him more than anything
else in his life ever has.
When the Pittsburg club played Detroit in 1909
for the championship of the world, many, even of
Wagner's admirers, said, "The Dutchman will
quit. " It was in this series he vindicated himself.
His batting scored the majority of the Pittsburg
runs, and his fielding was little short of wonderful.
He was demonstrating his gameness. Many men
would have quit under the reflection. They would
have been unable to withstand the criticism, but
not Wagner.
Many persons implied that John Murray, the
rightfielder on the Giants, was "yellow" at the
conclusion of the 1911 world's series because, after
batting almost three hundred in the season, he did
not get a hit in the six games. But there is n't
a man on the team gamer. He has n't any nerves.
He 's one of the sort of ball players who says:
"Well, now I 've got my chew of tobacco in
my mouth. Let her go. "
There is an interesting bit of psychology con-
nected with Wagner and the spit-ball. It comes
as near being Wagner's "groove" as any curve
that has found its way into the Big Leagues. This
38 Pitching in a Pinch
is explained by the fact that the first time Wagner
ever faced "Bugs" Raymond he did n't get a hit
with Arthur using the spitter. Consequently the
report went around the circuit that Wagner
couldn't hit the spit-ball. He disproved this
theory against two or three spit-ball pitchers, but
as long as Raymond remained in the League he had
it on the hard-hitting Dutchman.
"Here comes a 'spitter,' Hans. Look out for
it," Raymond would warn Wagner, with a wide
grin, and then he would pop up a wet one.
"Guess I '11 repeat on that dose, Hans; you
didn't like that one."
And Wagner would get so worked up that he
frequently struck out against "Bugs" when the
rest of his club was hitting the eccentric pitcher
hard. It was because he achieved the idea on the
first day he couldn't hit the spit-ball, and he
was n't able to rid his mind of the impression.
Many fans often wondered why Raymond had it
on Wagner, the man whose only "groove" is a
base on balls. "Bugs" had the edge after that
first day when Wagner lost confidence in his ability
to hit the spit-ball as served by Raymond.
In direct contrast to this loss of confidence on
"Take Him Out" 39
Wagner's part was the incident attendant upon
Arthur Devlin's d6but into the Big League. He
had joined the club a youngster, in the season of
1904, and McGraw had not counted upon him to
play third base, having planned to plant Bresnahan
at that corner. But Bresnahan developed sciatic
rheumatism early in the season, and Devlin was
put on the bag in the emergency with a great deal
of misgiving.
The first day he was in the game he came up to
the bat with the bases full. The Giants were
playing Brooklyn at the Polo Grounds, and two
men had already struck out, with the team two
runs behind. Devlin came out from the bench.
"Who is this youthful-looking party?" one fan
asked another, as they scanned their score cards.
"Devlin,some busher, taking Bresnahan's place,"
another answered.
"Well, it 's all off now, " was the general verdict.
The crowd settled back, and one could feel the
lassitude in the atmosphere. But Devlin had his
first chance to make good in a pinch. There was
no weariness in his manner. Poole, the Brooklyn
pitcher, showing less respect than he should have
for the newcomer in baseball society, spilled one
40 Pitching in a Pinch
over too near the middle, and Arthur drove out a
home run, winning the game. Those who had
refused to place any confidence in him only a
moment before, were on their feet cheering wildly
now. And Devlin played third base for almost
eight years after that, and none thought of Bresna-
han and his rheumatism until he began catching
again. Devlin, after that home run, was oozing
confidence from every pore and burned up the
League with his batting for three years. He got
the old confidence from his start. The fans had
expected nothing from him, and he had delivered.
He had gained everything. He had made the
most dramatic play in baseball on his first day,
a home run with the bases full.
When Fred Snodgrass first started playing as a
regular with the Giants about the middle of the
season of 1910, he hit any ball pitched him hard
and had all the fans marvelling at his stick work.
He believed that he could hit anything and, as
long as he retained that belief, he could.
But the Chalmers Automobile Company had
offered a prize of one nice, mild-mannered motor
car to the batter in either league who finished the
season with the biggest average.
" Take Him Out " 41
Snodgrass was batting over four hundred at one
time and was ahead of them all when suddenly
the New York evening papers began to publish
the daily averages of the leaders for the automo-
bile, boosting Snodgrass. It suddenly struck Fred
that he was a great batter and that to keep his
place in that daily standing he would have to
make a hit every time he went to the plate. These
printed figures worried him. His batting fell off
miserably until, in the post season series with the
Yankees, he gave one of the worst exhibitions of
any man on the team. The newspapers did it.
" They got me worrying about myself," he told
me once. " I began to think how close I was to
the car and had a moving picture of myself driv-
ing it. That settled it."
Many promising young players are broken in
their first game in the Big League by the ragging
which they are forced to undergo at the hands of
veteran catchers. John Kling is a very bad man
with youngsters, and sometimes he can get on the
nerves of older players in close games when the
nerves are strung tight. The purpose of a catcher
in talking to a man in this way is to distract his
attention from batting, and once this is accom-
42 Pitching in a Pinch
plished he is gone. A favorite trick of a catcher
is to say to a new batter:
"Look out for this fellow. He 's got a mean
'bean' ball, and he hasn't any influence over it.
There 's a poor ' boob ' in the hospital now that
stopped one with his head."
Then the catcher signs for the pitcher to throw
the next one at the young batter's head. If he
pulls away, an unpardonable sin in baseball, the
dose is repeated.
"Yer almost had your foot in the water-pail
over by the bench that time," says the catcher.
Bing! Up comes another "beaner. " Then,
after the catcher has sized the new man up, he
makes his report.
"He won't do. He 's yellow."
And the players keep mercilessly after this
shortcoming, this ingrained fault which, unlike
a mechanical error, cannot be corrected until the
new player is driven out of the League. Perhaps
the catcher says :
"He 's game, that guy. No scare to him."
After that he is let alone. It 's the psychology
of batting.
Once, when I first broke into the League, Jack
" Take Him Out " 43
Chesbro, then with Pittsburg, threw a fast one up,
and it went behind my head, although I tried to
dodge back. He had lots of speed in those days,
too. It set me wondering what would have
happened if the ball had hit me. The more I
thought, the more it struck me that it would have
greatly altered my face had it gotten into the
course of the ball. Ever afterwards, he had it on
me, and, for months, a fast one at the head had
me backing away from the plate.
In contrast to this experience of mine was the
curing of "Josh" Devore, the left-fielder of the
Giants, of being bat shy against left-handers.
Devore has always been very weak at the bat with a
southpaw in the box, dragging his right foot away
from the plate. This was particularly the case
against "Slim" Sallee, the tenuous southpaw of
the St. Louis Nationals. Finally McGraw, exas-
perated after "Josh" had struck out twice in one
day, said:
"That fellow has n't got speed enough to bend
a pane of glass at the home plate throwing from
the box, and you 're pullin' away as if he was
shooting them out of a gun. It 's a crime to let
him beat you. Go up there the next time and
44 Pitching in a Pinch
get hit, and see if he can hurt you. If you don't
get hit, you 're fined $10."
Devore, who is as fond of $10 as the next one,
went to the bat and took one of Sallee's slants in a
place where it would do the least damage. He
trotted to first base smiling.
"What 'd I tell you?" asked McGraw, coaching.
"Could he hurt you?"
"Say," replied "Josh," "I'd hire out to let
them pitch baseballs at me if none could throw
harder than that guy. "
Devore was cured of being bat shy when Sallee
was pitching, right then and there, and he has
improved greatly against all left-handers ever
since, so much so that McGraw leaves him in the
game now when a southpaw pitches, instead of
placing Beals Becker in left field as he used to.
All Devore needed was the confidence to stand up
to the plate against them, to rid his mind of the
idea that, if once he got hit, he would leave the
field feet first. That slam in the slats which
Sallee handed him supplied the confidence.
When Devore was going to Philadelphia for
the second game of the world's series in the fall of
1911, the first one in the other town, he was intro-
"Take Him Out" 45
duced to "Ty" Cobb, the Detroit out-fielder, by
some newspaper man on the train, and, as it was
the first time Devore had ever met Cobb, he sat
down with him and they talked all the way over.
"Gee," said "Josh" to me, as we were getting
off the train, "that fellow Cobb knows a lot about
batting. He told me some things about the Ameri-
can League pitchers just now, and he did n't know
he was doing it. I never let on. But I just
hope that fellow Plank works to-day, if they think
that I am weak against left-handers. Say, Matty,
I could write a book about that guy and his
' grooves' now, after buzzing Cobb, and the funny
thing is he did n't know he was telling me. "
Plank pitched that day and fanned Devore
four times out of a possible four. "Josh" did n't
even get a foul off him.
"Thought you knew all about that fellow," I
said to Devore after the game.
"I Ve learned since that Cobb and he are pretty
thick," replied "Josh," "and I guess 'Ty' was
giving me a bad steer. "
It was evident that Cobb had been filling
"Josh" up with misinformation that was working
around in Devore's mind when he went to the
46 Pitching in a Pinch
plate to face Plank, and, instead of being open
to impressions, these wrong opinions had already
been planted and he was constantly trying to con-
firm them. Plank was crossing him all the time,
and, being naturally weak against left-handers,
this additional handicap made Devore look foolish.
In the well-worn words of Mr. Dooley, it has
been my experience "to trust your friends, but
cut the cards. " By that, I mean one ball player
will often come to another with a tip that he really
thinks worth while, but that avails nothing in the
end. A man has to be a pretty smart ball player
to dispense accurate information about others, be-
cause the Big Leaguers know their own "grooves "
and are naturally trying to cover them up. Then
a batter may be weak against one pitcher on a
certain kind of a ball, and may whale the same sort
of delivery, with a different twist to it, out of the
lot against another.
That was the experience I had with "Ed"
Delehanty, the famous slugger of the old Philadel-
phia National League team, who is now dead.
During my first year in the League several well-
meaning advisers came to me and said :
"Don't give 'Del' any high fast ones because,
"Take Him Out" 47
if you do, you will just wear your fielders out worse
than a George M. Cohan show does the chorus.
They will think they are in a Marathon race
instead of a ball game. "
Being young, I took this advice, and the first
time I pitched against Delehanty, I fed him curved
balls. He hit these so far the first two times he
came to bat that one of the balls was never found,
and everybody felt like shaking hands with Van
Haltren, the old Giant outfielder, when he returned
with the other, as if he had been away on a vaca-
tion some place. In fact, I had been warned
against giving any of this Philadelphia team of
sluggers high fast ones, and I had been delivering
a diet of curves to all of them which they were
sending to the limits of the park and further, with
great regularity. At last, when Delehanty came
to the bat for the third time in the game, Van
Haltren walked into the box from the outfield and
handed the ball to me, after he had just gone to
the fence to get it. Elmer Flick had hit it there.
"Matty," he pleaded, "for the love of M&e,
slip this fellow a base on balls and let me get my
wind."
Instead I decided to switch my style, and I fed
48 Pitching in a Pinch
Delehanty high fast ones, the dangerous dose, and
he struck out then and later. He was n't expect-
ing them and was so surprised that he could n't
hit the ball. Only two of the six balls at which he
struck were good ones. I found out afterwards
that the tradition about not delivering any high
fast balls to the Philadelphia hitters was the out-
growth of the old buzzer tipping service, estab-
lished in 1899, by which the batters were informed
what to expect by Morgan Murphy, located in the
clubhouse with a pair of field-glasses and his finger
on a button which worked a buzzer under the
third-base coaching box. The coacher tipped the
batter off what was coming and the signal-stealing
device had worked perfectly. The hitters had
all waited for the high fast ones in those days, as
they can be hit easier if a man knows that they
are coming, and can also be hit farther.
But, after the buzzer had been discovered and
the delivery of pitchers could not be accurately
Jtorecast, this ability to hit high fast ones vanished,
but not the tradition. The result was that this
Philadelphia club was getting a steady diet of
curves and hitting them hard, not expecting any-
thing else. When I first pitched against Dele-
"Take Him Out" 49
hanty, his reputation as a hitter gave him a big edge
on me. Therefore I was willing to take any kind
of advice calculated to help me, but eventually I
had to find out for myself. If I had taken a
chance on mixing them up the first time he faced
me, I still doubt if he would have made those two
long hits, but it was his reputation working in my
mind and the idea that he ate up high fast balls
that prevented me from taking the risk.
Each pitcher has to find out for himself what a
man is going to hit. It 's all right to take advice
at first, but, if this does not prove to be the proper
prescription, it 's up to him to experiment and not
continue to feed him the sort of balls that he is
hitting.
Reputations count for a great deal in the Big
Leagues. Cobb has a record as being a great
base runner, and I believe that he steals ten bases
a season on this reputation. The catcher knows
he is on the bag, realizes that he is going to
steal, fears him, hurries his throw, and, in his
anxiety, it goes bad. Cobb is safe, whereas, if
he had been an ordinary runner with no reputa-
tion, he would probably have been thrown out.
Pitchers who have made names for themselves
50 Pitching in a Pinch
in the Big Leagues, have a much easier time
winning as a consequence.
"All he 's got to do is to throw his glove into
the box to beat that club," is an old expression
in baseball, which means that the opposing batters
fear the pitcher and that his reputation will carry
him through if he has nothing whatever on the ball.
Newspapers work on the mental attitude of
Big League players. This has been most marked
in Cincinnati, and I believe that the local news-
papers have done as much as anything to keep a
pennant away from that town. When the team
went south for the spring practice, the newspapers
printed glowing reports of the possibilities of the
club winning the pennant, but, when the club
started to fall down in the race, they would knock
the men, and it would take the heart out of the
players. Almost enough good players have been
let go by the Cincinnati team to make a world's
championship club. There are Donlin, Seymour,
Steinfeldt, Lobert and many more. Ball players
inhale the accounts printed in the newspapers, and
a correspondent with a grouch has ruined the
prospects of many a good player and club. The
New York newspapers, first by the great amount
"Take Him Out" 51
of publicity given to his old record, and then by
criticising him for not making a better showing,
had a great deal to do with Marquard failing to
make good the first two years he was in New York,
as I have shown.
A smart manager in the Big League is always
working to keep his valuable stars in the right
frame of mind. On the last western trip the
Giants made in the season of 1911, when they won
the pennant by taking eighteen games out of
twenty-two games, McGraw refused to permit
any of the men to play cards. He realized that
often the stakes ran high and that the losers
brooded over the money which they lost and were
thinking of this rather than the game when on the
ball field. It hurt their playing, so there were no
cards. He also carried "Charley" Faust, the
Kansas Jinx killer, along to keep the players
amused and because it was thought that he was
good luck. It helped their mental attitude.
The treatment of a new player when he first
arrives is different now from what it was in the
old days. Once there was a time when the veteran
looked upon the recruit with suspicion and the
feeling that he had come to take his job and his
52 Pitching in a Pinch
bread and butter from him. If a young pitcher
was put into the box, the old catcher would do all
that he could to irritate him, and many times he
would inform the batters of the other side what he
was going to throw.
"He 's tryin' to horn my friend Bill out of a
job," I have heard catchers charge against a
youngster.
This attitude drove many a star ball player
back to the minors because he couldn't make
good under the adverse circumstances, but nothing
of the sort exists now. Each veteran does all that
he can to help the youngster, realizing that on the
younger generation depends the success of the
club, and that no one makes any money by being
on a loser. Travelling with a tail-end ball
club is the poorest pastime in the world. I would
rather ride in the first coach of a funeral procession.
The youngster is treated more courteously
now when he first arrives. In the old days, the
veterans of the club sized up the recruit and treated
him like a stranger for days, which made him feel
as if he were among enemies instead of friends, and,
as a result, it was much harder for him to make
good. Now all hands make him a companion
"Take Him Out'* 53
from the start, unless he shows signs of being
unusually fresh.
There is a lot to baseball in the Big Leagues
besides playing the game. No man can have a
' ' yellow streak ' ' and last. He must not pay much
attention to his nerves or temperament. He must
hide every flaw. It 's all part of the psychology
of baseball. But the saddest words of all to a
pitcher are three " Take Him Out. "
ra
Pitching in a Pinch
Many Pitchers Are Effective in a Big League Ball Game
until that Heart-Breaking Moment Arrives Known
as the " Pinch "It Is then that the Man in the
Box is Put to the Severest Test by the Coachers
and the Players on the Bench Victory or De-
feat Hangs on his Work in that Inning Famous
"Pinches."
I N most Big League ball games, there comes an
* inning on which hangs victory or defeat.
Certain intellectual fans call it the crisis; college
professors, interested in the sport, have named it
the psychological moment; Big League managers
mention it as the "break," and pitchers speak of
the "pinch."
This is the time when each team is straining
every nerve either to win or to prevent defeat.
The players and spectators realize that the out-
come of the inning is of vital importance. And
54
Pitching in a Pinch 55
in most of these pinches, the real burden falls on
the pitcher. It is at this moment that he is
"putting all he has" on the ball, and simulta-
neously his opponents are doing everything they
can to disconcert him.
Managers wait for this break, and the shrewd
league leader can often time it. Frequently a
certain style of play is adopted to lead up to the
pinch, then suddenly a slovenly mode of attack is
changed, and the team comes on with a rush in an
effort to break up the game. That is the real test
of a pitcher. He must be able to live through
these squalls.
Two evenly matched clubs have been playing
through six innings with neither team gaining any
advantage. Let us say that they are the Giants
and the Chicago Cubs. Suddenly the Chicago
pitcher begins to weaken in the seventh. Specta-
tors cannot perceive this, but McGraw, the Giants'
manager, has detected some crack. All has been
quiet on the bench up to this moment. Now
the men begin to fling about sweaters and move
around, one going to the water cooler to get a
drink, another picking up a bat or two and flinging
them in the air, while four or five prospective
56 Pitching in a Pinch
hitters are lined up, swinging several sticks apiece,
as if absolutely confident that each will get his
turn at the plate.
The two coachers on the side lines have become
dancing dervishes, waving sweaters and arms
wildly, and shouting various words of discourage-
ment to the pitcher which are calculated to make
his job as soft as a bed of concrete. He has
pitched three balls to the batter, and McGraw vehe-
mently protests to the umpire that the twirler
is not keeping his foot on the slab. The game is
delayed while this is discussed at the pitcher's box
and the umpire brushes off the rubber strip with
a whisk broom.
There is a kick against these tactics from the
other bench, but the damage has been done.
The pitcher passes the batter, forgets what he
ought to throw to the next man, and cannot get
the ball where he wants it. A base hit follows.
Then he is gone. The following batter triples,
and, before another pitcher can be warmed up,
three or four runs are across the plate, and the
game is won. That explains why so many wise
managers keep a pitcher warming up when the
man in the box is going strong.
Pitching in a Pinch 57
It is in the pinch that the pitcher shows whether
or not he is a Big Leaguer. He must have some-
thing besides curves then. He needs a head, and
he has to use it. It is the acid test. That is the
reason so many men, who shine in the minor
leagues, fail to make good in the majors. They
cannot stand the fire.
A young pitcher came to the Giants a few years
ago. I won't mention his name because he has
been pitching good minor-league ball since. He
was a wonder with the bases empty, but let a man
or two get on the sacks, and he would n't know
whether he was in a pitcher's box or learning
aviation in the Wright school, and he acted a lot
more like an aviator in the crisis. McGraw
looked him over twice.
"He 's got a spine like a charlotte russe, "
declared "Mac," after his second peek, and he
passed him back to the bushes.
Several other Big League managers, tempted by
this man's brilliant record in the minors, have
tried him out since, but he has always gone back.
McGraw's judgment of the man was correct.
On the other hand, Otis Crandall came to the
New York club a few years ago a raw country boy
58 Pitching in a Pinch
from Indiana. I shall never forget how he looked
the first spring I saw him in Texas. The club
had a large number of recruits and was short of
uniforms. He was among the last of the hopefuls
to arrive and there was no suit for him, so, in a
pair of regular trousers with his coat off, he began
chasing flies in the outfield. His head hung down
on his chest, and, when not playing, a cigarette
drooped out of the comer of his mouth. But he
turned out to be a very good fly chaser, and
McGraw admired his persistency.
"What are you?" McGraw asked him one day.
"A pitcher," replied Crandall. Two words
constitute an oration for him.
" Let 's see what you 've got," said Me Graw.
Crandall warmed up, and he did n't have much
of anything besides a sweeping outcurve and a
good deal of speed. He looked less like a pitcher
than any of the spring crop, but McGraw saw
something in him and kept him. The result is he
has turned out to be one of the most valuable
men on the club, because he is there in a pinch.
He could n't be disturbed if the McNamaras tied
a bomb to him, with a time fuse on it set for "at
once. " He is the sort of pitcher who is best when
Pitching in a Pinch 59
things look darkest. I Ve heard the crowd
yelling, when he has been pitching on the enemy's
ground, so that a sixteen-inch gun could n't have
been heard if it had gone off in the lot.
"That crowd was making some noise," I've
said to Crandall after the inning.
"Was it?" asked Otie. "I didn't notice it."
One day in 1911, he started a game in Philadel-
phia and three men got on the bases with no one
out, along about the fourth or fifth inning. He shut
them out without a run. It was the first game he
had started for a long while, his specialty having
been to enter a contest, after some other pitcher
had gotten into trouble, with two or three men on
the bases and scarcely any one out. After he
came to the bench with the threatening inning
behind him, he said to me:
"Matty, I did n't feel at home out there to-day
until a lot of people got on the bases. I '11 be all
right now. " And he was. I believe that Crandall is
the best pitcher in a pinch in the National League
and one of the most valuable men to a team, for he
can play any position and bats hard. Besides being
a great pinch pitcher, he can also hit in a crush, and
won many games for the Giants in 1911 that way.
60 Pitching in a Pinch
Very often spectators think that a pitcher has
lost his grip in a pinch, when really he is playing
inside baseball. A game with Chicago in Chicago
back in 1908 (not the famous contest that cost
the Giants a championship ; I did not have any grip
at all that day; but one earlier in the season) best
illustrates the point I want to bring out. Mordecai
Brown and I were having a pitchers' duel, and the
Giants were in the lead by the score of i to o when
the team took the field for the ninth inning.
It was one of those fragile games in which one
run makes a lot of difference, the sort that has a
fringe of nervous prostration for the spectators.
Chance was up first in the ninth and he pushed a
base hit to right field. Steinfeldt followed with a
triple that brought Chance home and left the run
which would win the game for the Cubs on third
base. The crowd was shouting like mad, thinking
I was done. I looked at the hitters, waiting to
come up, and saw Hofman and Tinker swinging
their bats in anticipation. Both are dangerous
men, but the silver lining was my second look,
which revealed to me Kling and Brown following
Hofman and Tinker.
Without a second's hesitation, I decided to pass
Pitching in a Pinch 61
both Hofman and Tinker, because the run on
third base would win the game anyway if it scored,
and with three men on the bags instead of one,
there would be a remote chance for a triple
play, besides making a force out at the plate pos-
sible. Remember that no one was out at this
time. Kling and Brown had always been easy for
me.
When I got two balls on Hofman, trying to make
him hit at a bad one, the throng stood up in the
stand and tore splinters out of the floor with its
feet. And then I passed Hofman. The spectators
misunderstood my motive.
"He 's done. He 's all in," shouted one man
in a voice which was one of the carrying, persistent,
penetrating sort. The crowd took the cry up
and stamped its feet and cheered wildly.
Then I passed Tinker, a man, as I have said
before, who has had a habit of making trouble for
me. The crowd quieted down somewhat, per-
haps because it was not possible for it to cheer
any louder, but probably because the spectators
thought that now it would be only a matter of how
many the Cubs would win by. The bases were
full, and no one was out.
62 Pitching in a Pinch
But that wildly cheering crowd had worked me
up to greater effort, and I struck Kling out and
then Brown followed him back to the bench for
the same reason. Just one batter stood between
me and a tied score now. He was John Evers,
and the crowd having lost its chortle of victory,
was begging him to make the hit which would
bring just one run over the plate. They were
surprised by my recuperation after having passed
two men. Evers lifted a gentle fly to left field
and the three men were left on the bases. The
Giants eventually won that game in the eleventh
inning by the score of 4 to I.
But that system does n't always work. Often
I have passed a man to get a supposedly poor
batter up and then had him bang out a base hit.
My first successful year in the National League
was 1901, although I joined the Giants in the
middle of the season of 1900. The Boston club
at that time had a pitcher named "Kid" Nichols
who was a great twirler. The first two games
I pitched against the Boston club were against this
man, and I won the first in Boston and the second
in New York, the latter by the score of 2 to I.
Both teams then went west for a three weeks'
Pitching in a Pinch 63
trip, and when the Giants returned a series was
scheduled with Boston at the Polo Grounds. There
was a good deal of speculation as to whether I
would again beat the veteran "Kid" Nichols,
and the newspapers, discussing the promised
pitching duel, stirred up considerable enthusiasm
over it. Of course, I, the youngster, was eager to
make it three straight over the veteran. Neither
team had scored at the beginning of the eighth
inning. Boston runners got on second and third
bases with two out, and FredTenney, then playing
first base on the Boston club, was up at the bat.
He had been hitting me hard that day, and I
decided to pass him and take a chance on " Dick* *
Cooley, the next man, and a weak batter. So
Tenney got his base on ba 1 ls, and the sacks were
full.
Two strikes were gathered on Cooley, one at
which he swung and the other called, and I was
beginning to congratulate myself on my excellent
judgment, which was really counting my chickens
while they were still in the incubator. I at-
tempted to slip a fast one over on Cooley and got
the ball a little too high. The result was that he
stepped into it and made a three base hit which
64 Pitching in a Pinch
eventually won the game by the score of 3 to o.
That was once when passing a man to get a weak
batter did not work.
I have always been against a tvirler pitching
himself out, when there is no necessity for it, as so
many youngsters do. They bum them through
for eight innings and then, when the pinch comes,
something is lacking. A pitcher must remember
that there are eight other men in the game,
drawing more or less salary to stop balls hit at
them, and he must have confidence in them.
Some pitchers will put all that they have on each
ball. This is foolish for two reasons.
In the first place, it exhausts the man physically
and, when the pinch comes, he has not the strength
to last it out. But second and more important,
it shows the batters everything that he has, which
is senseless. A man should always hold something
in reserve, a surprise to spring when things get
tight. If a pitcher has displayed his whole assort-
ment to the batters in the early part of the game
and has used all his speed and his fastest breaking
curve, then, when the crisis comes, he "hasn't
anything" to fall back on.
Like all youngsters, I was eager to make a
Pitching in a Pinch 65
record during my first year in the Big League,
and in one of the first games I pitched against
Cincinnati I made the mistake of putting all that
1 had on every ball. We were playing at the Polo
Grounds, and the Giants had the visitors beaten
2 to o, going into the last inning. I had been
popping them through, trying to strike out every
hitter and had not held anything in reserve. The
first man to the bat in the ninth got a single, the
next a two bagger, and by the time they had
stopped hitting me, the scorer had credited the
Cincinnati club with four runs, and we lost the
game, 4 to 2.
I was very much down in the mouth over the
defeat, after I had the game apparently won, and
George Davis, then the manager of the Giants,
noticed it in the clubhouse.
" Never mind, Matty," he said, "it was worth
it. The game ought to teach you not to pitch
your head off when you don't need to. "
It did. I have never forgotten that lesson.
Many spectators wonder why a pitcher does not
work as hard as he can all through the game,
instead of just in the pinches. If he did, they
argue, there would be no pinches. But there
66 Pitching in a Pinch
would be, and, if the pitcher did not conserve his
energy, the pinches would usually go against him.
Sometimes bawling at a man in a pinch has the
opposite effect from that desired. Clarke Griffith,
recently of Cincinnati, has a reputation in the
Big Leagues for being a bad man to upset a pitcher
from the coacher's box. Off the field he is one of
the decentest fellows in the game, but, when
talking to a pitcher, he is very irritating. I was
working in a game against the Reds in Cincinnati
one day, just after he had been made manager of
the club, and Griffith spent the afternoon and a lot
of breath trying to get me going. The Giants
were ahead, 5 to I, at the beginning of the seventh.
In the Cincinnati half of that inning, "Mike"
Mitchell tripled with the bases full and later
tallied on an outfield fly which tied the score.
The effect this had on Griffith was much the same
as that of a lighted match on gasolene.
1 ' Now, you big blond, ' ' he shouted at me, ' ' we ' ve
got you at last."
I expected McGraw to take me out, as it looked
in that inning as if I was not right, but he did not,
and I pitched along up to the ninth with the score
still tied and with Griffith, the carping critic, on
Pitching in a Pinch 67
the side lines. We failed to count in our half, but
the first Cincinnati batter got on the bases, stole
second, and went to third on a sacrifice. He was
there with one out.
"Here 's where we get you," chortled Griffith.
"This is the point at which you receive a terrible
showing up."
I tried to get the next batter to hit at bad balls,
and he refused, so that I lost him. I was afraid
to lay the ball over the plate in this crisis, as a hit
or an outfield fly meant the game. Hoblitzell
and Mitchell, two of Griffith's heaviest batters,
were scheduled to arrive at the plate next.
"You ought to be up, Mike," yelled the Cin-
cinnati manager at Mitchell, who was swinging a
couple of sticks preparatory to his turn at the bat.
"Too bad you won't get a lick, old man, because
Hobby's going to break it up right here. "
Something he said irritated me, but, instead of
worrying me, it made me feel more like pitching.
I seldom talk to a coacher, but I turned to Griffith
and said:
"I '11 bring Mike up, and we '11 see what he can
do."
I deliberately passed Hoblitzell without even
68 Pitching in a Pinch
giving him a chance to hit at a single ball. It
wasn't to make a grand stand play I did this,
but because it was baseball. One run would win
the game anyway, and, with more men on the
bases, there were more plays possible. Besides
Hoblitzell is a nasty hitter, and I thought that I
had a better chance of making Mitchell hit the
ball on the ground, a desirable thing under the
conditions.
"Now, Mike," urged Griffith, as Mitchell
stepped up to the plate, "go as far as you like.
Blot up the bases, old boy. This blond is gone. "
That sort of talk never bothers me. I had
better luck with Mitchell than I had hoped. He
struck out. The next batter was easy, and the
Giants won the game in the .tenth inning. Accord -
ing to the newspaper reports, I won twenty-one
or twenty-two games before Cincinnati beat me
again, so it can be seen that joshing in pinches is
not effective against all pitchers. A manager
must judge the temperament of his victim. But
Griffith has never stopped trying to rag me. In
191 1, when the Giants were west on their final trip,
I was warming up in Cincinnati before a game, and
he was batting out flies near me. He would
Pitching in a Pinch 69
talk to me between each ball he hit to the
outfield.
"Got anything to-day, Matty?" he asked.
"Guess there ain't many games left in you.
You 're getting old. "
When I broke into the National League, the
Brooklyn club had as bad a bunch of men to
bother a pitcher as I ever faced. The team had
won the championship in 1900, and naturally they
were all pretty chesty. When I first began to
play in 1901, this crowd Kelly, Jennings, Keeler
and Hanlon got after me pretty strong. But I
seemed to get pitching nourishment out of their
line of conversation and won a lot of games. At
last, so I have been told, Hanlon, who was the
manager, said to his conversational ball players:
"Lay off that Mathewson kid. Leave him
alone. He likes the chatter you fellows spill out
there."
They did not bother me after that, but this
bunch spoiled many a promising young pitcher.
Speaking of sizing up the temperarneut of bat-
ters and pitchers in a pinch, few persons realize
that it was a little bit of carelessly placed conversa-
tion belonging to "Chief" Bender, the Indian
70 Pitching in a Pinch
pitcher on the Athletics, that did as much aa
anything to give the Giants the first game in the
1911 world's series.
"Josh" Devore, the leftfielder on the New York
team, is an in-and-out batter, but he is a bulldog
in a pinch and is more apt to make a hit in a tight
place than when the bases are empty. And he is
quite as likely to strike out. He is the type of ball
player who cannot be rattled. With "Chief"
Myers on second base, the score tied, and two out,
Devore came to the bat in the seventh inning of
the first game.
"Look at little 'Josh/" said Bender, who had
been talking to batters all through the game.
Devore promptly got himself into the hole with
two strikes and two balls on him, but a little
drawback like that never worries "Josh."
"I 'm going to pitch you a curved ball over the
outside corner, " shouted Bender as he wound up.
"I know it, Chief," replied "Josh," and he set
himself to receive just that sort of delivery.
Up came the predicted curve over the outside
corner. "Josh" hit it to left field for two bases,
and brought home the winning run. Bender
evidently thought that, by telling Devore what he
Pitching in a Pinch 71
was actually going to pitch, he would make him
think he was going to cross him.
"I knew it would be a curve ball, " Devore told
me after the game. "With two and two, he would
be crazy to hand me anything else. When he
made that crack, I guessed that he was trying to
cross me by telling the truth. Before he spoke,
I was n't sure which corner he was going to put it
over, but he tipped me."
Some batters might have been fooled by those
tactics. It was taking a chance in a pinch, and
Bender lost.
Very few of the fans who saw this first game of
the 1911 world's series realize that the "break" in
that contest came in the fifth inning. The score
was tied, with runners on second and third bases
with two out, when "Eddie "Collins, the fast second
baseman of the Athletics, and a dangerous hitter,
came to the bat. I realized that I was skating on
thin ice and was putting everything I had on the
ball. Collins hit a slow one down the first base
line, about six feet inside the bag.
With the hit, I ran over to cover the base, and
Merkle made for the ball, but he had to get directly
in my line of approach to field it. Collins, steam-
72 Pitching in a Pinch
ing down the base line, realized that, if he could
get the decision at first on this hit, his team would
probably win the game, as the two other runners
could score easily. In a flash, I was aware of this,
too.
"I '11 take it," yelled Merkle, as he stopped to
pick up the ball.
Seeing Merkle and me in front of him, both
heavy men, Collins knew that he could not get
past us standing up. When still ten or twelve
feet from the bag, he slid, hoping to take us una-
awares and thus avoid being touched. He could
then scramble to the bag. As soon as he jumped,
I realized what he hoped to do, and, fearing that
Merkle would miss him, I grabbed the first base-
man and hurled him at Collins. It was an old-
fashioned, football shove, Merkle landing on
Collins and touching him out. A great many of
the spectators believed that I had interfered with
Merkle on the play. As a matter of fact, I thought
that it was the crisis of the game and knew that,
if Collins was not put out, we would probably lose.
That football shove was a brand new play to me
in baseball, invented on the spur of the second, but
it worked.
Pitching in a Pinch 73
In minor leagues, there are fewer games in which
a "break" comes. It does not develop in all Big
League contests by any means. Sometimes one
team starts to win in the first inning and simply
runs away from the other club all the way. But
in all close games the pinch shows up.
It happens in many contests in the major
leagues because of the almost perfect baseball
played. Depending on his fielders, a manager
can play for this "break." And when the pinch
comes, it is a case of the batter's nerve against the
pitcher's.
IV
Big League Pitchers and Their
Peculiarities.
Nearly Every Pitcher in the Big Leagues Has Some
Temperamental or Mechanical Flaw which he is
Constantly Trying to Hide, and which Opposing
Batters are always Endeavoring to Uncover The
Giants Drove Coveleski, the Man who Beat them
out of a Pennant, Back to the Minor Leagues by
Taunting him on One Sore Point Weaknesses
of Other Stars.
LIKE great artists in other fields of endeavor,
many Big League pitchers are tempera-
mental. "Bugs" Raymond, "Rube" Waddell,
"Slim" Sallee, and "Wild Bill" Donovan are
ready examples of the temperamental type. The
first three are the sort of men of whom the man-
ager is never sure. He does not know, when they
come into the ball park, whether or not they are
74
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 75
in condition to work. They always carry with
them a delightful atmosphere of uncertainty.
In contrast to this eccentric group, there are
those with certain mechanical defects in their
pitching of which opposing clubs take advantage.
Last comes the irritable, nervous box artist
who must have things just so, even down to the
temperature, before he can work satisfactorily.
"As delicate as prima donnas," says John
McGraw of this variety.
He speaks of the man who loses his love for his
art when his shirt is too tight or a toe is sore. This
style, perhaps, is the most difficult for a manager
to handle, unless it is the uncertain, eccentric sort.
As soon as a new pitcher breaks into the Big
Leagues, seven clubs are studying him with
microscopic care to discover some flaw in his
physical style or a temperamental weakness
on which his opponents can play. Naturally,
if the man has such a "groove," his team mates
are endeavoring to hide it, but it soon leaks out
and becomes general gossip around the circuit.
Then the seven clubs start aiming at this flaw,
and oftentimes the result is that a promising young
pitcher, because he has some one definite weakness.
76 Pitching in a Pinch
goes back to the minors. A crack in the tempera-
ment is the worst. Mechanical defects can usually
be remedied when discovered.
Few baseball fans know that the Giants drove
a man back to the minor leagues who once pitched
them out of a pennant. The club was tipped off
to a certain, unfortunate circumstance in the
twirler's early life which left a lasting impression
on his mind. The players never let him forget
this when he was in a game, and it was like
constantly hitting him on a boil.
Coveleski won three games for the Philadelphia
National League club from the Giants back in
1908, when one of these contests would have meant
a pennant to the New York club and possibly a
world's championship. That was the season the
fight was decided in a single game with the Chicago
Cubs after the regular schedule had been played
out. Coveleski was hailed as a wonder for his
performance.
Just after the season closed, " Tacks " Ashenbach,
the scout for the Cincinnati club, now dead,
and formerly a manager in the league where
Coveleski got his start, came to McGraw and
laughed behind his hand.
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 77
"Mac," he said, "I 'm surprised you let that big
Pole beat you out of a championship. I can give
you the prescription to use every time that he
starts working. All you have to do is to imitate
a snare drum."
"What are you trying to do kid me?" asked
McGraw, for he was still tolerably irritable over
the outcome of the season.
"Try it," was Ashenbach's laconic reply.
The result was that the first game Coveleski
started against the Giants the next season, there
was a chorus of "rat-a-tat-tats" from the bench,
with each of the coachers doing a "rat-a-tat-tat"
solo, for we decided, after due consideration,
this was the way to imitate a snare drum. We
would have tried to imitate a calliope if we had
thought that it would have done any good against
this pitcher.
"I'll hire a fife and drum corps if the tip is
worth anything," declared McGraw.
"Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!" came the
chorus as Coveleski wound up to pitch the first
ball. It went wide of the plate.
' ' Rat-a-tat-tat ! Rat-a-tat-tat ! " it was repeated
all through the inning. When Coveleski walked
78 Pitching in a Pinch
to the Philadelphia bench at the end of the first
round, after the Giants had made three runs off
him, he looked over at us and shouted:
"You think you're smart, don't you?"
"Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!" was the only
reply. But now we knew we had him. When a
pitcher starts to talk back, it is a cinch that he is
irritated. So the deadly chorus was kept up in
volleys, until the umpire stopped us, and then
it had to be in a broken fire, but always there
was the "Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat!" When
Coveleski looked at McGraw coaching on third
base, the manager made as if to beat a snare drum,
and as he glanced at Latham stationed at first,
"Arlie" would reply with the "rat-a-tat-tat."
The team on the bench sounded like a fife
and drum corps without the fifes, and Coveleski
got no peace. In the fourth inning, after the game
had been hopelessly lost by the Philadelphia
club, Coveleski was taken out. We did not
understand the reason for it, but we all knew that
we had found Coveleski's "groove" with that
1 ' rat-a-tat-tat ' ' chorus. The man who had beaten
the New York club out of a pennant never won
another game against the Giants.
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 79
"Say," said McGraw to "Tacks" Ashenbach
the next time the club was in Cincinnati, "there
are two things I want to ask you. First, why does
that 'rat-a-tat-tat' thing get under Coveleski's
skin so badly, and, second, why didn't you
mention it to us when he was beating the club out
of a championship last fall?"
"Never thought of it," asserted Ashenbach.
"Just chanced to be telling stories one day last
winter about the old times in the Tri-State, when
that weakness of Coveleski's happened to pop
into my mind. Thought maybe he was cured."
"Cured!" echoed McGraw. "Only way he
could be cured of that is to poison him. But tip
me. Why is it?"
"Well, this is the way I heard it," answered
Ashenbach. "When he was a coal miner back
in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, he got stuck on some
Jane who was very fond of music. Everybody
who was any one played in the Silver Cornet
Band down in Melodeon Hall on Thursday nights.
The girl told Coveleski that she couldn't see
him with an X-ray unless he broke into the band.
'"But I can't play any instrument,' said the
Pole.
8o Pitching in a Pinch
'"Well, get busy and learn, and don't show
around here until you have,' answered the girl.
"Now Coveleski had no talent for music,
so he picked out the snare drum as his victim and
started practising regularly, getting some instruc-
tion from the local bandmaster. After he had
driven all the neighbors pretty nearly crazy,
the bandmaster said he would give him a show
at the big annual concert, when he tried to get
all the pieces in his outfit that he could. Things
went all right until it was time for Coveleski
to come along with a little bit on the snare drum,
and then he was nowhere in the neighborhood.
He didn't even swing at it. But later, when
the leader waved for a solo from the fiddle,
Coveleski mistook it for his hit-and-run sign and
came in so strong on the snare drum that no one
could identify the fiddle in the mixup.
"The result was that the leader asked for
waivers on old Coveleski very promptly, and the
girl was not long in following suit. That snare
drum incident has been the sore point in his make-
up ever since."
"I wish I 'd known it last fall about the first
of September," declared McGraw.
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 81
But the real snapper came later when the
Cincinnati club was whipsawed on the information.
In a trade with Philadelphia, Griffith got Coveleski
for Cincinnati along with several other players.
Each game he started against us he got the old
"rat-a-tat-tat." Griffith protested to the um-
pires, but it is impossible to stop a thing of that
sort even though the judges of play did try.
The Pole did not finish another game against
the Giants until his last in the Big League. One
day we were hitting him near and far, and the
"rat-a-tat-tat" chorus was only interrupted by
the rattle of the bats against the ball, when he
looked in at the bench to see if Griffith wanted
to take him out, for it was about his usual leaving
time.
"Stay in there and get it," shouted back Griff.
Coveleski did. He absorbed nineteen hits
and seventeen runs at the hands of the Giants,
this man who had taken a championship of the
National League away from us.
That night Griffith asked for waivers on him,
and he left the Big Leagues for good. He was a
good twirler, except for that one flaw, which cost
him his place in the big show. There is little
82 Pitching in a Pinch
mercy among professional ball players when a
game is at stake, especially if the man has taken
a championship away from a team by insisting
upon working out of his turn, so he can win games
that will benefit his club not a scintilla.
Mordecai Brown, the great pitcher of the
Chicago Cubs and the man who did more than
any other one player to bring four National
League pennants and two world's championships
to that club, has a physical deformity which
has turned out to be an advantage. Many years
ago, "Brown lost most of the first ringer of his
right hand in an argument with a feed cutter,
said finger being amputated at the second joint;
while his third finger is shorter than it should be,
because a hot grounder carried part of it away
one day. In some strange way, Brown has
achieved wonders with this crippled hand. It
is on account of the missing finger that he is
called "Three Fingered" Brown, and he is bet-
ter known by that appellation than by his real
name.
Brown beat the Giants a hard game one day
in 191 1, pitching against me. He had a big curve,
lots of speed, and absolute control. The Giants
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 83
could not touch him. Next day McGraw was
out wanning up with Arthur Wilson, the young
catcher on the club.
"Wonder if he gets any new curve with that
short first finger?" said McGraw, and thereupon
crooked his own initial digit and began trying
to throw the ball in different ways off it to see
what the result would be. Finally he decided:
"No, I guess he doesn't get anything extra
with the abbreviated finger, but that 's lucky for
you fellows, because, if I thought he did, I 'd have
a surgeon out here to-morrow operating on tho
first fingers of each of you pitchers."
Brown is my idea of the almost perfect pitcher
He is always ready to work. It is customary for
most managers in the Big Leagues to say to a man
on the day he is slated to pitch :
"Well, how do you feel to-day? Want to
work?"
Then if the twirler is not right, he has a chance
to say so. But Brown always replies:
"Yes, I'm ready."
He likes to pitch and is in chronic condition.
It will usually be found at the end of a season
that he has taken part in more games than any
84 Pitching in a Pinch
other pitcher in the country. He held the Chicago
pitching staff together in 1911.
"Three Fingered" Brown is a finished pitcher
in all departments of the game. Besides being a
great worker, he is a wonderful fielder and sure
death on bunts. He spends weeks in the spring
preparing himself to field short hits in the infield,
and it is fatal to try to bunt against him. He
has perfected and used successfully for three years
a play invented by "Joe" McGinnity, the former
Gitint pitcher. This play is with men on first
and second bases and no one out or one out.
The batter tries to sacrifice, but instead of fielding
the ball to first base, which would advance the
two base runners as intended, Brown makes the
play to third and thus forces out the man nearest
the plate. This is usually successful unless the
bunt is laid down perfectly along the first base
line, so that the ball cannot be thrown to third
base.
The Cubs have always claimed it was this play
which broke the Detroit club's heart in the world's
series in 1908, and turned the tide so that the
Cubs took the championship. The American
League team was leading in the first game, and
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 83
runners were on first and second bases, "Ty"
Cobb being on the middle sack. It was evident
that the batter would try to sacrifice. Brown
walked over to Steinfeldt, playing third base,
pulling out a chew of tobacco as he went.
"No matter what this guy does or where he
hits it, stick to your bag," ordered Brown.
Then he put the chew of tobacco in his mouth,
a sign which augurs ill for his opponents, and
pitched a low one to the batter, a perfect ball to
bunt. He followed the pitch through and was on
top of the plate as the batter laid it down. The
ball rolled slowly down the third base line until
Brown pounced on it. He whirled and drove the
ball at Steinfeldt, getting Cobb by a foot. That
play carried Detroit off its feet, as a sudden reversal
often will a ball club, when things are apparently
breaking for it. Cobb, the Tigers' speed flash,
had been caught at third base on an attempted
sacrifice, an unheard of play, and, from that
point on, the American Leaguers wilted, according
to the stories of Chance and his men.
It is Brown's perfect control that has permit-
ted catchers like Kling and Archer to make such
great records as throwers. This pitcher can afford
86 Pitching in a Pinch
to waste a ball that is, pitch out so the batter
cannot hit it, but putting the catcher in a perfect
position to throw and then he knows he can get
the next one over. A catcher's efficiency as a
thrower depends largely on the pitcher's ability
to have good enough control of the ball to be able
to pitch out when it is necessary. Brown helps
a catcher by the way in which he watches the
bases, not permitting the runners to take any lead
on him. All around, I think that he is one of the
most finished pitchers of the game.
Russell Ford, of the New York American League
club, has a hard pitching motion because he seems
to throw a spit ball with a jerk. He cannot pitch
more than one good game in four or five days.
McGraw had detected this weakness from watch-
ing the Highlanders play before the post-season
series in 1910, and took advantage of it.
"If Ford pitches to-day," said McGraw to his
team in the clubhouse before the first game, "wait
everything out to the last minute. Make him
pitch every ball you can."
McGraw knew that the strain on Ford's arm
would get him along toward the end of the game.
In the eighth inning the score was tied when
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 87
Devore came to the bat. No crack in Ford was
perceptible to the rest of us, but McGraw must
have detected some slight sign of weakening.
He stopped "Josh" on the way to the plate and
ordered :
"Now go ahead and get him."
By the time the inning was over, the Giants
had made four runs, and eventually won the game
by the score of 5 to I. McGraw just played for
this flaw in Ford's pitching, and hung his whole
plan of battle on the chance of it showing.
"Old Cy" Young has the absolutely perfect
pitching motion. When he jumped from the
National League to the Boston American League
club some years ago, during the war times, many
National League players thought that he was
through.
"What," said Fred Clarke, the manager of the
Pittsburg club, "you American Leaguers letting
that old boy make good in your set? Why, he
was done when he jumped the National. He 'd
lost his speed."
" But you ought to see his curve ball," answered
"Bill" Dineen, then pitching for the Boston
Americans.
88 Pitching in a Pinch
"Curve ball," echoed Clarke. "He never had
any curve that it did n't take a microscope to
find. He depended on his speed."
"Well, he's got one now," replied Dineen.
Clarke had a chance to look at the curve ball
later, for, with Dineen, Young did a lot toward
winning the world's championship for Boston
from Pitteburg in 1903. The old pitcher was
vrise enough to realize, when he began to lose his
speed, that he would have to develop a curve ball
or go back to the minors, and he set to work and
produced a peach. He is still pitching for the
National League now and he will win a lot of
games yet. When he came back in 1911, the
American Leaguers said:
"What, going to let that old man in your show
again? He's done."
Maybe he will yet figure in another world's
championship. One never can tell. Anyway, he
has taken a couple of falls out of Pittsburg just
for good luck since he came back to the National
League.
Some pitchers depend largely on their motions
to fool batters. ' ' Motion pitchers ' ' they might be
called. Such an elaborate wind-up is developed
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 89
that it is hard for a hitter to tell when and from.
where the ball is coming. "Slim" Sallee of the
St. Louis Nationals has n't any curve to mention
and he lacks speed, but he wins a lot of ball games
on his motion.
"It 's a crime," says McGraw, "to let a fellow
like that beat you. Why, he has so little on the
ball that it looks like one of those Salome dancers
when it comes up to the plate, and actually makes
me blush."
But Sallee will take a long wind-up and shoot
one off his shoe tops and another from his shoulder
while he is facing second base. He has good
control, has catalogued the weaknesses of the
batters, and can work the corners. With this
capital, he was winning ball games for the Cardinals
in 1911 until he fell off the water wagon. He is
different from Raymond in that respect. When
he is on the vehicle, he is on it, and, when he is off,
he is distinctly a pedestrian.
The way the Giants try to beat Sallee is to get
men on the bases, because then he has to cut down
his motion or they will run wild on him. As soon
as a runner gets on the bag with Sallee pitching,
he tries to steal to make "Slim" reduce that long
90 Pitching in a Pinch
winding motion which is his greatest asset. But
Sallee won several games from the Giants last
season because we could not get enough men on
the bases to beat him. He only gave us four or
five hits per contest.
For a long time, "Josh" Devore, the Giants'
left-fielder, was "plate shy" with left-handers
that is, he stepped away and all the pitchers in
the League soon learned of this and started shoot-
ing the first ball, a fast one, at his head to increase
liis natural timidity. Sallee, in particular, had
him scared.
"Stand up there," said McGraw to "Josh"
one day when Sallee was pitching, "and let him
hit you. He hasn't speed enough to hurt you."
"Josh" did, got hit, and found out that what
McGraw said was true. It cured him of being
afraid of Sallee.
As getting men on the bases decreases Sallee's
effectiveness, even if he is a left-hander, so it
increases the efficiency of "Lefty" Leifield of
Pittsburg. The Giants never regard Sallee as a
left-hander with men on the bases. Most south-
paws can keep a runner close to the bag because
they are facing first base when in a position to
Pitchers and Their Peculiarities 91
pitch, but Sallee cannot. On the other hand,
Leifield uses almost exactly the same motion to
throw to first base as to pitch to the batter.
These two are so nearly alike that he can change his
mind after he starts and throw to the other place.
He keeps men hugging the bag, and it is next to
impossible to steal bases on him. H he gets his
arm so far forward in pitching to the batter that
he cannot throw to the base, he can see a man
start and pitch out so the catcher has a fine chance
to get the runner at second. If the signal is for a
curved ball, he can make it a high curve, and the
catcher is in position to throw. Leifield has been
working this combination pitch either to first
base or the plate for years, and the motion for
each is so similar that even the umpires cannot
detect it and never call a balk on him.
A busher broke into the League with the Giants
one fall and was batting against Pittsburg. There
was a man on first base and Leifield started to
pitch to the plate, saw by a quick glance that
the runner was taking too large a lead, and threw
to first. The youngster swung at the ball and
started to run it out. Every one laughed.
"What were you trying to do?" asked McGraw.
92 Pitching in a Pinch
"I hit the ball," protested the bush leaguer.
That is how perfect Leifield's motion is with men
on the bases. But most of his effectiveness resides
in that crafty motion.
Many New York fans will remember " Dummy"
Taylor, the deaf and dumb pitcher of the Giants.
He won ball games for the last two years he was
with the club on his peculiar, whirling motion,
but as soon as men got on the bases and he had
to cut it down, McGraw would take him out.
That swing and his irresistible good nature are
still winning games in the International League,
which used to be the Eastern.
So if a pitcher expects to be a successful Big
Leaguer, he must guard against eccentricities
of temperament and mechanical motion. As I
have said, Drucke of the Giants for a long time had
a little movement with his foot which indicated
to the runner when he was going to pitch, and they
stole bases wildly on him. But McGraw soon
discovered that something was wrong and corrected
it. The armor of a Big Leaguer must be impene-
trable, for there are seven clubs always looking
for flaws in the manufacture, and "every little
movement has a meaning of its own."
Playing the Game from the Bench
Behind Every Big League Ball Game there Is a
Master Mind which Directs the Moves of the
Players How McGraw Won Two Pennants for
the Giants from the " Bench " and Lost One
by Giving the Players Too Much Liberty The
Methods of "Connie" Mack and Other Great
Leaders
HPHE bench! To many fans who see a hundred
* Big League ball games each season, this is a
long, hooded structure from which the next
batter emerges and where the players sit while
their club is at bat. It is also the resort of the
substitutes, manager, mascot and water cooler.
But to the ball player it is the headquarters.
It is the place from which the orders come, and
it is here that the battle is planned and from here
the moves are executed. The manager sits here
93
94 Pitching in a Pinch
and pulls the wires, and his players obey him as
if they were manikins.
"The batteries for to-day's game," says the
umpire, "will be Sallee and Bresnahan for St.
Louis; Wiltse and Meyers for New York."
"Bunt," says McGraw as his players scatter
to take their positions on the field. He repeats
the order when they come to the bat for the first
inning, because he knows that Sallee has two
weaknesses, one being that he cannot field bunts
and the other that a great deal of activity in the
box tires him out so that he weakens. A bunting
game hits at both these flaws. As soon as Bres-
nahan observes the plan of battle, he arranges
his players to meet the attack; draws in his third
baseman, shifts the shortstop more down the
line toward third base, and is on the alert himself
to gather in slow rollers just in front of the plate.
The idea is to give Sallee the minimum opportunity
to get at the ball and reduce his fielding responsi-
bilities to nothing or less. There is one thing
about Sallee's style known to every Big League
manager. He is not half as effective with men
on the bases, for he depends largely on his deceptive
motion to fool the batters, and when he has to
Playing the Game from the Bench 95
cut this down because runners are on the bases,
his pitching ability evaporates.
After the old Polo Grounds had been burned
down in the spring of 1911, we were playing St.
Louis at American League Park one Saturday
afternoon, and the final returns of the game were
about 1 9 to 5 in our favor, as near as I can remember.
We made thirteen runs in the first inning. Many
spectators went away from the park talking
about a slaughter and a runaway score and so on.
That game was won in the very first inning
when Sallee went into the box to pitch, and Mc-
Graw had murmured that mystic word "Bunt!"
The first batters bunted, bunted, bunted in
monotonous succession. Sallee not yet in very
good physical condition because it was early in
the season, was stood upon his head by this form
of attack. Bresnahan redraped his infield to
try to stop this onslaught, and then McGraw
switched.
"Hit it," he directed the next batter.
A line drive whistled past Mowrey's ears,
the man who plays third base on the Cardinals.
He was coming in to get a bunt. Another followed.
The break had come. Bresnahan removed Sallee
96 Pitching in a Pinch
and put another pitcher into the box, but once a
ball club starts to hit the ball, it is like a skidding
automobile. It can't be stopped. The Giants
kept on and piled up a ridiculous and laughable
score, which McGraw had made possible in the
first inning by directing his men to bunt.
The Giants won the championship of the
National League in 1904 and the New York fans
gave the team credit for the victory. It was a
club of young players, and McGraw realized this
fact when he started his campaign. Every play
that season was made from the bench, made by
John McGraw through his agents, his manikins,
who moved according to the wires which he pulled.
And by the end of the summer his hands were
badly calloused from pulling wires, but the Giants
had the pennant.
When the batter was at the plate in a critical
stage, he would stall and look to the "bench"
for orders to discover whether to hit the ball out
or lay it down, whether to try the hit and run,
or wait for the base runner to attempt to steal.
By stalling, I mean that he would tie his shoe or
fix his belt, or find any little excuse to delay the
game so that he could get a flash at the "bench"
Playing the Game from the Bench 97
for orders. A shoe lace has played an important
role in many a Big League battle, as I will try to
show later on in this story. If it ever became the
custom to wear button shoes, the game would
have to be revised.
As the batter looked toward the bench, McGraw
might reach for his handkerchief to blow his
nose, and the batter knew it was up to him to
kit the ball out. Some days in that season of
1904 I saw McGraw blow his nose during a game
until it was red and sore on the end, and then
another day, when he had a cold in his head,
he had to do without his handkerchief because he
wanted to play a bunting game. Until his cold
got better, he had to switch to another system
of signs.
During that season, each coacher would keep
his eye on the bench for orders. Around McGraw
revolved the game of the Giants. He was the
game. And most of that summer he spent upon
the bench, because from there he could get the
best look at the diamond, and his observations
were not confined to one place or to one base
runner. He was able to discover whether an
out-fielder was playing too close for a batter, or too
98 Pitching in a Pinch
far out, and rearrange the men. He could perhaps
catch a sign from the opposing catcher and pass
it along to the batter. And he won the pennant
from the bench. He was seldom seen on the
coaching lines that year.
Many fans wonder why, when the Giants
get behind in a game, McGraw takes to the bench,
after having been out on the coaching lines
inning after inning while the club was holding
its own or winning. Time and again I have
heard him criticised for this by spectators and
even by players on other clubs.
" McGraw is 'yellow,' " players have said to me.
"Just as soon as his club gets behind, he runs
for cover."
The crime of being "yellow" is the worst in
the Big Leagues. It means that a man is afraid,
that he lacks the nerve to face the music. But
McGraw and "yellow" are as far apart as the
poles, or Alpha and Omega, or Fifth Avenue and
the Bowery, or any two widely separated and
distant things. I have seen McGraw go on to
ball fields where he is as welcome as a man with
the black smallpox and face the crowd alone
that, in the heat of its excitement, would like to
Playing the Game from the Bench 99
tear him apart. I have seen him take all sorts
of personal chances. He does n't know what fear
is, and in his bright lexicon of baseball there is
no such word as "fear." His success is partly due
to his indomitable courage.
There is a real reason for his going to the bench
when the team gets behind. It is because this
increases the club's chances of winning. From
the bench he can see the whole field, can note
where his fielders are playing, can get a peek at
the other bench, and perhaps pick up a tip as to
what to expect. He can watch his own pitcher,
or observe whether the opposing twirler drops his
throwing arm as if weary. He is at the helm when
"on the bench," and, noting any flaw in the
opposition, he is in a position to take advantage
of it at a moment's notice, or, catching some sign
of faltering among his own men, he is imme-
diately there to strengthen the weakness. Many a
game he has pulled out of the fire by going back
to the bench and watching. So the idea obtained
by many spectators that he is quitting is the
wrong one. He is only fighting harder.
The Giants were playing Pittsburg one day in
the season of 1909, and Clarke and McGraw
ioo Pitching in a Pinch
had been having a great guessing match. It was
one of those give-and-take games with plenty of
batting, with one club forging ahead and then the
other. Clarke had saved the game for Pittsburg
in the sixth inning by a shoe-string. Leifield had
been pitching up to this point, and he was n't
there or even in the neighborhood. But still
the Pirates were leading by two runs, having
previously knocked Ames out of the box. Doyle
and McCormick made hits with no one out in
our half of the sixth.
It looked like the "break," and McGraw was
urging his players on to even up the score,
when Clarke suddenly took off his sun glasses
in left field and stooped down to tie his shoe.
When he removes his sun-glasses that is a sign
for a pitcher to warm up in a hurry, and "Babe"
Adams sprinted to the outfield with a catcher
and began to heat up. Clarke took all of five
minutes to tie that shoe, McGraw violently pro-
testing against the delay in the meantime. Fred
Clarke has been known to wear out a pair of shoe
laces in one game tying and untying them.
After the shoe was fixed up, he jogged slowly
to the bench and took Leifield out of the box.
Playing the Game from the Bench 101
In the interim, Adams had had an opportunity
to warm up, and Clarke raised his arm and or-
dered him into the box. He fanned the next
two men, and the last batter hit an easy roller
to Wagner. We were still two runs to the bad
after that promising start in the sixth, and
Clarke, for the time being, had saved the game
by a shoe string.
McGraw, who had been on the coaching lines
up to this point, retired to the bench after that,
and I heard one of those wise spectators, sitting
just behind our coop, who could tell Mr. Rocke-
feller how to run his business but who spends his
life working as a clerk at $18 a week, remark to
a friend:
"It 's all off now. McGraw has laid down."
Watching the game through eyes half shut
and drawn to a focus, McGraw waited. In the
seventh inning Clarke came to bat with two men
on the bases. A hit would have won the game
beyond any doubt. In a flash McGraw was on
his feet and ran out to Meyers, catching. He
stopped the game, and, with a wave of his arm,
drew Harry McCormick, playing left field, in
close to third base. The game went on, and
102 Pitching in a Pinch
Wiltse twisted a slow curve over the outside
corner of the plate to Clarke, a left-handed hitter.
He timed his swing and sent a low hit singing
over third base. McCormick dashed in and
caught the ball off his shoe tops. That made
three outs. McGraw had saved our chances of
victory right there, for had McCormick been
playing where he originally intended before Mc-
Graw stopped the contest, the ball would have
landed in unguarded territory and two runs
would have been scored.
But McGraw had yet the game to win. As
his team came to the bat for the seventh, he said :
"This fellow Adams is a youngster and liable
to be nervous and wild. Wait."
The batters waited with the patience of Job.
Each man let the first two balls pass him and made
Adams pitch himself to the limit to every batter.
It got on Adams's nerves. In the ninth he passed
a couple of men, and a hit tied the score. Clarke
left him in the box, for he was short of pitchers.
On the game went to ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
innings. The score was still tied and Wiltse
was pitching like a machine. McGraw was on
the bench, leaving the coaching to his lieutenants.
Playing the Game from the Bench 103
The club was still waiting for the youngster to
weaken. At last, in the thirteenth, after one man
had been put out, the eye of McGraw saw Adams
drop his pitching arm to his side as if tired. It
was only a minute motion. None of the spectators
saw it, none of the players.
"Now hit it, boys," came the order from the
"bench." The style was switched, and the game
won when three hits were rattled out. McGraw
alone observed that sign of weakening and took
advantage of it at the opportune time. He won
the game from the bench. That is what makes
him a great manager, observing the little things.
Anyone can see the big ones. If he had been on
the coaching lines, he would not have had as good
an opportunity to study the young pitcher, for
he would have had to devote his attention to the
base runners. He might have missed this sign
of wilting.
McGraw is always studying a pitcher, particu-
larly a new one in the League. The St. Louis
club had a young pitcher last fall, named Lauder-
milk, who was being tried out. He had a brother
on the team. In his first game against the Giants,
played in St. Louis, he held us to a few scattered
104 Pitching in a Pinch
hits and gave us a terrific battle, only losing the
game because one of his fielders made a costly
error behind him. The papers of St. Louis boosted
him as another "Rube" Waddell. He was left-
handed. McGraw laughed.
"All I want," he said, "is another crack at that
Buttermilk after what I learned about him this
afternoon. He can't control his curve, and all
you fellows have got to do is wait for his fast one.
He gave you that fight to-day because he had you
all swinging at bad curve balls."
Laudermilk made another appearance against
the Giants later, and he made his disappearance
in that game in the fourth inning, when only one
was out to be exact, after we had scored five runs
off him by waiting for his fast one, according to
McGraw's orders.
After winning the pennant in 1904 by sitting
on the bench, keeping away from the coaching
lines, and making every play himself, McGraw
decided that his men were older and knew the game
and that he would give them more rein in 1905.
He appeared oftener on the coaching lines and
attended more to the base runners than to the
game an A whole. But in the crises he was the
Playing the Game from the Bench 105
man who decided what was to be done. The
club won the pennant that year and the world's
championship. The players got very chesty
immediately thereafter, and the buttons on their
vests had to be shifted back to make room for the
new measure. They knew the game and had won
two pennants, besides a championship of the world.
So in the season of 1906 McGraw started with
a team of veterans, and it was predicted that he
would repeat. But these men, who knew the game,
were making decisions for themselves because
McGraw was giving them more liberty. The
runners went wild on the bases and tried things
at the wrong stages. They lost game after game.
At last, after a particularly disastrous defeat one
day, McGraw called his men together in the dub-
house and addressed them in this wise:
"Because you fellows have won two champion-
ships and beaten the Athletics is no reason for you
all to believe that you are fit to write a book on
how to play baseball. You are just running wild
on the bases. You might as well not have a
manager. Now don't any one try to pull anything
without orders. We will begin all over again."
But it is hard to teach old ball-players new tricks,
io6 Pitching in a Pinch
and several fines had to be imposed before the
orders were obeyed. The club did not win the
championship that year.
When McGraw won the pennant in 1911, he
did it with a club of youngsters, many of them
playing through their first whole season as regu-
lars in the company. There were Snodgrass and
Devore and Fletcher and Marquard. Every
time a batter went to the plate, he had definite
orders from the "bench" as to what he was to
attempt whether to take two, or lay the ball
down, or swing, or work the hit and run. Each
time that a man shot out from first base like a
catapulted figure and slid into second, he had
been ordered by McGraw to try to steal. If
players protested against his judgment, his
invariable answer was:
"Do what I tell you, and I '11 take the blame
for mistakes."
One of McGraw's laments is, "I wish I could
be in three places at once."
I never heard him say it with such a ring to
the words as after Snodgrass was touched out in the
third game of the 1911 world's series, in the tenth
inning, when his life might have meant victory
Playing the Game from the Bench 107
in that game anyway. I have frequently referred
to the incident in these stories, so most of my
readers are familiar with the situation. Snodgrass
was put out trying to get to third base on a short
passed ball, after he had started back for second
to recover some of the ground he had taken in
too long a lead before the ball got to Lapp.
McGraw's face took on an expression of agony
as if he were watching his dearest friend die.
"If I could only have been there!" he said.
"I wish I could be in three places at once."
He meant the bench, the first base coaching
line, and the third base line. At this particular
time he was giving the batters orders from the
bench. It was one of those incidents which come
up in a ball game and have to be decided in the
drawing of a breath, so that a manager cannot
give orders unless he is right on the spot.
It is my opinion that it is a big advantage to
a team to have the manager on the bench rather
than in the game. Frank Chance of the Chicago
Cubs is a great leader, but I think he would be
a greater one if he could find one of his mechanical
ability to play first base, and he could sit on the
bench as the director general. He is occupied
io8 Pitching in a Pinch
with the duties of his position and often little
things get by him. I believe that we beat the
Cubs in two games in 1909 because Chance was
playing first base instead of directing the game
from the bench.
In the first contest Ames was pitching and Schlei
catching. Now, Schlei was no three hundred
hitter, but he was a good man in a pinch and
looked like Wagner when compared to Ames
as a swatter. Schlei came up to the bat with
men on second and third bases, two out, and a
chance to win or put us ahead if he could make a
hit. The first time it happened, McGraw un-
folded his arms and relaxed, which is a sign that
he is conceding something for the time being.
"No use," he said. "All those runners are
going to waste. We'll have to make another
try in the next inning. They will surely pass
Schlei to take a chance on Ames."
Then Overall, who was pitching, whistled a
strike over the plate and McGraw's body tightened
and the old lines around the mouth appeared.
Here was a chance yet.
"They 're going to let him hit," he cried joyfully.
Schlei made a base hit on the next pitch and
Playing the Game from the Bench 109
scored both men. Almost the same thing happened
later on in the season with men on second and
third bases, and Raymond, another feather-
weight hitter, pitching. It struck me as being an
oversight on the part of Chance on both occasions,
probably because he was so busy with his own
position and watching the players on the field
that he did n't notice the pitcher was the next
batter. He let Schlei hit each time, which proba-
bly cost him two games.
The Giants were playing St. Louis at the Polo
Grounds in 1910, and I was pitching against
Harmon. I held the Cardinals to one hit up
to the ninth inning, and we had the game won
by the score of I to o, when their first batter in
the ninth walked. Then, after two had been put
out, another scratched a hit. It looked as if we
still had the game won, since only one man was
left to be put out and the runners were on first
and second bases. Mowrey, the red-headed third
baseman, came to the bat.
"Murray's playing too near centre field for
this fellow," remarked McGraw to some of the
players on the bench.
Hardly had he said it when Mowrey shoved
no Pitching in a Pinch
a long fly to right field, which soared away toward
the stand. Murray started to run with the ball.
For a minute it looked as if he were going to get
there, and then it just tipped his outstretched
hands as it fell to the ground. It amounted to a
three-base hit and won the game for the Cardinals
by the score of 2 to I.
"I knew it," said McGraw, one of whose many
rdles is as a prophet of evil. "Did n't I call the
turn? I ought to have gone out there and
stopped the game and moved Murray over. I
blame myself for that hit."
That was a game in which the St. Louis batters
made three hits and won it. It is n't the number
of hits, so much as when they come, that wins
ball games.
Frequently, McGraw will stop a game bring
it to a dead standstill by walking out from the
bench as the pitcher is about to wind up.
"Stop it a minute, Meyers," he will shout.
"Pull Snodgrass in a little bit for this fellow."
The man interested in statistics would be
surprised at how many times little moves of this
sort have saved games. But for the McGraw
system to be effective, he must have working for
Playing the Game from the Bench in
him a set of players who are taking the old look
around for orders all the time. He has a way of
inducing the men to keep their heads up which
has worked very well. If a player has been slow
or has not taken all the distance McGraw believes
is possible on a hit, he often finds $10 less in his
pay envelope at the end of the month. And the
conversation on the bench at times, when men
have made errors of omission, would not fit into
any Sunday-school room.
During a game for the most part, McGraw is
silent, concentrating his attention on the game,
and the players talk in low tones, as if in church,
discussing the progress of the contest. But let
a player make a bad break, and McGraw delivers
a talk to him that would have to be written on
asbestos paper.
Arthur Wilson was coaching at third base in
one of the games in a series played in Philadelphia
the first part of September, 1911. There were
barely enough pitchers to go around at the time,
and McGraw was very careful to take advantage
of every little point, so that nothing would be
wasted. He feels that if a game is lost because
the other side is better, there is some excuse,
1 12 Pitching in a Pinch
but if it goes because some one's head should be
used for furniture instead of thinking baseball,
it is like losing money that might have been spent.
Fletcher was on second base when Meyers came
to bat. The Indian pushed the ball to right fieltf
along the line. Fletcher came steaming around
third base and could have rolled home safely,
but Wilson, misjudging the hit, rushed out, tackled
him, and threw him back on the bag. Even the
plodding Meyers reached second on the hit and
McGraw was boiling. He promptly sent a coacher
out to relieve Wilson, and his oratory to the young
catcher would have made a Billingsgate fishwife
sore. We eventually won the game, but at this
time there was only a difference of something like
one, and it would have been a big relief to have seen
that run which Wilson interrupted across the plate.
McGraw is always on Devore's hip because
he often feels that this brilliant young player
does not get as much out of his natural ability
as he might. He is frequently listless, and, often,
after a good hit, he will feel satisfied with himself
and fan out a couple of times. So McGraw does
all that he can to discourage this self-satisfaction.
"Josh" is a great man in a pinch, for he hangs on
Playing the Game from the Bench 113
like a bulldog, and instead of getting nervous,
works the harder. If the reader will consult
past history, he will note that it was a pinch
hit by Devore which won the first world-series
game, and one of his wallops, combined with a
timely bingle by Crandall, was largely instrumental
in bringing the second victory to the Giants.
McGraw has made Devore the ball-player that he
is by skilful handling.
The Giants were having a nip and tuck game
with the Cubs in the early part of last summer,
when Devore came to the bat in one of those
pinches and shot a three bagger over third base
which won the game. As he slid into third and
picked himself up, feeling like more or less of a hero
because the crowd was announcing this fact to
him by prolonged cheers, McGraw said :
"Gee, you're a lucky guy. I wish I had your
luck. You were shot full of horseshoes to get
that one. When I saw you shut your eyes,
I never thought you would hit it."
This was like pricking a bubble, and "Josh's"
chest returned to its normal measure.
Marquard is another man whom McGraw
constantly subjects to a conversational massage.
ii4 Pitching in a Pinch
Devore and Marquard room together on the road,
and they got to talking about their suite at the
hotel during a close game in Philadelphia one day.
It annoys McGraw to hear his men discussing
off-stage subjects during a critical contest, because
it not only distracts their attention, but his and
that of the other players.
"Ain't that room of ours a dandy, Rube?"
asked Devore.
"Best in the lot," replied Marquard.
"It's got five windows and swell furniture,"
said Devore.
"Solid mahogany," said McGraw, who appar-
ently had been paying no attention to the con-
versation. "That is, judging by some of the plays
I have seen you two pull. Now can the con-
versation."
Devore went down into Cuba with the Giants,
carrying quite a bank roll from the world's series,
and the idea that he was on a picnic. He started
a personally conducted tour of Havana on his
first night there and we lost the game the next
day, "Josh" overlooking several swell opportuni-
ties to make hits in pinches. In fact he did n't
even get a foul.
Playing the Game from the Bench 115
"You are fined $25," said McGraw to him after
the game.
"You can't fine me," said Devore. "I'm not
under contract."
"Then you take the next boat home," replied
the manager. "I didn't come down here to let
a lot of coffee-colored Cubans show me up. You Ve
got to either play ball or go home."
Devore made four hits the next day.
In giving his signs from the bench to the players,
McGraw depends on a gesture or catch word.
When "Dummy" Taylor, the deaf and dumb
twirler, was with the club, all the players learned
the deaf and dumb language. This medium was
used for signing fora time, until smart ball players,
like Evers and Leach, took up the study of it and
became so proficient they could converse fluently
on their fingers. But they were also great
"listeners," and we did n't discover for some time
that this was how they were getting our signs.
Thereafter we only used the language for social
purposes.
Evers and McGraw got into a conversation
one, day in the deaf and dumb language at long
range and "Johnny" Evers threw a finger out
n6 Pitching in a Pinch
of joint replying to McGraw in a brilliant flash
of repartee.
Every successful manager is a distinct type.
Each plays the game from the bench. "Connie"
Mack gives his men more liberty than most.
Chance rules for the most part with an iron hand.
Bresnahan is ever spurring his men on. Chance
changes his seat on the bench, and there is a double
steal. "Connie" Mack uncrosses his legs, and
the hit and run is tried.
Most managers transmit their signs by move-
ments or words. Jennings is supposed to have
hidden in his jumble of jibes some catch words.
The manager on the bench must know just
when to change pitchers. He has to decide the
exact time to send in a substitute hitter, when to
install another base runner. All these decisions
must be made in the "batting" of an eye. It
takes quick and accurate judgment, and the suc-
cessful manager must be right usually. That 's
playing the game from the bench.
VI
Coaching Good and Bad
Coaching is Divided into Three Parts: Offensive, De-
fensive, and the Use of Crowds to Rattle Players
Why McGraw Developed Scientific Coaching The
Important Rdle a Coacher Plays in the Crisis of a
Big League Ball Game when, on his Orders,
Hangs Victory or Defeat.
moments occur in every close
ball game, when coaching may win or lose it.
"That was n't the stage for you to try to score,"
yelled John McGraw, the manager of the Giants,
at "Josh" Devore, as the New York left-fielder
attempted to count from second base on a short
hit to left field, with no one out and the team
one run behind in a game with the Pirates one day
in 1911, when every contest might mean the
winning or losing of the pennant.
"First time in my life I was ever thrown
117
n8 Pitching in a Pinch
out trying to score from second on a base hit to
the outfield," answered Devore, "and besides
the coacher sent me in."
"I don't care," replied McGraw, "that was a
two out play."
As a matter of fact, one of the younger players
on the team was coaching at third base at the
time and made an error of judgment in sending
Devore home, of which an older head would not
have been guilty. And the Pirates beat us by
just that one run the coacher sacrificed. The
next batter came through with an outfield fly
which would have scored Devore from third base
easily.
Probably no more wily general ever crouched
on the coaching line at third base than John
McGraw. His judgment in holding runners or
urging them on to score is almost uncanny.
Governed by no set rules himself, he has formu-
lated a list of regulations for his players which might
be called the "McGraw Coaching Curriculum."
He has favorite expressions, such as "there are
stages" and "that was a two out play," which
mean certain chances are to be taken by a coacher
at one point in a contest, while to attempt such a
Coaching Good and Bad 119
play under other circumstances would be nothing
short of foolhardy.
With the development of baseball, coaching
has advanced until it is now an exact science.
For many years the two men who stood at first
and third bases were stationed there merely
to bullyrag and abuse the pitchers, often using
language that was a disgrace to a ball field.
When they were not busy with this part of their
art, they handed helpful hints to the runners as
to where the ball was and whether the second
baseman was concealing it under his shirt (a
favorite trick of the old days), while the pitcher
pretended to prepare to deliver it. But as rules
were made which strictly forbade the use of
indecent language to a pitcher, and as the old
school of clowns passed, coaching developed into
a science, and the sentries stationed at first and
third bases found themselves occupying important
jobs.
For some time McGraw frowned down upon
scientific coaching, until its value was forcibly
brought home to him one day by an incident
that occurred at the Polo Grounds, and since
then he has developed it until his knowledge
120 Pitching in a Pinch
of advising base runners is the pinnacle of scien-
tific coaching.
A few years ago, the Giants were having a nip
and tuck struggle one day, when Harry McCormick,
then the left-fielder, came to the plate and knocked
the ball to the old centre-field ropes. He sped
around the bases, and when he reached third,
it looked as if he could roll home ahead of the
ball. "Cy" Seymour was coaching and surprised
everybody by rushing out and tackling McCormick,
throwing him down and trying to force him back
to third base. But big McCormick got the best
of the struggle, scrambled to his feet, and finally
scored after overcoming the obstacle that Seymour
made. That run won the game.
"What was the matter with you, Cy?"
asked McGraw as Seymour came to the bench
after he had almost lost the game by his poor
coaching.
"The sun got in my eyes, and I couldn't see
the ball," replied Seymour.
"You'd better wear smoked glasses the next
time you go out to coach," replied the manager.
The batter was hitting the ball due east, and the
game was being played in the afternoon, so Sey-
Coaching Good and Bad 121
mour had no alibi. From the moment ' ' Cy ' ' made
that mistake, McGraw realized the value of
scientific coaching, which means making the most
of every hit in a game.
I have always held that a good actor with a
knowledge of baseball would make a good coacher,
because it is the acting that impresses a base
runner, not the talking. More often than not,
the conversation of a coacher, be it ever so brill-
iant, is not audible above the screeching of the
crowd at critical moments. And I believe that
McGraw is a great actor, at least of the baseball
school.
The cheering of the immense crowds which
attend ball games, if it can be organized, is a potent
factor in winning or losing them. McGraw gets
the most out of a throng by his clever acting.
Did any patron of the Polo Grounds ever see him
turn to the stands or make any pretence that he
was paying attention to the spectators? Does he
ever play to the gallery? Yet it is admitted that
he can do more with a crowd, make it more malle-
able, than any other man in baseball to-day.
The attitude of the spectators makes a lot of
difference to a ball club. A lackadaisical, half-
122 Pitching in a Pinch
interested crowd often results in the team playing
slovenly ball, while a lively throng can inject
ginger into the men and put the whole club
on its toes. McGraw is skilled in getting the most
out of the spectators without letting them know
that he is doing it.
Did you ever watch the little manager crouching,
immovable, at third base with a mitt on his hand,
when the New York club goes to bat in the seventh
inning two runs behind? The first hitter gets a
base on balls. McGraw leaps into the air, kicks
his heels together, claps his mitt, shouts at the
umpire, runs in and pats the next batter on the
back, and says something to the pitcher. The
crowd gets it cue, wakes up and leaps into the air,
kicking its heels together. The whole atmosphere
inside the park is changed in a minute, and the
air is bristling with enthusiasm. The other
coacher, at first base, is waving his hands and
running up and down the line, while the men on
the bench have apparently gained new hope.
They are moving about restlessly, and the next
two hitters are swinging their bats in anticipation
with a vigor which augurs ill for the pitcher.
The game has found Ponce de Leon's fountain of
Coaching Good and Bad 123
youth, and the little, silent actor on the third
base coaching line is the cause of the change.
"Nick" Altrock, the old pitcher on the Chicago
White Sox, was one of the most skilful men at
handling a crowd that the game has ever developed.
As a pitcher, Altrock was largely instrumental
in bringing a world's championship to the American
League team in 1906, and, as a coacher, after his
Big League pitching days were nearly done, he
won many a game by his work on the lines in
pinches. Baseball has produced several come-
dians, some with questionable ratings as humorists.
There is "Germany" Schaefer of the Washington
team, and there were "Rube" Waddell, "Bugs"
Raymond and others, but "Nick" Altrock could
give the best that the game has brought out in the
way of comic-supplement players a terrible battle
for the honors.
At the old south side park in Chicago, I have seen
him go to the lines with a catcher's mitt and a
first-baseman's glove on his hands and lead the
untrained mob as skilfully as one of those pom-
padoured young men with a megaphone does the
undergraduates at a college football game.
My experience as a pitcher has been that it
124 Pitching in a Pinch
is not the steady, unbroken flood of howling
and yelling, with, the incessant pounding of feet,
that gets on the nerves of a ball-player, but the
broken, rhythmical waves of sound or the constant
reiteration of one expression. A man gets ac-
customed to the steady cheering. It becomes
a part of the game and his surroundings, as much
as the stands and the crowd itself are, and he
does not know that it is there. Let the coacher
be clever enough to induce a crowd to repeat over
and over just one sentence such as "Get a hit,"
"Get a hit," and it wears on the steadiest nerves.
Nick Altrock had his baseball chorus trained so
that, by a certain motion of the arm, he could get
the crowd to do this at the right moment.
But the science of latter-day coaching means
much more than using the crowd. All coaching,
like all Gaul and four or five other things, is
divided into three parts, defensive coaching,
offensive coaching and the use of the crowd.
Offensive coaching means the handling of base
runners, and requires quick and accurate judgment.
The defensive sort is the advice that one player
on the field gives another as to where to throw the
ball, who shall take a hit, and how the base runner
Coaching Good and Bad 125
is coming into the bag. There is a sub-division
of defensive coaching which might be called the
illegitimate brand. It is giving "phoney" advice
to a base runner by the fielders of the other side
that may lead him, in the excitement of the
moment, to make a foolish play. This style has
developed largely in the Big Leagues in the last
three or four years.
Offensive coaching, in my opinion, is the most
important. For a man to be a good coacher he
must be trained for the work. The best coachers
are the seasoned players, the veterans of the
game. A man must know the throwing ability
of each outfielder on the opposing club, he must
be familiar with the speed of the base runner
whom he is handling, and he must be so closely
acquainted with the game as a whole that he
knows the stages at which to try a certain play
and the circumstances under which the same
attempt would be foolish. Above all things, he
must be a quick thinker.
Watch McGraw on the coaching lines some
day. As he crouches, he picks up a pebble
and throws it out of his way, and two base runners
start a double steal. "Hughie" Jennings emits
126 Pitching in a Pinch
his famous "Ee-Yaah!" and the third baseman
creeps in, expecting Cobb to bunt with a man
on first base and no one out. The hitter pushes
the ball on a line past the third baseman. The
next time Jennings shrieks his famous war-cry,
it has a different intonation, and the batter bunts.
"Bill" Dahlen of the Brooklyn club shouts,
"Watch his foot," and the base runner starts
while the batter smashes the ball on a hit and run
play. Again the pitcher hears that "Watch his
foot." He "wastes one," so that the batter will
not get a chance at the ball and turns to first
base. He is surprised to find the runner anchored
there. Nothing has happened. So it will be seen
that the offensive coacher controls the situation
and directs the plays, usually taking his orders
from the manager, if the boss himself is not on
the lines.
In 1911 the Giants led the National League
by a good margin in stealing bases, and to this
speed many critics attributed the fact that the
championship was won by the club. I can safely
say that every base which was pilfered by a
New York runner was stolen by the direct order
of McGraw, except in the few games from
Coaching Good and Bad 127
which he was absent. Then his lietitenants
followed his system as closely as any one can
pursue the involved and intricate style that he
alone understands. If it was the base running
of the Giants that won the pennant for the club,
then it was the coaching of McGraw, employing
the speed of his men and his opportunities, which
brought the championship to New York.
The first thing that every manager teaches his
players now is to obey absolutely the orders of
the coacher, and then he selects able men to give
the advice. The brain of McGraw is behind
each game the Giants play, and he plans every
move, most of the hitters going to the plate with
definite instructions from him as to what to try
to do. In order to make this system efficient,
absolute discipline must be assured. If a player
has other ideas than McGraw as to what should
be done, "Mac's" invariable answer to him is:
"You do what I tell you, and I '11 take the
responsibility if we lose."
For two months at the end of 1911, McGraw
would not let either "Josh" Devore or John
Murray swing at a first ball pitched to them.
Murray did this one day, after he had been ordered
128 Pitching in a Pinch
not to, and he was promptly fined $10 and sat
down oh the bench, while Becker played right field.
Many fans doubtless recall the substitution of
Becker, but could not understand the move.
Murray and Devore are what are known in
baseball as " first-ball hitters." That is, they
invariably hit at the first one delivered. They
watch a pitcher wind up and swing their bats
involuntarily, as a man blinks his eyes when he
sees a blow started. It is probably due to slight
nervousness. The result was that the news of
this weakness spread rapidly around the circuit
by the underground routes of baseball, and every
pitcher in the League was handing Devore and
Murray a bad ball on the first one. Of course,
each would miss it or else make a dinky little hit.
They were always "in the hole," which means
that the pitcher had the advantage in the count.
McGraw became exasperated after Devore had
fanned out three times one day by getting bad
starts, hitting at the first ball.
"After this," said McGraw to both Murray and
Devore in the clubhouse, "if either of you moves
his bat off his shoulder at a first ball, even if it cuts
the plate, you will be fined $10 and sat down."
Coaching Good and Bad 129
Murray forgot the next day, saw the pitcher
wind up, and swung his bat at the first one.
He spent the rest of the month on the bench.
But Devore's hitting improved at once because
all the pitchers, expecting him to swing at the
first one, were surprised to find him "taking it"
and, as it was usually bad, he had the pitcher
constantly "in the hole," instead of being at a
disadvantage himself. For this reason he was
able to guess more accurately what the pitcher was
going to throw, and his hitting consequently im-
proved. So did Murray's after he had served his
term on the bench. The right-fielder hit well up to
the world's series and then he just struck a slump
that any player is liable to encounter. But so de-
pendent is McGraw's system on absolute discipline
for its success that he dispensed with the services
of a good player for a month to preserve his style.
In contrast, "Connie" Mack, the manager of
the Athletics, and by many declared to be the
greatest leader in the country (although each
private, of course, is true to his own general),
lets his players use their own judgment largely.
He seldom gives a batter a direct order unless
the pinch is very stringent.
130 Pitching in a Pinch
The most difficult position to fill as a coacher
is at third base, the critical corner. There a
man's judgment must be lightning fast and always
accurate. He encourages runners with his voice,
but his orders are given primarily with his hands,
because often the noise made by the crowd drowns
out the shouted instructions. Last, he must be
prepared to handle all sorts of base running.
On nearly every ball club, there are some
players who are known in the frank parlance
of the profession as "hog wild runners."
The expression means that these players are
bitten by a sort of "bug" which causes them to
lose their heads when once they get on the bases.
They cannot be stopped, oftentimes fighting with
a coacher to go on to the next base, when it is
easy to see that if the attempt is made, the runner
is doomed.
New York fans have often seen McGraw dash
out into the line at third base, tackle Murray,
and throw him back on the bag. He is a "hog
wild" runner, and with him on the bases, the
duties of a coacher become more arduous. He will
insist on scoring if he is not stopped or does not
drop dead.
Coaching Good and Bad 131
Some youngster was coaching on third base
in a game with Boston in the summer of 1911
and the Giants had a comfortable lead of several
runs. Murray was on second when the batter
hit clearly and sharply to left field. Murray
started, and, with his usual intensity of purpose,
rounded third base at top speed, bound to score.
The ball was already on the way home when
Murray, about ten feet from the bag, tripped and
fell. He scrambled safely back to the cushion
on all fours. There was nothing else to do.
"This is his third year with me," laughed Mc-
Graw on the bench, "and that 's the first time he
has ever failed to try to score from second base
on a hit unless he was tackled."
All ball clubs have certain "must" motions
which are as strictly observed as danger signals
on a railroad. A coacher's hand upraised will
stop a base runner as abruptly as the uplifted
white glove of a traffic policeman halts a row of
automobiles. A wave of the arm will start a
runner going at top speed again.
Many times a quick-witted ball-player wins a
game for his club by his snap judgment. Again
McGraw is the master of that. He took a game
132 Pitching in a Pinch
from the Cubs in 1911, because, always alert for
flaws in the opposition, he noticed the centre-
fielder drop his arm after getting set to throw the
ball home. Devore was on second base, and one
run was needed to win the game. Doyle hit
sharply to centre field, and Devore, coming from
second, started to slow up as he rounded third.
Hofman, the Chicago centre-fielder, perceiving
this slackening of pace, dropped his arm. McGraw
noticed this, and, with a wave of his arm, notified
Devore to go home. With two strides he was at
top speed again, and Hofman, taken by surprise,
threw badly.
The run scored which won the game.
The pastime of bullyragging the pitcher by the
coachers has lost its popularity recently. The
wily coacher must first judge the temperament of
a pitcher before he dares to undertake to get on his
nerves. Clarke Griffith, formerly the manager
of Cincinnati, has a reputation for being able to
ruin young pitchers just attempting to establish
themselves in the Big League. Time and again
he has forced youngsters back to the minors by
his constant cry of "Watch his foot" or "He's
going to waste this one."
Coaching Good and Bad 133
The rules are very strict now about talking to
pitchers, but, if a complaint is made, Griffith
declares that he was warning the batter that it
was to be a pitchout, which is perfectly legitimate.
The rules permit the coacher to talk to the batter
and the base runners.
Griffith caught a Tartar in Grover Cleveland
Alexander, the sensational pitcher of the Phila-
delphia club. It was at his first appearance in
Cincinnati that the young fellow got into the
hole with several men on the bases, and "Mike"
Mitchell coming up to the bat.
"Now here is where we get a look at the
'yellow,'" yelled Griffith at Alexander.
The young pitcher walked over toward third base.
"I 'm going to make that big boob up at the
bat there show such a 'yellow streak' that you
won't be able to see any white," declared Alexan-
der, and then he struck Mitchell out. Griffith
had tried the wrong tactics.
A story is told of Fred Clarke and " Rube " Wad-
dell, the eccentric twirler. Waddell was once one
of the best pitchers in the business when he could
concentrate his attention on his work, but his
mind wandered easily.
134 Pitching in a Pinch
"Now pay no attention to Clarke," warned his
manager before the game.
Clarke tried everything from cajolery to abuse
on Waddell with no effect, because the eccentric
"Rube" had been tipped to fight shy of the
Pittsburg manager. Suddenly Clarke became
friendly and walked with Waddell between innings,
chatting on trivial matters. At last he said:
"Why don't you come out on my ranch in
Kansas and hunt after the season, George? I Ve
got a dog out there you might train."
"What kind of a dog?" asked Waddell at once
interested.
"Just a pup," replied Clarke, "and you can
have him if he takes a fancy to you."
"They all do," replied Waddell. "He's as
good as mine."
The next inning the big left-hander was still
thinking of that dog, and the Pirates made five
runs.
In many instances defensive coaching is as
important as the offensive brand, which simply
indorses the old axiom that any chain is only as
strong as its weakest link or any ball club is only
as efficient as its most deficient department.
Coaching Good and Bad 135
When Roger Bresnahan was on the Giants, he was
one of those aggressive players who are always
coaching the other fielders and holding a team
together, a type so much desired by a manager.
If a slow roller was hit between the pitcher's
box and third base, I could always hear "Rog"
yelling, "You take it, Matty," or, "Artie, Artie, "
meaning Devlin, the third baseman. He was in
a position to see which man would be better
able to make the play, and he gave this helpful
advice. His coaching saved many a game for
the Giants in the old days. "Al" Bridwell,
the former shortstop, was of the same type, and,
if you have ever attended a ball game at the
Polo Grounds, you have doubtless heard him in
his shrill, piercing voice, shouting:
"I've got it! I 've got it!" or, "You take it!"
This style of coaching saves ball-players from
accidents, and accidents have lost many a pennant.
I have always held that it was a lack of the proper
coaching that sent "Cy" Seymour, formerly the
Giant centre-fielder, out of the Big Leagues and
back to the minors. Both Murray and he at-
tempted to catch the same fly in the season of
1909 and came into collision. Seymour went
136 Pitching in a Pinch
down on the field, but later got up and played the
game out. However, he hurt his leg so badly
that it never regained its strength.
Then there is that other style of defensive
coaching which is the shouting of misleading
advice by the fielders to the base runners. Collins
and Barry, the second baseman and shortstop
on the Athletics, worked a clever trick in one of
the games of the 1911 world's series which il-
lustrates my point. The play is as old as the one
in which the second baseman hides the ball under
his shirt so as to catch a man asleep off first base,
but often the old ones are the more effective.
Doyle was on first base in one of the contests
played in Philadelphia, and the batter lifted a
short foul fly to Baker, playing third base. The
crowd roared and the coacher's voice was drowned
by the volume of sound. "Eddie" Collins ran
to cover second base, and Barry scrabbled his
hand along the dirt as if preparing to field a
ground ball.
"Throw it here! Throw it here!" yelled
Collins, and Doyle, thinking that they were trying
for a force play, increased his efforts to reach
second. Baker caught the fly, and Larry was
Coaching Good and Bad 137
doubled up at first base so far that he looked
foolish. Yet it really was not his fault. The
safest thing for a base runner to do under those
circumstances is to get one glimpse of the coacher's
motions and then he can tell whether to go back
or to go on.
"Johnnie" Kling, the old catcher of the Chicago
Cubs, used to work a clever piece of defensive
.coaching with John Evers, the second baseman.
This was tried on young players and usually was
successful. The victim was picked out before
the game, and the play depended upon him
arriving at second base. Once there the schemers
worked it as follows:
When the "busher" was found taking a large
lead, Evers would dash to the bag and Kling would
make a bluff to throw the ball, but hold it. The
runner naturally scampered for the base. Then,
seeing that Kling had not thrown, he would start
to walk away from it again.
"If the Jew had thrown that time, he would
have had you," Evers would carelessly hurl
over his shoulder at the intended victim. The
man usually turned for a fatal second to reply.
Tinker, who was playing shortstop, rushed in
138 Pitching in a Pinch
from behind, Kling whipped the ball to the bag,
and the man, caught off his guard, was tagged
out. The play was really made before the game,
when the victim was selected.
It was this same Evers-Kling combination that
turned the tide in the first inning of the most
famous game ever played in baseball, the extra
one between the Giants and the Cubs in the
season of 1908. The Chicago club was nervous
in the first inning. Tenney was hit by a pitched
ball, and Herzog walked. It looked as if Pfeister,
the Chicago pitcher, was losing his grip. Bresna-
han struck out, and Kling, always alert, dropped
the third strike, but conveniently at his feet.
Thinking that here was an opportunity the
crowd roared. Evers, playing deep, almost behind
Herzog, shouted, "Go on!"
Herzog took the bait in the excitement of the
moment and ran and was nipped many yards
from first base.
There are many tricks to the coacher's trade,
both offensive and defensive, and it is the quickest-
witted man who is the best coacher. The sentry
at first yells as the pitcher winds up, "There he
goes!" imitating the first baseman as nearly as
Coaching Good and Bad 139
possible, in the hope that the twirler will waste
one by pitching out and thus give the batter an
advantage. The coacher on third base will shout
at the runner on a short hit to the outfield, "Take
your turn!" in the dim hope that the fielder,
seeing the man rounding third, will throw the
ball home, and the hitter can thus make an extra
base. And the job of coaching is no sinecure.
McGraw has told me after directing a hard game
that he is as tired as if he had played.
vn
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing
Everything Fair in Baseball except the Dishonest Steal-
ing of Signals The National Game More a Con-
test of the Wits than Most Onlookers Imagine.
AA7"HEN the Philadelphia Athletics unexpect-
* * edly defeated the Chicago Cubs in the
world's series of 1910, the National League players
cried that their signals had been stolen by the
American League team, and that, because Connie
Mack's batters knew what to expect, they had won
the championship.
But were the owners or any member of the
Philadelphia club arrested charged with grand
larceny in stealing the baseball championship
of the world? No. Was there any murmur
against the methods of Connie Mack's men?
No, again. By a strange kink in the ethics
of baseball John Kling, the Chicago catcher,
140
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 141
was blamed by the other players on the defeated
team for the signs being stolen. They charged
that he had been careless in covering his signals
and that the enemy's coachers, particularly
Topsy Hartsell, a clever man at it, had seen
them from the lines. This was really the cause
of Kling leaving the Cubs and going to Boston
in 1911.
After the games were over and the series was lost,
many of the players, and especially the pitchers,
would hardly speak to Kling, the man who had
as much as any one else to do with the Cubs
winning four championships, and the man who by
his great throwing had made the reputations of
a lot of their pitchers. But the players were
sore because they had lost the series and lost the
extra money which many of them had counted
as their own before the games started, and they
looked around for some one to blame and found
Kling. One of the pitchers complained after he
had lost a game:
"Can't expect a guy to win with his catcher
giving the signs so the coachers can read 'em
and tip the batters."
"And you can't expect a catcher to win a game
142 Pitching in a Pinch
for you if you have n't got anything on the ball,"
replied Kling, for he is quick tempered and cannot
stand reflections on his ability. But the pitcher's
chance remark had given the other players an ex-
cuse for fixing the blame, and it was put on Kling.
I honestly do not believe that Kling was in
any way responsible for the rout of the proud
Cubs. The Chicago pitchers were away off
form in the series and could not control the ball,
thus getting themselves "into the hole" all the
time. Shrewd Connie Mack soon realized this
and ordered his batters to wait everything out,
to make the twirlers throw every ball possible.
The result was that, with the pitcher continually
in the hole, the batters were guessing what was
coming and frequently guessing right, as any smart
hitter could under the circumstances. This made
it look as if the Athletics were getting the Cubs'
signals.
"Why, I changed signs every three innings,
Matty," Kling told me afterwards in discussing
the charge. "Some of the boys said that I gave
the old bended-knee sign for a curve ball. Well,
did you ever find anything to improve on the old
ones? That 's why they are old."
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 143
But the Cubs still point the finger of scorn
at Kling, for it hurts to lose. I know it, I have
lost myself. Even though the Athletics are
charged with stealing the signs whether they did
or not, it is no smirch on the character of the
club, for they stole honestly which sounds like a
paradox.
"You have such jolly funny morals in this
bally country," declared an Englishman I once
met. "You steal and rob in baseball and yet
you call it fair. Now in cricket we give our
opponents every advantage, don't cher know,
and after the game we are all jolly good fellows
at tea together."
This brings us down to the ethics of signal
stealing. Each game has its own recognized
standards of fairness. For instance, no tricks
are tolerated in tennis, yet the baseball manager
who can devise some scheme by which he dis-
concerts his opponents is considered a great leader.
I was about to say that all is fair in love, war, and
baseball, but will modify that too comprehensive
statement by saying all is fair in love, war, and
baseball except stealing signals dishonestly, which
listens like another paradox. Therefore, I shall
144 Pitching in a Pinch
divide the subject of signal stealing into half
portions, the honest and the dishonest halves,
and, since we are dealing in paradoxes, take up
the latter first.
Dishonest signal stealing might be defined as
obtaining information by artificial aids. The
honest methods are those requiring cleverness of
eye, mind, and hand without outside assistance.
One of the most flagrant and for a time successful
pieces of signal stealing occurred in Philadelphia
several years ago.
Opposing players can usually tell when the
batsman is getting the signs, because he steps up
and sets himself for a curve with so much confid-
lence. During the season of 1899 the report went
around the circuit that the Philadelphia club
was stealing signals, because the batters were
popping them all on the nose, but no one was able
to discover the transmitter. The coachers were
closely watched and it was evident that these
sentinels were not getting the signs.
It was while the Washington club, then in the
National League, was playing Philadelphia that
there came a rainy morning which made the field
very wet, and for a long time it was doubtful
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 145
whether a game could be played in the afternoon,
but the Washington club insisted on it and
overruled the protests of the Phillies. Arlie
Latham, now the coacher on the Giants', was
playing third base for the Senators at the time.
He has told me often since how he discovered the
device by which the signs were being stolen. He
repeated the story to me recently when I asked
him for the facts to use in this book.
"There was a big puddle in the third base
coaching box that day," said Latham." And
it was in the third inning that I noticed Cupid
Childs, the Philadelphia second baseman, coach-
ing. He stood with one foot in the puddle and
never budged it, although the water came up
to his shoe-laces. He usually jumped around
when on the lines, and this stillness surprised me.
" ' Better go get your rubbers if you are goin*
to keep that trilby there/ I said to him. ' Charley
horse and the rheumatism have no terrors for you.'
"But he kept his foot planted in the puddle
just the same, and first thing the batter cracked
out a base hit.
" 'So that's where you're gettin' the signs?'
I said to him, not guessing that it really was.
146 Pitching in a Pinch
Then he started to jump around and we got
the next two batters out right quick, there being a
big slump in the Philadelphia hitting as soon as
he took his foot out of that puddle.
"When the Washington club went to bat I
hiked out to the third base line and started to
coach, putting my foot into the puddle as near
the place where Childs had had his as I could.
" 'Here's where we get a few signs,' I yelled,
'and I ain't afraid of Charley horse, either.'
"I looked over at the Philadelphia bench, and
there were all the extra players sitting with their
caps pulled down over their eyes, so that I could n't
see their faces. The fielders all looked the other
way. Then I knew I was on a warm scent.
"When the Washington players started back
for the field I told Tommy Corcoran that I
thought they must be getting the signs from the
third base coaching box, although I had n't been
able to feel anything there. He went over and
started pawing around in the dirt and water with
his spikes and fingers. Pretty soon he dug up a
square chunk of wood with a buzzer on the under
side of it.
" 'That ought to help their hitting a little/
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 147
he remarked as he kept on pulling. Up came a
wire, and when he started to pull on it he found
that it was buried about an inch under the soil
and ran across the outfield. He kept right on
coiling it up and following it, like a hound on a
scent, the Philadelphia players being very busy
a.11 this time and nervous like a busher at his debut
into Big League society. One of the substitutes
started to run for the clubhouse, but I stopped him.
"Tommy was galloping by this time across the
outfield and all the time pulling up this wire.
It led straight to the clubhouse, and there sitting
where he could get a good view of the catcher's
signs with a pair of field-glasses was Morgan
Murphy. The wire led right to him.
" 'What cher doin'?" asked Tommy.
" 'Watchin' the game,' replied Murphy.
1 ' Could n't you see it easier from the bench
than lookin' through those peepers from here?
And why are you connected up with this machine?'
inquired Tommy, showin' him the chunk of wood
with the buzzer attached.
' 4 I guess you've got the goods,' Murphy
answered with a laugh, and all the newspapers
laughed at it then, too. But the batting averages
148 Pitching in a Pinch
of the Philadelphia players took an awful slump
after that.
" 'Why didn't they tip me?' asked Murphy
as he put aside his field-glasses and went to the
bench and watched the rest of the game from there.
And we later won that contest, our first victory
of the series, which was no discredit to us, since
it was like gamblin' against loaded dice," concluded
"Arlie."
The newspapers may have laughed at the
incident in those days, but since that time the
National Commission has intimated that if there
was ever a recurrence of such tactics, the club
caught using them would be subjected to a heavy
fine and possibly expulsion from the League.
So much have baseball standards improved.
The incident is a great illustration of the unfair
method of obtaining signs. Since then, there
have come from time to time reports of teams
talcing signals by mechanical devices. The Ath-
letics once declared that the American League
team in New York had a man stationed behind
the fence in centre field with a pair of glasses
and that he shifted a line in the score board
slightly, so as to tip off the batters, but this
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 149
charge was never confirmed. It was said a short
time ago that the Athletics themselves had a spy
located in a house outside their grounds and that
he tipped the batters by raising and lowering
an awning a trifle. When the Giants went to
Philadelphia in 1911 for the first game of the
world's series in the enemy's camp, I kept watching
the windows of the houses just outside of the park
for suspicious movements, but could discover
none. Once in Pittsburg I thought that the
Pirates were getting the Giants' signals and I
kept my eyes glued to the score board in centre
field, throughout one whole series, to see if any
of the figures moved or changed positions, as that
seemed to be the only place from which a batter
could be tipped. But I never discovered anything
wrong.
There are many fair ways to steal the signs of
the enemy, so many that the smart ball-player
is always kept on the alert by them. Baseball
geniuses, some almost magicians, are constantly
looking for new schemes to find out what the
catcher is telling the pitcher, what the batter is
tipping the base runner to, or what the coacher's
instructions are. The Athletics have a great
150 Pitching in a Pinch
reputation as being a club able to get the other
team's signs if they are obtainable. This is their
record all around the American League circuit.
Personally I do not believe that Connie Mack's
players steal as much information as they get the
credit for, but the reputation itself, if they never
get a sign, is valuable. If a prizefighter is supposed
to have a haymaking punch in his left hand,
the other fellow is going to be constantly looking
out for that left. If the players on a club have
great reputations as signal stealers, their opponents
are going to be on their guard all the time, which
gives the team with the reputation just that much
advantage. If a pitcher has a reputation, he has
the percentage on the batter. Therefore, this
gossip about the signal-stealing ability of the
Athletics has added to their natural strength.
"Bill," I said to Dahlen, the Brooklyn manager,
one day toward the end of the season of 1911,
when the Giants were playing their schedule out
after the pennant was sure, "see if you can get
the Chiefs signs."
Dahlen coached on first base and then went
to third, always looking for Meyers's signals.
Pretty soon he came to me.
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 151
"I can see them a little bit, Matty," he reported.
"Chief," I said to Meyers that night as I button-
holed him in the clubhouse, "you Ve got to be
careful to cover up your signs in the Big Series.
The Athletics have a reputation of being pretty
slick at getting them. And to make sure we will
arrange a set of signs that I can give if we think
they are 'hep' to yours."
So right there Meyers and I fixed up a code
of signals that I could give to him, the Chief
always to use some himself which would be
"phoney" of course, and might have the desirable
effect of "crossing them."
In the first championship game at the Polo
Grounds, Topsy Hartsell was out on the coaching
lines looking for signals, and the Chief started
giving the real ones until Davis stepped into a curve
ball and cracked it to left field for a single, scoring
the only run made by the Athletics. Right here
Meyers stopped, and I began transmitting the
private information, although the Chief continued
to pass out signals that meant nothing. The
Athletics were getting the Indian's and could not
understand why the answers seemed invariably
to be wrong, for a couple of them struck out
152 Pitching in a Pinch
swinging at bad balls, and one batter narrowly
avoided being hit by a fast one when apparently
he had been tipped off to a curve and was set
ready to swing at it. They did not discover that
I was behind the signals, although to make this
method successful the catcher must be a clever
man. If he makes it too obvious that his signals
are "phoney" and are meant to be seen, then the
other club will look around for the source of the
real ones. Meyers carefully concealed his mis-
leading wig-wags beneath his chest protector,
under his glove and behind his knee, as any good
catcher does his real signs, so they would not
look at my head.
Many persons argue: if a man sees the signs,
what good does it do him if he does not know what
they mean? It is easy for a smart ball-player to
deduce the answers, because there are only three
real signs passed between a pitcher and catcher,
the sign for the fast one, for the curve ball and
for the pitchout. If a coacher sees a catcher
open his hand behind his glove and then watches
the pitcher throw a fast one, he is likely to guess
that the open palm says "Fast one."
After a coacher has stolen the desired informa-
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 153
tion, he must be clever to pass it along to the
batter without the other club being aware that he
is doing it. He may straighten up to tell the
batter a curve ball is coming, and bend over to
forecast a fast one, and turn his back as a neutral
signal, meaning that he does not know what is
coming. If a coacher is smart enough to pass
the meanings to the batter without the other
team getting on, he may go through the entire
season as a transmitter of information. To steal
signs fairly requires quickness of mind, eye and
action. Few players can do it successfully.
Perhaps that is why it is considered fair.
If a team is going to make a success of signal
stealing it must get every sign that is given,
for an occasional crumb of information picked up
at random is worse than none at all. First, it
is dangerous. A batter, tipped off that a curved
ball is coming, steps up to the plate and is surprised
to meet a fast one, which often he has not time to
dodge. Many a good ball-player has been injured
in this way, and an accident to a star has cost
more than one pennant.
"Joe" Kelley, formerly manager of the Reds,
was coaching in Cincinnati one day several years
154 Pitching in a Pinch
ago, and "Eagle Eye Jake" Beckley, the old
first baseman and a chronic three hundred hitter,
was at the bat. I had been feeding him low drops
and Kelley, on the third base line, thought he
was getting the signals that Jack Warner, the
Giant catcher in a former cast of characters,
was giving. I saw Kelley apparently pass some
information to Beckley, and the latter stepped
almost across the plate ready for a curve. He
encountered a high, fast one, close in, and he
encountered it with that part of him between his
neck and hat band. "Eagle Eye" was uncon-
scious for two days after that and in the hospital
several weeks. When he got back into the game
he said to me one day:
"Why did n't you throw me that curve, Matty,
that 'Joe' tipped me to?"
"Were you tipped off?" I asked. "Then it
was 'Joe's' error, not mine."
"Say," he answered, "if I ever take another
sign from a coacher I hope the ball kills me."
"It probably will," I replied. "That one
nearly did."
It is one of the risks of signal stealing. Beckley
had received the wrong information and I felt
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 155
no qualms at hitting him, for it was not a wild
pitch but a misinterpreted signal which had put
him out of the game. His manager, not I, was
to blame. For this reason many nervous players
refuse to accept any information from a coacher,
even if the coacher thinks he knows what is going
to be pitched, because they do not dare take the
risk of getting hit by a fast one, against which
they have little protection if set for a curve. On
this account few National League clubs attempt
to steal signs as a part of the regular team work,
but many individuals make a practice of it for
their own benefit and for the benefit of the batter,
if he is not of the timid type.
As soon as a runner gets on second base he is
in an excellent position to see the hands of the
catcher, and it is then that the man behind the
bat is doing all that he can cover up. Jack Warner,
the old Giant, used sometimes to give his signals
with his mouth in this emergency, because they
were visible from the pitcher's box, but not from
second base. The thieves were looking at his
hands for them. In the National League, Leach,
Clarke, Wagner, Bresnahan, Evers, Tinker and
a few more of the sort are dangerous to have on
156 Pitching in a Pinch
second. Wagner will get on the middle sack
and watch the catcher until he thinks that he has
discovered the pitchout sign, which means a ball
is to be wasted in the hope that a base runner can
be caught. Wagner takes a big lead, and the
catcher, tempted, gives the "office" to waste one,
thinking to nail "Hans" off second. The Dutch-
man sees it, and instead of running back to second
dashes for third. He starts as the catcher lets go
of the ball to throw to second and can usually
make the extra base.
Many coachers, who do not attempt to get
the signs for fast and curved balls, study the
catcher to get his pitchout sign, because once this
is recognized it gives the team at the bat a great
advantage. If a coacher sees the catcher give the
pitchout signal he can stop the runner from
trying to steal and the pitcher has wasted a ball
and is "in the hole." Then if his control is
uncertain the result is likely to be disastrous.
Several players in the National League are
always trying to get the batter's signs. Bresnahan,
the manager and catcher of the St. Louis club,
devotes half his time and energy to looking for
the wireless code employed by batter and base
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 157
runner. If he can discover the hit and run
sign, then he is able to order a pitchout and catch
the man who has started to run in response to
it several feet at second base. He is a genius at
getting this information.
Once late in 1911, when the New York club was
in St. Louis on the last trip West, I came up to
the bat with Fletcher on first base. I rubbed the
end of my stick with my hand and Roger exclaimed :
"Why, that's your old hit and run, Matty!
What are you trying to do, kid me?"
"I forgot you knew it, Rog," I answered,
"but it goes."
He thought I was attempting to cross him and
did not order a pitchout. The sign had been
given intentionally. I hit the ball and had the
laugh on him. If a catcher can get a pitchout
on a hit and run sign he upsets the other team
greatly. Take a fast man on first base and the
batter signs him that he is going to hit the next
ball. The runner gets his start and the ball
comes up so wide that the batter could not half
reach it with a ten-foot bat. The runner is caught
easily at second base and it makes him look foolish.
That is why so many catchers devote time to
158 Pitching in a Pinch
looking for this signal. It is a great fruit
bearer.
Many of the extra players on the bench are
always on the alert for the hit and run sign.
This is a typical situation:
The Giants were playing the Pittsburg club one
day in 1911. Byrne was on first base. Fred
Clarke was at bat and Byrne started for second
while Clarke hit the ball to right field, Byrne
reaching third base on the play.
"What did he do?" asked Ames.
"Did you get it, Matty?" inquired Wiltse.
"No," I answered. "Did you?"
"I think he tapped his bat on the plate," replied
Wiltse. The next time Clarke came up we were
all looking to see if he tapped his bat on the
plate. Byrne was again on first base. The
Pirates' manager fixed his cap, he stepped back
out of the box and knocked the dirt out of his
cleats, and he did two or three other natural things
before the pitch, but nothing happened. Then
he tapped his bat on the plate.
"Make him put them over, Chief," yelled Wiltse
which, translated, meant, "Order a pitch-out,
Chief. He just gave Byrne the hit and run sign."
Honest and Dishonest Sign Stealing 159
Meyers signed for a pitchout, and Byrne was
caught ten feet from second. Wiltse on the bench
had really nailed the base runner. As soon as a
sign is discovered it is communicated to the other
players, and they are always watching for it,
but try to conceal the fact that they recognize it,
because, as soon as a batter discovers that his
messages are being read, he changes his code.
From these few facts about signals and sign
stealing some idea of the battle of wits that is
going on between two ball clubs in a game may
be obtained. That is why so few men without
brains last in the Big Leagues nowadays. A
young fellow broke in with the Giants a few years
ago and was very anxious to make good. He
was playing shortstop.
"Watch for the catcher's signs and then shift,"
McGraw told him one day. It is well known in
baseball that a right-handed hitter will naturally
push a curve over the outside corner of the plate
toward right field and over the inside he will pull
it around toward third base. But this youngster
was overanxious and would shift before the
pitcher started to deliver the ball. Some smart
player on another club noticed this and tipped
160 Pitching in a Pinch
the batters off to watch the youngster for the signs.
When he shifted toward second base the batter set
himself for a ball over the outside corner. For
a long time McGraw could not understand how
the other teams were getting the Giants' signs,
especially as it was on our home grounds. At
last he saw the new infielder shift one day and
the batter prepare for an inside ball.
"Say," he said to the player, rushing on the
field alter he had stopped the pitcher, "do you
know you are telegraphing the signs to the batters
by moving around before the pitcher throws the
ball?"
Bill Dahlen, formerly a shortstop on the Giants,
used to shift, but he was clever enough to wait
until the pitcher had started his motion, when
it was too late for the batter to look at him.
Ball-players are always looking to steal some
sign so that they may "cross" the enemy. In the
language of the Big Leagues it is "signs," never
"signals." And in conclusion I reiterate my
former sentiments that all is fair in love, war and
baseball except stealing signs dishonestly.
VIII
Umpires and Close Decisions
Ballplayers and Umpires are Regarded by the Fans as
Natural Enemies, and the Fans Are about Right
Types of Arbiters and how the Players Treat them
"Silk" O'Loughlin, "Hank" O'Day, "Tim"
Hurst , "Bob" Emslie, and Others, and Close Ones
they have Called Also Some Narrow Escapes
which have Followed.
WHEN the Giants were swinging through
the West in 1911 on the final trip, the
club played three games in Pittsburg, with the
pennant at that time only a possibility more or
less remote. The Pirates still had a chance, and
they were fighting hard for every game, espe-
cially as they were playing on their home
grounds.
The first contest of the series was on Saturday
afternoon before a crowd that packed the gigantic
" 161
162 Pitching in a Pinch
stands which surrounded Forbes Field. The
throng wanted to see the Pirates win because
they were the Pirates, and the Giants beaten
because they were the Giants, and were sticking
their heads up above the other clubs in the race.
I always think of the horse show when I play in
Pittsburg, for they have the diamond horse-shoe
of boxes there, you know. No; I 'm wrong
it 's at the Metropolitan Opera House they have
the diamond horse-shoe. Any way, the diamond
horse-shoe of boxes was doing business at Forbes
Field that Saturday afternoon.
This story is going to be about umpires, but the
reader who has never seen the Forbes Field folks
must get the atmosphere before I let the yarn into
the block. Once, on a bright, sunny day there,
I muffed fly after fly because the glint of Sol's
rays on the diamonds blinded me. Always now
I wear smoked glasses. "Josh" Devore is so
afraid that he will lose social caste when he goes
to Pittsburg that he gets his finger-nails manicured
before he will appear on the field. And the lady
who treated him one day polished them to such
an ultimate glossiness that the sun flashed on
them, and he dropped two flies in left field.
Umpires and Close Decisions 163
"Look here, Josh," warned McG raw after the
game, "I hire you to play ball and not to lead
cotillions. Get some pumice stone and rub it on
your finger-nails and cut out those John Drew
manicures after this."
This crowd is worse after umpires than the
residents of the bleachers. The game on that
Saturday worked out into a pitchers' battle
between Marty O'Toole, the expensive exponent
of the spit ball, and "Rube" Marquard, the great
left-hander. Half of "Who's Who in Pittsburg"
had already split white gloves applauding when,
along about the fourth or fifth inning, Fred Clarke
got as far as third base with one out. The score
was nothing for either side as yet, and of such a
delicate nature was the contest that one run was
likely to decide it.
"Hans" Wagner, the peerless, and the pride
of Pittsburg, was at the bat. He pushed a long
fly to Murray in right field, and John caught it
and threw the ball home. Clarke and the ball
arrived almost simultaneously. There was a
slide, a jumble of players, and a small cloud
of dust blew away from the home plate.
"Ye 're out!" bawled Mr. Brennan, the um-
164 Pitching in a Pinch
pire, jerking his thumb over his shoulder with a
conclusiveness that forbade argument. Clarke
jumped up and stretched his hands four feet
apart, for he recognizes no conclusiveness when
"one is called against him."
" Safe ! that much ! " he shouted in Brennan's ear,
showing him the four-foot margin with his hands.
There was a roar from the diamond horse-shoe
that, if it could have been canned and put on a
phonograph, would have made any one his fortune
because it could have been turned on to accompany
moving pictures of lions and other wild beasts to
make them realistic.
"Say," said Clarke to Brennan, "I know a
pickpocket who looks honest compared to you,
and I 'd rather trust my watch to a second-story
worker."
Brennan was dusting off the plate and paid
no attention to him. But Clarke continued to
snap and bark at the umpire as he brushed him-
self off, referring with feeling to Mr. Brennan's
immediate family, and weaving into his talk a
sketch of the umpire's ancestors, for Clarke is a
great master of the English language as fed to
umpires.
Umpires and Close Decisions 165
"Mr. Clarke," said Brennan, turning at last,
"you were out. Now beat it to the bench before
you beat it to the clubhouse."
Clarke went grumbling and all the afternoon
was after Brennan for the decision, his wrath
increasing because the Pirates lost the game
finally, although they would not have won it
had they been given that decision. And the
crowd was roaring at Brennan, too, throughout
the remainder of the contest, asking him pointed
questions about his habits and what his regular
business was.
It takes a man with nerve to make a decision
like that one that could be called either way
because it was so close and to make it as he sees
it, which happened in this particular case to
be against the home team.
Many times have I, in the excitement of the
moment, protested against the decision of an
umpire, but fundamentally I know that the
umpires are honest and are doing their best, as
all ball-players are. The umpires make, mistakes
and the players make errors. Many arbiters
have told me that when they are working they
seldom know what inning it is or how many are
1 66 Pitching in a Pinch
out, and sometimes, in their efforts to concentrate
their minds on their decisions, they say they even
forget what clubs are playing and which is the
home team.
The future of the game depends on the umpire,
for his honesty must not be questioned. If there
is a breath of suspicion against a man, he is imme-
diately let go, because constant repetition of such
a charge would result in baseball going the way
of horse racing and some other sports. No
scandal can creep in where the umpire is concerned,
for the very popularity of baseball depends on its
honesty.
"The only good umpire is a dead umpire,"
McGraw has declared many times when he has
been disgruntled over some decision.
"I think they 're all dead ones in this League,"
replied Devore one day, "considering the decisions
that they are handing me down there at second
base. Why, I had that bag by three feet and he
called me out."
Many baseball fans look upon an umpire as a
sort of necessary evil to the luxury of baseball,
like the odor that follows an automobile.
"Kill him! He hasn't got any friends!" is
Umpires and Close Decisions 167
an expression shouted from the stands time and
again during a game.
But I know differently. I have seen umpires
with friends. It is true that most ball-players
regard umpires as their natural enemies, as a boy
does a school teacher. But "Bill" Klem has
friends because I have seen him with them, and
besides he has a constant companion, which is
a calabash pipe. And "Billy" Evans of the
American League has lots of friends. And most
all of the umpires have some one who will speak
to them when they are off the field.
These men in blue travel by themselves, live
at obscure hotels apart from those at which the
teams stop, and slip into the ball parks unobtrus-
ively just before game time. They never make
friends with ball-players off the field for fear
that there might be a hint of scandal. Seldom
do they take the same train with a club unless
it cannot be avoided. "Hank" O'Day, the vet-
eran of the National League staff, and Brennan
took the same train out of Chicago with the
Giants in the fall of 1911 because we stopped in
Pittsburg for one game, and they had to be there
to umpire. It was the only available means of
1 68 Pitching in a Pinch
transportation. But they stayed by themselves
in another Pullman until some one told them
"Charley" Faust, the official jinx-killer of the
Giants, was doing his stunt. Then they both
came back into the Giants' car and for the first
time in my life I saw "Hank" O'Day laugh.
His face acted as if it was n't accustomed to the
exercise and broke all in funny new wrinkles,
like a glove when you put it on for the first time.
There are several types of umpires, and ball-
players are always studying the species to find out
the best way to treat each man to get the most
out of him. There are autocrats and stubborn
ones and good fellows and weak-kneed ones,
almost as many kinds as there are human beings.
The autocrat of the umpire world is "Silk"
O'Loughlin, now appearing with a rival show.
"There are no close plays," says "Silk." "A
man is always out or safe, or it is a ball or a
strike, and the umpire, if he is a good man and
knows his business, is always right. For instance,
I am always right."
He refuses to let the players discuss a decision
with him, maintaining that there is never any room
for argument. If a man makes any talk with him,
Umpires and Close Decisions 169
it is quick to the shower bath. "Silk" has a
voice of which he is proud and declares that he
shares the honors with Caruso and that it is only
his profession as an umpire that keeps him off
the grand-opera circuit. I have heard a lot of
American League ball-players say at various times
that they wished he was on the grand-opera
circuit or some more calorific circuit, but they were
mostly prejudiced at those moments by some
sentiments which "Silk" had just voiced in an
official capacity.
As is well known in baseball, "Silk" is the
inventor of " Strike Tuh! " and the creased trousers
for umpires. I have heard American League
players declare that they are afraid to slide
when "Silk" is close down over a play for fear
they will bump up against his trousers and cut
themselves. He is one of the kind of umpires
who can go through a game on the hottest summer
day, running about the bases, and still keep his
collar unwilted. At the end he will look as if he
were dressed for an afternoon tea.
Always he wears on his right hand, which is
his salary or decision wing, a large diamond that
sparkles in the sunlight every time he calls a man
170 Pitching in a Pinch
out. Many American League players assert that
he would rather call a man out than safe, so that
he can shimmer his "cracked ice, " but again they
are usually influenced by circumstances. Such
is "Silk," well named.
Corresponding to him in the National League
is "Billy" Klem. He always wears a Norfolk
jacket because he thinks it more stylish, and
perhaps it is, and he refuses to don a wind pad.
Ever notice him working behind the bat? But
I am going to let you in on a secret. That chest
is not all his own. Beneath his jacket he carries
his armor, a protector, and under his trousers'
legs are shin guards. He insists that all players
call him "Mr." He says that he thinks maybe
soon his name will be in the social register.
"Larry" Doyle thought that he had received
the raw end of a decision at second base one day.
He ran down to first, where Klem had retreated
after he passed his judgment.
"Say, 'Bill,' " exploded "Larry," "that man
didn't touch the bag didn't come within six
feet of it."
"Say, Doyle," replied Klem, "when you talk
to me call me 'Mr. Klem.' "
Umpires and Close Decisions 171
"But, Mr. Klem " amended "Larry."
Klem hurriedly drew a line with his foot as
Doyle approached him menacingly.
"But if you come over that line, you 're out of
the game, Air. Doyle," he threatened.
"All right," answered "Larry," letting his
pugilistic attitude evaporate before the abrupt-
ness of Klem as the mist does before the classic
noonday sun, "but, Mr. Klem, I only wanted to
ask you if that clock in centre field is right by
your watch, because I know everything about
you is right."
"Larry" went back, grinning and considering
that he had put one over on Klem Mr. Klem.
For a long time "Johnny" Evers of the Chicago
club declared that Klem owed him $5 on a bet
he had lost to the second baseman and had
neglected to pay. Now John, when he was right,
could make almost any umpirical goat leap from
crag to crag and do somersaults en route. He
kept pestering Klem about that measly $5 bet,
not in an obtrusive way, you understand, but by
such delicate methods as holding up five fingers
when Klem glanced down on the coaching lines
where he was stationed, or by writing a large "5"
172 Pitching in a Pinch
in the dirt at the home plate with the butt of
his bat as he came up when Klem was umpiring
on balls and strikes, or by counting slowly and
casually up to five and stopping with an abrupt-
ness that could not be misconstrued.
One day John let his temper get away from him
and bawled Klem out in his most approved fashion.
"Here's your five, Mr. Evers," said Klem,
handing him a five dollar bill, "and now you are
fined $25."
"And it was worth it," answered Evers, "to
bawl you out."
Next comes the O'Day type, and there is
only one of them, "Hank." He is the stubborn
kind or perhaps was the stubborn kind, would
be better, as he is now a manager. He is bull-
headed. If a manager gets after him for a
decision, he is likely to go up in the air and, not
meaning to do it, call close ones against the club
that has made the kick, for it must be remembered
that umpires are only "poor weak mortals after
all." O'Day has to be handled with shock
absorbers. McGraw tries to do it, but shock
absorbers do not fit him well, and the first thing
that usually occurs is a row.
Umpires and Close Decisions 173
"Let me do the kicking, boys," McGraw always
warns his players before a contest that O'Day is
going to umpire. He does not want to see any
of his men put out of the game.
"Bill" Dahlen always got on O' Day's nerves
by calling him "Henry." For some reason,
O'Day does not like the name, and "Bill" Dahlen
discovered long ago the most irritating inflection
to give it so that it would rasp on O'Day's
ears. He does not mind "Hank" and is not a
"Mister" umpire. But every time Dahlen would
call O'Day "Henry" it was the cold shower and
the civilian's clothes for his.
Dahlen was playing in St. Louis many years
ago when the race track was right opposite the
ball park. "Bill" had a preference in one of
the later races one day and was anxious to get
across the street and make a little bet. He had
obtained a leave of absence on two preceding days
by calling O'Day "Henry" and had lost money
on the horses he had selected as fleet of foot.
But this last time he had a "sure thing" and was
banking on some positive information which had
been slipped to him by a friend of the friend of
the man who owned the winner, and "Bill"
174 Pitching in a Pinch
wanted to be there. Along about the fifth inning,
"Bill" figured that it was time for him to get a
start, so he walked up to O'Day and said:
"Henry, do you know who won the first race?"
"No, and you won't either, Mr. Dahlen,"
answered "Hank." "You are fined $25, and
you stay here and play the game out."
Some one had tipped " Hank " off. And the sad-
dest part of the story is that "Bill's" horse walked
home, and he could not get a bet down on him.
"First time it ever failed to work," groaned
"Bill" in the hotel that night, "and I said 'Henry'
in my meanest way, too."
Most clubs try to keep an umpire from feeling
hostile toward the team because, even if he means
to see a play right, he is likely to call a close one
against his enemies, not intending to be dishonest.
It would simply mean that you would not get
any close ones from him, and the close ones count.
Some umpires can be reasoned with, and a good
fair protest will often make a man think perhaps
he has called it wrong, and he will give you the
edge on the next decision. A player must un-
derstand an umpire to know how to approach him
to the best advantage. O'Day cannot be reasoned
Umpires and Close Decisions 175
with. It is as dangerous to argue with him as it
is to try to ascertain how much gasoline is in the
tank of an automobile by sticking down the
lighted end of a cigar or a cigarette.
Emslie will listen to a reasonable argument.
He is one of the finest umpires that ever broke
into the League, I think. He is a good fellow.
Far be it from me to be disloyal to my manager,
for I think that he is the greatest that ever won a
pennant, but Emslie put one over on McGraw
in 1911 when it was being said that Emslie was
getting so old he could not see a play.
"I '11 bet," said McGraw to him one day after
he had called one against the Giants, "that I can
put a baseball and an orange on second base,
and you can't tell the difference standing at the
home plate, Bob."
Emslie made no reply right then, but when the
eye test for umpires was established by Mr. Lynch,
the president of the League, "Bob" passed it at
the head of the list and then turned around and
went up to Chatham in Ontario, Canada, and made
a high score with the rifle in a shooting match up
there. After he had done that, he was umpiring
at the Polo Grounds one day.
176 Pitching in a Pinch
"Want to take me on for a shooting go, John?"
he asked McGraw as he passed him.
"No, Bob, you're all right. I give it to you,"
answered McGraw, who had long forgotten his
slur on Emslie's eyesight.
Emslie is the sort of umpire who rules by the
bond of good fellowship rather than by the
voice of authority. " Old Bob " has one " groove "
and it is a personal matter about which he is very
sensitive. He is under cover. It is no secret,
or I would not give way on him. But that
luxuriant growth of hair, apparent, comes off at
night like his collar and necktie. It used to be
quite the fad in the League to "josh" "Bob"
about his wig, but that pastime has sort of died
out now because he has proven himself to be such
a good fellow.
I had to laugh to myself, and not boisterously,
in the season of 1911 when Mr. Lynch appointed
"Jack" Doyle, formerly a first baseman and a
hot-headed player, an umpire and scheduled him
to work with Emslie. I remembered the time
several seasons ago when Doyle took offence at
one of "Bob's" decisions and wrestled him all
over the infield trying to get his wig off and show
Umpires and Close Decisions 177
him up before the crowd. And then Emslie and
he worked together like Damon and Pythias.
This business makes strange bed-fellows.
Emslie was umpiring in New York one day
in the season of 1909, when the Giants were play-
ing St. Louis. A wild pitch hit Emslie over the
heart and he wilted down, unconscious. The
players gathered around him, and Bresnahan,
who was catching for St. Louis at the time,
started to help "Bob." Suddenly the old umpire
came to and began to fight off his first-aid-to-the-
injured corps. No one could understand his
attitude as he struggled to his feet and strolled
away by himself, staggering a little and apparently
dizzy. At last he came back and gamely finished
the business of the day. I never knew why he
fought with the men who were trying to help
him until several weeks later, when we were
playing in Pittsburg. As I came out from under
the stand on my way to the bench, Emslie hap-
pened to be making his entrance at the same
time.
"Say, Matty," he asked me, "that time in
New York did my wig come off? Did Bresnahan
take my wig off?"
178 Pitching in a Pinch
"No, Bob," I replied, "he was only trying to
help you."
"I thought maybe he took it off while I was
down and out and showed me up before the
crowd," he apologized.
"Listen, Bob," I said. "I don't believe there
is a player in either League who would do that,
and, if any youngster tried it now, he would
probably be licked."
"I 'm glad to hear you say that, Matty,"
answered the old man, as he picked up his wind
pad and prepared to go to work. And he called
more bad ones on me that day than he ever had
in his life before, but I never mentioned the wig
to liim.
Most umpires declare they have off days just
like players, when they know that they are
making mistakes and cannot help it. If a pitcher
of Mordecai Brown's kind, who depends largely on
his control for his effectiveness, happens to run
up against an umpire with a bad day, he might
just as well go back to the bench. Brown is a
great man to work the corners of the plate,
and if the umpire is missing strikes, he is forced
to lay the ball over and then the batters whang it
Umpires and Close Decisions 179
out. Johnstone had an off day in Chicago in
1911, when Brown was working.
"What's the use of my tryin' to pitch, Jim,"
said Brown, throwing down his glove and walking
to the bench disgusted, "if you don't know a
strike when you see one?"
Sometimes an umpire who has been good
will go into a long slump when he cannot call
things right and knows it. Men like that get as
discouraged as a pitcher who goes bad. There
used to be one in the National League who was a
pretty fair umpire when he started and seemed
to be getting along fine until he hit one of those
slumps. Then he began calling everything wrong
and knew it. At last he quit, and the next time
I saw him was in Philadelphia in the 1911 world's
series. He was a policeman.
"Hello, Matty," he shouted at me as we were
going into Shibe Park for the first game there.
"I can call you by your first name now," and he
waved his hand real friendly. The last conver-
sation I had with that fellow, unless my recollec-
tion fails me entirely, was anything but friendly.
Umpires have told me that sometimes they see
a play one way and call it another, and, as soon
i8o Pitching in a Pinch
as the decision is announced, they realize that
they have called it wrong. This malady has
put more than one umpire out. A man on the
National League staff has informed me since,
that he called a hit fair that was palpably two
feet foul in one of the most important games
ever played in baseball, when he saw the ball
strike on foul ground.
"I couldn't help saying 'Fair ball,'" declared
this man, and he is one of the best in the National
League. "Luckily," he added, "the team against
which the decision went won the game."
Many players assert that arbiters hold a
personal grudge against certain men who have
put up too strenuous kicks, and for that reason
the wise ones are careful how they talk to umpires
of this sort. Fred Tenney has said for a long time
that Mr. Klem gives him a shade the worst of it
on all close ones because he had a run in with that
umpire one day when they came to blows. Tenney
is a great man to pick out the good ones when at
the bat, and Fred says that if he is up with a
three and two count on him now, Klem is likely
to call the next one a strike if it is close, not
because he is dishonest, but because he has a
Umpires and Close Decisions 181
certain personal prejudice which he cannot over-
come. And the funny part about it is that
Tenney does not hold this up against Klem.
Humorous incidents are always occurring in con-
nection with umpires. We were playing in Boston
one day a few years ago, and the score was 3 to o
against the Giants in the ninth inning. Becker
knocked a home run with two men on the bases, and
it tied the count. With men on first and third bases
and one out in the last half of the ninth, a Boston
batter tapped one to Merkle which I thought he
trapped, but Johnstone, the umpire, said he caught
it on the fly. It was simplicity itself to double
the runner up off first base who also thought
Merkle had trapped the ball and had started for
second. That retired the side, and we won the
game in the twelfth inning, whereas Boston would
have taken it in the ninth if Johnstone had said
the ball was trapped instead of caught on the fly.
It was a very hot day, and those extra three
innings in the box knocked me out. I was sick
for a week with stomach trouble afterwards and
could not pitch in Chicago, where we made our
next stop. That was a case of where a decision
in my favor "made me sick."
1 82 Pitching in a Pinch
"Tim" Hurst, the old American League umpire,
was one of the most picturesque judges that ever
spun an indicator. He was the sort who would
take a player at his word and fight him blow for
blow. "Tim" was umpiring in Baltimore in
the old days when there was a runner on first base.
"The man started to steal," says "Tim."
He was telling the story only the other day in
McGraw's billiard room in New York, and it is bet-
ter every time he does it. "As he left the bag he
spiked the first baseman and that player attempted
to trip him. The second baseman blocked the
runner and, in sliding into the bag, the latter
tried to spike 'Hugh* Jennings, who was playing
shortstop and covering, while Jennings sat on
him to knock the wind out. The batter hit
Robinson, who was catching, on the hands with
his bat so that he couldn't throw, and 'Robbie'
trod on my toes with his spikes and shoved
his glove into my face so that I could n't see to
give the decision. It was one of the hardest
that I have ever been called upon to make."
"What did you do?" I asked him.
"I punched 'Robbie' in the ribs, called it a
foul and sent the runner back," replied "Tim."
IX
The Game that Cost a Pennant
The Championship of the National League was De-
cided in 1908 in One Game between the Giants
and Cubs Few Fans Know that it Was Mr.
Brush who Induced the Disgruntled New York
Players to Meet Chicago This is the "Inside"
Story of the Famous Game, Including "Fred"
Merkle's Part in the Series of Events which Led
up to it.
HTHE New York Giants and the Chicago Cubs
* played a game at the Polo Grounds on
October 8, 1908, which decided the championship
of the National League in one afternoon, which
was responsible for the deaths of two spectators,
who fell from the elevated railroad structure
overlooking the grounds, which made Fred
Merkle famous for not touching second, which
caused lifelong friends to become bitter enemies,
183
184 Pitching in a Pinch
and which, altogether, was the most dramatic
and important contest in the history of baseball.
It stands out from every-day events like the
battle of Waterloo and the assassination of
President Lincoln. It was a baseball tragedy
from a New York point of view. The Cubs
won by the score of 4 to 2.
Behind this game is some "inside" history that
has never been written. Few persons, outside of
the members of the New York club, know that it
was only after a great deal of consultation the game
was finally played, only after the urging of John
T. Brush, the president of the club. The Giants
were risking, in one afternoon, their chances of
winning the pennant and the world's series
the concentration of their hopes of a season
because the Cubs claimed the right on a technical-
ity to play this one game for the championship.
Many members of the New York club felt that
it would be fighting for what they had already
won, as did their supporters. This made bad
feeling between the teams and between the spec-
tators, until the whole dramatic situation leading
up to the famous game culminated in the climax
of that afternoon. The nerves of the players
The Game that Cost a Pennant 185
were rasped raw with the strain, and the town
wore a fringe of nervous prostration. It all
burst forth in the game.
Among other things, Frank Chance, the manager
of the Cubs, had a cartilage in his neck broken
when some rooter hit him with a handy pop
bottle, several spectators hurt one another when
they switched from conversational to fistic ar-
guments, large portions of the fence at the Polo
Grounds were broken down by patrons who insisted
on gaining entrance, and most of the police of
New York were present to keep order. They had
their clubs unlimbered, too, acting more as if on
strike duty than restraining the spectators at
a pleasure park. Last of all, that night, after we
had lost the game, the report filtered through
New York that Fred Merkle, then a youngster
and around whom the whole situation revolved,
had committed suicide. Of course it was not true,
for Merkle is one of the gamest ball-players that
ever lived.
My part in the game was small. I started to
pitch and I didn't finish. The Cubs beat me
because I never had less on the ball in my life.
What I can't understand to this day is why it
i86 Pitching in a Pinch
took them so long to hit me. Frequently it has
been said that "Cy" Seymour started the Cubs
on their victorious way and lost the game, because
he misjudged a long hit jostled to centre field
by "Joe" Tinker at the beginning of the third
inning, in which chapter they made four runs.
The hit went for three bases.
Seymour, playing centre field, had a bad back-
ground against which to judge fly balls that after-
noon, facing the shadows of the towering stand,
with the uncertain horizon formed by persons
perched on the roof. A baseball writer has said
that, when Tinker came to the bat in that fatal
inning, I turned in the box and motioned Sey-
mour back, and instead of obeying instructions
he crept a few steps closer to the infield. I don't
recall giving any advice to "Cy, "as he knew the
Chicago batters as well as I did and how to play
for them.
Tinker, with his long bat, swung on a ball
intended to be a low curve over the outside
corner of the plate, but it failed to break well.
He pushed out a high fly to centre field, and I
turned with the ball to see Seymour take a couple
of steps toward the diamond, evidently thinking
The Game that Cost a Pennant 187
it would drop somewhere behind second base.
He appeared to be uncertain in his judgment
of the hit until he suddenly turned and started
to run back. That must have been when the ball
cleared the roof of the stand and was visible above
the sky line. He ran wildly. Once he turned,
and then ran on again, at last sticking up his
hands and having the ball fall just beyond them.
He chased it and picked it up, but Tinker had
reached third base by that time. If he had let
the ball roll into the crowd in centre field, the
Cub could have made only two bases on the hit,
according to the ground rules. That was a mis-
take, but it made little difference in the end.
All the players, both the Cubs and the Giants,
were under a terrific strain that day, and Seymour,
in his anxiety to be sure to catch the ball, mis-
judged it. Did you ever stand out in the field at
a ball park with thirty thousand crazy, shouting
fans looking at you and watch a ball climb and
climb into the air and have to make up your mind
exactly where it is going to land and then have to
be there, when it arrived, to greet it, realizing all
the time that if you are not there you are going to
be everlastingly roasted? It is no cure for ner-
1 88 Pitching in a Pinch
vous diseases, that situation. Probably forty-
nine times out of fifty Seymour would have caught
the fly.
"I misjudged that ball," said "Cy" to me in
the clubhouse after the game. "I'll take the
blame for it."
He accepted all the abuse the newspapers
handed him without a murmur and I don't think
myself that it was more than an incident in the
game. 1 11 try to show later in this story where
the real "break" came.
Just one mistake, made by "Fred" Merkle,
resulted in this play-off game. Several newspaper
men have called September 23, 1908, "Merkle
Day," because it was on that day he ran to the
clubhouse from first base instead of by way of
second, when "Al" Bridwell whacked out the hit
that apparently won the game from the Cubs.
Any other player on the team would have undoubt-
edly done the same thing under the circumstances,
as the custom had been in vogue all around the
circuit during the season. It was simply Fred
Merkle's misfortune to have been on first base
at the critical moment. The situation which
gave rise to the incident is well known to every
The Game that Cost a Pennant 189
follower of baseball. Merkle, as a pinch hitter,
had singled with two out in the ninth inning
and the score tied, sending McCormick from first
base to third. "Al" Bridwell came up to the
bat and smashed a single to centre field. Mc-
Cormick crossed the plate, and that, according
to the customs of the League, ended the game,
so Merkle dug for the clubhouse. Evers and
Tinker ran through the crowd which had flocked
on the field and got the ball, touching second
and claiming that Merkle had been forced out
there.
Most of the spectators did not understand the
play, as Merkle was under the shower bath
when the alleged put-out was made, but they
started after "Hank" O'Day, the umpire, to be
on the safe side. He made a speedy departure
under the grand-stand and the crowd got the
put-out unassisted. Finally, while somewhere
near Coogan's Bluff, he called Merkle out and the
score a tie. When the boys heard this in the
clubhouse, they laughed, for it did n't seem like
a situation to be taken seriously. But it turned
out to be one of those things that the farther it
goes the more serious it becomes.
190 Pitching in a Pinch
"Connie" Mack, the manager of the Athletics,
says:
"There is no luck in Big League baseball.
In a schedule of one hundred and fifty-four games,
the lucky and unlucky plays break about even,
except in the matter of injuries."
But Mack's theory does not include a schedule
of one hundred and fifty-five games, with the
result depending on the one hundred and fifty-
fifth. Chicago had a lot of injured athletes early
in the season of 1908, and the Giants had shot out
ahead in the race in grand style. In the meantime
the Cubs' cripples began to recuperate, and that
lamentable event on September 23 seemed to be
the turning-point in the Giants' fortunes.
Almost within a week afterwards, Bresnahan
had an attack of sciatic rheumatism and "Mike"
Donlin was limping about the outfield, leading a
great case of "Charley horse." Tenney was band-
aged from his waist down and should have been
wearing crutches instead of playing first base on
a Big League club. Doyle was badly spiked
and in the hospital. McGraw's daily greeting
to his athletes when he came to the park
was:
The Game that Cost a Pennant 191
"How are the cripples? Any more to add to
the list of identified dead to-day? "
Merkle moped. He lost flesh, and time after
time begged McGraw to send him to a minor
league or to turn him loose altogether.
" It was n't your fault," \ras the regular response
of the manager who makes it a habit to stand by
his men.
We played on with the cripples, many double-
headers costing the pitchers extra effort, and Mc-
Graw not daring to take a chance on losing a game
if there were any opportunity to win it. He
could not rest any of his men. Merkle lost weight
and seldom spoke to the other players as the Cubs
crept up on us day after day and more men were
hurt. He felt that he was responsible for this
change in the luck of the club. None of the
players felt this way toward him, and many tried
to cheer him up, but he was inconsolable. The team
went over to Philadelphia, and Coveleski, the
pitcher we later drove out of the League, beat us
three times, winning the last game by the scantiest
of margins. The result of that series left us three
to play with Boston to tie the Cubs if they won
from Pittsburg the next day, Sunday. If the
192 Pitching in a Pinch
Pirates had taken that Sunday game, it would
have given them the pennant. We returned to
New York on Saturday night very much down-
hearted.
"Lose me. I 'm the jinx," Merkle begged
McGraw that night.
"You stick," replied the manager.
While we had been losing, the Cubs had been
coming fast. It seemed as if they could not drop
a game. At last Cincinnati beat them one,
which was the only thing that made the famous
season tie possible. There is an interesting
anecdote connected with that Cincinnati contest
which goes to prove the honesty of baseball.
Two of the closest friends in the game are "Hans"
Lobert, then with the Reds, and Overall, the
former Chicago pitcher. It looked as if Chicago
had the important game won up to the ninth
inning when Lobert came to the bat with two men
out and two on the bases. Here he had a chance
to overcome the lead of one run which the Cubs
had gained, and win the contest for the home club,
but he would beat his best friend and maybe
put the Cubs out of the running for the pennant.
Lobert had two balls and two strikes when he
The Game that Cost a Pennant 193
smashed the next pitch to center field, scoring
both the base runners. The hit came near
beating the Cubs out of the championship.
It would have if we had taken one of those close
games against Philadelphia. Lobert was broken-
hearted over his hit, for he wanted the Cubs to
win. On his way to the clubhouse, he walked
with Overall, the two striding side by side like a
couple of mourners.
"I'm sorry, 'Orvie,' " said Lobert. "I would
not have made that hit for my year's salary
if I could have helped it."
"That f s all right, 'Hans,'" returned Overall.
"It 's all part of the game."
Next came the famous game in Chicago on
Sunday between the Cubs and the Pittsburg
Pirates, when a victory for the latter club would
have meant the pennant and the big game would
never have been played. Ten thousand persons
crowded into the Polo Grounds that Sunday
afternoon and watched a little electric score
board which showed the plays as made in Chicago.
For the first time in my life I heard a New York
crowd cheering the Cubs with great fervor, for
on their victory hung our only chances of ultimate
194 Pitching in a Pinch
success. The same man who was shouting himself
hoarse for the Cubs that afternoon was for taking
a vote on the desirability of poisoning the whole
Chicago team on the following Thursday. Even
the New York players were rooting for the Cubs.
The Chicago team at last won the game when
Clarke was called out at third base on a close
play, late in the contest. With the decision, the
Pirates' last chance went glimmering. The
Giants now had three games to win from Boston
on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, to make the
deciding game on Thursday necessary. We won
those, and the stage was cleared for the big number.
The National Commission gave the New York
club the option of playing three games out of five
for the championship or risking it all on one
contest. As more than half of the club was
tottering on the brink of the hospital, it was
decided that all hope should be hung on one game.
By this time, Merkle had lost twenty pounds,
and his eyes were hollow and his cheeks sunken.
The newspapers showed him no mercy, and the
fans never failed to criticise and hiss him when he
appeared on the field. He stuck to it and showed
up in the ball park every day, putting on his
The Game that Cost a Pennant 195
uniform and practising. It was a game thing to
do. A lot of men, under the same fire, would have
quit cold. McGraw was with him all the way.
But it was not until after considerable discussion
that it was decided to play that game. All the men
felt disgruntled because they believed they would
be playing for something they had already won.
Even McGraw was so wrought up, he said in the
clubhouse the night before the game:
"I don't care whether you fellows play this
game or not. You can take a vote."
A vote was taken, and the players were not
unanimous, some protesting it ought to be put
up to the League directors so that, if they wanted
to rob the team of a pennant, they would have
to take the blame. Others insisted it would look
like quitting, and it was finally decided to appoint
a committee to call upon Mr. Brush, the president
of the club, who was ill in bed in the Lambs club
at the time. Devlin, Bresnahan, Donlin, Tenney,
and I were on that committee.
"Mr. Brush," I said to my employer, having
been appointed the spokesman, "McGraw has
left it up to us to decide whether we shall meet
the Chicago team for the championship of the
196 Pitching in a Pinch
National League to-morrow. A lot of the boys
do not believe we ought to be forced to play over
again for something we have already won, so
the players have appointed this committee of
five to consult with you and get your opinion on
the subject. What we decide goes with them."
Mr. Brush looked surprised. I was nervous,
more so than when I ana in the box with three on
the bases and "Joe" Tinker at the bat. Bres-
nahan fumbled with his hat, and Devlin coughed.
Tenney leaned more heavily on his cane, and
Donlin blew his nose. We five big athletes
were embarrassed in the presence of this sick man.
Suddenly it struck us all at the same time that
the game would have to be played to keep ourselves
square with our own ideas of courage. Even
if the Cubs had claimed it on a technicality,
even if we had really won the pennant once,
that game had to be played now. We all saw
that, and it was this thin, ill man in bed who
made us see it even before he had said a word.
It was the expression on his face. It seemed to
say, "And I had confidence in you, boys, to do
the right thing."
"I'm going to leave it to you," he answered.
The Game that Cost a Pennant 197
"You boys can play the game or put it up to the
directors of the League to decide as you want.
But I should n't think you would stop now after
making all this fight."
The committee called an executive session,
and we all thought of the crowd of fans looking
forward to the game and of what the newspapers
would say if we refused to play it and of Mr. Brush
lying there, the man who wanted us to play,
and it was rapidly and unanimously decided
to imitate "Steve" Brodie and take a chance.
"We '11 play," I said to Mr. Brush.
"I'm glad," he answered. "And, say, boys,"
he added, as we started to file out, "I want to
tell you something. Win or lose, I 'm going to
give the players a bonus of $10,000."
That night was a wild one in New York. The
air crackled with excitement and baseball. I
went home, but could n't sleep for I live near the
Polo Grounds, and the crowd began to gather there
early in the evening of the day before the game
to be ready for the opening of the gates the next
morning. They tooted horns all night, and were
never still. When I reported at the ball park,
the gates had been closed by order of the National
198 Pitching in a Pinch
Commission, but the streets for blocks around the
Polo Grounds were jammed with persons fighting
to get to the entrances.
The players in the clubhouse had little to say
to one another, but, after the bandages were
adjusted, McGraw called his men around him
and said:
"Chance will probably pitch Pfiester or Brown.
If Pfiester works there is no use trying to steal.
He won't give you any lead. The right-handed
batters ought to wait him out and the left-handers
hit him when he gets in a hole. Matty is going
to pitch for us."
Pfiester is a left-hand pitcher who watches the
bases closely.
Merkle had reported at the clubhouse as
usual and had put on his uniform. He hung on
the edge of the group as McGraw spoke, and
then we all went to the field. It was hard for us
to play that game with the crowd which was there,
but harder for the Cubs. In one place, the fence
was broken down, and some employees were
playing a stream of water from a fire hose on the
cavity to keep the crowd back. Many preferred
a ducking to missing the game and ran through
The Game that Cost a Pennant 199
the stream to the lines around the field. A string
of fans recklessly straddled the roof of the old
grand-stand.
Every once in a while some group would break
through the restraining ropes and scurry across
the diamond to what appeared to be a better
point of vantage. This would let a throng loose
which hurried one way and another and mixed
in with the players. More police had to be
summoned. As I watched that half -wild multi-
tude before the contest, I could think of three or
four things I would rather do than umpire the game.
I had rested my arm four days, not having
pitched in the Boston series, and I felt that it
should be in pretty good condition. Before that
respite, I had been in nine out of fifteen games.
But as I started to warm up, the ball refused to
break. I. could n't get anything on it.
"What 's the matter, Rog?" I asked Bresnahan.
"They won't break for me."
"It '11 come as you start to work," he replied,
although I could see that he, too, was worried.
John M. Ward, the old ball-player and now one
of the owners of the Boston National League club,
has told me since that, after working almost every
200 Pitching in a Finch
day as I had been doing, it does a pitcher's arm no
good to lay off for three or four days. Only a
week or ten days will accomplish any results. It
would have been better for me to continue to
work as often as I had been doing, for the short
rest only seemed to deaden my arm.
The crowd that day was inflammable. The
players caught this incendiary spirit. McGinnity,
batting out to our infield in practice, insisted on
driving Chance away from the plate before the
Cubs' leader thought his team had had its full
share of the batting rehearsal. "Joe" shoved
him a little, and in a minute fists were flying,
although Chance and McGinnity are very good
friends off the field.
Fights immediately started all around in the
stands. I remember seeing two men roll from
the top to the bottom of the right-field bleachers,
over the heads of the rest of the spectators.
And they were yanked to their feet and run out
of the park by the police.
"Too bad," I said to Bresnahan, nodding my
head toward the departing belligerents, "they
couldn't have waited until they saw the game,
anyway. I '11 bet they stood outside the park
The Game that Cost a Pennant 201
all night to get in, only to be run out before it
started."
I forgot the crowd, forgot the fights, and did n't
hear the howling after the game started. I
knew only one thing, and that was my curved ball
would n't break for me. It surprised me that
the Cubs did n't hit it far, right away, but two of
them fanned in the first inning and Herzog threw
out Evers. Then came our first time at bat.
Pfiester was plainly nervous and hit Tenney.
Herzog walked and Bresnahan fanned out, Herzog
being doubled up at second because he tried to
advance on a short passed ball. "Mike" Donlin
whisked a double to right field and Tenney
counted.
For the first time in almost a month, Merkle
smiled. He was drawn up in the corner of the
bench, pulling away from the rest of us as if he
had some contagious disease and was quarantined.
For a minute it looked as if we had them going.
Chance yanked Pfiester out of the box with him
protesting that he had been robbed on the decisions
on balls and strikes. Brown was brought into
the game and fanned Devlin. That ended the
inning.
2O2 Pitching in a Pinch
We never had a chance against Brown. His
curve was breaking sharply, and his control was
microscopic. We went back to the field in the
second with that one run lead. Chance made
the first hit of the game off me in the second,
but I caught him sleeping at first base, according
to Klem's decision. There was a kick, and Hofman,
joining in the chorus of protests, was sent to the
clubhouse.
Tinker started the third with that memorable
triple which gave the Cubs their chance. I
couldn't make my curve break. I didn't have
anything on the ball.
"Rog," I said to Bresnahan, "I haven't got
anything to-day."
"Keep at it, Matty," he replied. "We '11 get
them all right."
I looked in at the bench, and McGraw signalled
me to go on pitching. Kling singled and scored
Tinker. Brown sacrificed, sending Kling to
second, and Sheckard flied out to Seymour, Kling
being held on second base. I lost Evers, because I
was afraid to put the ball over the plate for him,
and he walked. Two were out now, and we had
yet a chance to win the game as the score was
The Game that Cost a Pennant 203
only tied. But Schulte doubled, and Kling scored,
leaving men on second and third bases. Still
we had a Mongolian's chance with them only one
run ahead of us. Frank Chance, with his under jaw
set like the fender on a trolley car, caught a curved
ball over the inside corner of the plate and pushed
it to right field for two bases. That was the
most remarkable batting performance I have
ever witnessed since I have been in the Big Leagues.
A right-handed hitter naturally slaps a ball over
the outside edge of the plate to right field, but
Chance pushed this one, on the inside, with the
handle of his bat, just over Tenney's hands
and on into the crowd. The hit scored Evers and
Schulte and dissolved the game right there.
It was the "break." Steinfeldt fanned.
None of the players spoke to one another as
they went to the bench. Even McGraw was
silent. We knew it was gone. Merkle was drawn
up behind the water cooler. Once he said:
"It was my fault, boys."
No one answered him. Inning after inning,
our batters were mowed down by the great pitching
of Brown, who was never better. His control
of his curved ball was marvellous, and he had all
204 Pitching in a Pinch
his speed. As the innings dragged by, the spec-
tators lost heart, and the cowbells ceased to jingle,
and the cheering lost its resonant ring. It was
now a surly growl.
Then the seventh! We had our one glimmer of
sunshine. Devlin started with a single to centre,
and McCormick shoved a drive to right field.
Recalling that Bridwell was more or less of a
pinch hitter, Brown passed him purposely and
Doyle was sent to the bat in my place. As he
hobbled to the plate on his weak foot, said McGraw:
"Hit one, Larry."
The crowd broke into cheers again and was
stamping its feet. The bases were full, and no
one was out. Then Doyle popped up a weak
foul behind the catcher. His batting eye was dim
and rusty through long disuse. Kling went
back for it, and some one threw a pop bottle
which narrowly missed him, and another scaled
a cushion. But Kling kept on and got what he
went after, which was the ball. He has a habit
of doing that. Tenney flied to Schulte, counting
Devlin on the catch, and Tinker threw out Herzog.
The game was gone. Never again did we have a
chance.
The Game that Cost a Pennant 205
It was a glum lot of players in the clubhouse.
Merkle came up to McGraw and said:
"Mac, I 've lost you one penant. Fire me
before I can do any more harm."
"Fire you?" replied McGraw. "We ran the
wrong way of the track to-day. That 's all.
Next year is another season, and do you think
I 'm going to let you go after the gameness you Ve
shown through all this abuse? Why you 're the
kind of a guy I 've been lookin' for many years.
I could use a carload like you. Forget this
season and come around next spring. The news-
papers will have forgotten it all then. Good-by,
boys." And he slipped out of the clubhouse.
"He 's a regular guy," said Merkle.
Merkle has lived down that failure to touch
second and proved himself to be one of the gamest
players that ever stood in a diamond. Many
times since has he vindicated himself. He is a
great first baseman now, and McGraw and he are
close friends. That is the "inside" story of the
most important game ever played in baseball
and Merkle's connection with it.
When the Teams Are in Spring Training
The Hardships of the Preliminary Practice in Limbering
up Muscles and, Reducing Weight for the Big Cam-
paign How a Ball Club is Whipped into Playing
Shape Trips to the South Not the Picnics they Seem to
Be The Battle of the Bushers to Stay in the Big
Show Making a Pitcher Some Fun on the Side,
including the Adventure of the Turkish Bath.
OPRING training! The words probably re-
^ mind the reader of the sunny South and light
exercise and good food and rubs and other luxuries,
but the reader perhaps has never been with a Big
League ball club when it is getting ready to go
into a six months' campaign.
All I can ever remember after a training trip
is taking off and putting on a uniform, and running
around the ball park under the inspiration of
John McGraw, and he is some inspirer.
206
Teams in Spring Training 207
The heavier a man gets through the winter,
the harder the routine work is for him, and a few
years ago I almost broke down and cried out of
sympathy for Otis Crandall, who arrived in camp
very corpulent.
"What have you been doing this winter, Otie?"
McGraw asked him after shaking hands in greet-
ing, "appearing with a show as the stout lady?
You '11 have to take a lot of that off. "
"Taking it off" meant running several miles
every day so bundled up that the Indiana agri-
culturist looked like the pictures published of
"Old Doc" Cook which showed him discovering
the north pole. Ever since, CrandalTs spring
training, like charity, has begun at home, and he
takes exercise night and morning throughout the
winter, so that when he comes into camp his weight
will be somewhere near normal. In 1911 he had
the best year of his career. He is the type of man
who cannot afford to carry too much weight. He
is stronger when he is slimmer.
In contrast to him is George Wiltse, who maps
out a training course with the idea of adding several
pounds, as he is better with all the real weight he
can put on. By that I do not mean any fat.
208 Pitching in a Pinch
George came whirling and spinning and waltzing
and turkey-trotting and pirouetting across the
field at Marlin Springs, Texas, the Giants' spring
training headquarters, one day in the spring of
1911, developing steps that would have ruled him
off any cotillion floor in New York in the days of
the ban on the grizzly bear and kindred dances.
Suddenly he dove down with his left hand and
reached as far as he could.
"What's that one, George?" I yelled as he
passed me.
"Getting ready to cover first base on a slow
hit, Matty," he replied, and was off on another
series of hand springs that made him look more like
a contortionist rehearsing for an act which he was
going to take out for the "big time" than a ball-
player getting ready for the season.
But perhaps some close followers of baseball
statistics will recall a game that Wiltse took from
the Cubs in 1911 by a wonderful one-hand reaching
catch of a low throw to first base. Two Chicago
runners were on the bags at the time and the loss
of that throw would have meant that they both
scored. Wiltse caught the ball, and it made the
third out, and the Giants won the game. Thou-
Teams in Spring Training 209
sands of fans applauded the catch, but the play
was not the result of the exigencies of the moment.
It was the outcome of forethought used months
before.
Spectators at ball games who wonder at the
marvellous fielding of Wiltse should watch him
getting ready during the spring season at Marlin.
He is a tireless worker, and when he is not pitching
he is doing hand springs and other acrobatic
acts to limber up all his muscles. It is torture
then, but it pays in the end.
When I was a young fellow and read about the
Big League clubs going South, I used to think
what a grand life that must be. Riding in Pullmans,
some pleasant exercise which did not entail the
responsibility of a ball game, and plenty of food,
with a little social recreation, were all parts of my
dream. A young ball-player looks on his first
spring training trip as a stage-struck young woman
regards the theatre. She cannot wait for her
first rehearsal, and she thinks only of the lobster
suppers and the applause and the lights and the
life, but nowhere in her dream is there a place for
the raucous voice of the stage manager and the
long jumps of "one night stands" with the
210 Pitching in a Pinch
loss of sleep and the poor meals and the cold
dressing rooms. As actors begin to dread the
drudgery of rehearsing, so do baseball men detest
the drill of the spring training. The only thing
that I can think of right away which is more
tiresome and less interesting is signal practice
with a college football team.
About the time that the sap starts up in the
trees and the young man's fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love and baseball, the big trek starts.
Five hundred ball-players, attached more or less
firmly to sixteen major league clubs, spread them-
selves out over the southern part of the United
States, from Florida to California, and begin to
prepare for the campaign that is to furnish the
answer to that annual question, "Which is the
best baseball club in the world?"
In the case of the Giants, McGraw, with a flock
of youngsters, has already arrived when the older
men begin to drift into camp. The youngsters,
who have come from the bushes and realize
that this is their one big chance to make good,
to be a success or a failure in their chosen profes-
sion in short, to become a Big Leaguer or go
back to the bushes for good have already been
Teams in Spring Training 211
working for ten days and are in fair shape. They
stare at the regulars as the veterans straggle in
by twos and threes, and McGraw has a brief
greeting for each. He could use a rubber stamp.
"How are you, Matty? What kind of shape
are you in? Let 's see you in a uniform at nine
o'clock to-morrow morning. "
When I first start South, for the spring trip,
after shivering through a New York winter, I
arouse myself to some enthusiasm over the
prospect, but all this has evaporated after listen-
ing to that terse speech from McGraw, for I
know what it means. Nothing looms on the hori-
zon but the hardest five weeks' grind in the world.
The next day the practice begins, and for the
first time in five months, a uniform is donned. I
usually start my work by limbering up slowly, and
on the first day I do not pitch at all. With several
other players, I help to form a large circle and the
time is spent in throwing the ball at impossible and
unreachable points in the anatomy. The man
next to you shoots one away up over your head
and the next one at your feet and off to the side
while he is looking at the third man from you.
This is great for limbering up, but the loosening
212 Pitching in a Pinch
is torture. After about fifteen minutes of that,
the winter-logged player goes over on the bench
and drops down exhausted. But does he stay
there? Not if McGraw sees him, and he is one
of the busiest watchers I have ever met.
"Here, Matty," he will shout, "lead this squad
three times around the park and be careful not
to cut the corners. "
By the time that little formality is finished, a
man's tongue is hanging out and he goes to get a
drink of water. The spring training is just one
darned drink after another and still the player is
always thirsty.
After three hours of practice, McGraw may say:
"All right, Matty. Go back to the hotel and
get a bath and a rub and cut it out for to-day. "
Or he may remark:
"You 're looking heavy this year. Better take
another little workout this afternoon. "
And so ends the first day. That night I flex
the muscles in my salary wing and wonder to
myself if it is going to be very sore. I get the
answer next day. And what always makes me
maddest is that the fans up North imagine that we
are having some kind of a picnic in Marlin Springs,
I
I
f *
s|
15
Teams in Spring Training 213
Texas. My idea of no setting for a pleasure party
is Marlin Springs, Texas.
The morning of the second day is always a
pleasant occasion. The muscles which have
remained idle so long begin to rebel at the un-
accustomed exercise, and the players are as pleasant
as a flock of full-grown grizzly bears. I would not
be a waiter for a ball club on a spring tour if they
offered me a contract with a salary as large as J. P.
Morgan's income.
Each year the winter kinks seem to have settled
into the muscles more permanently and are harder
to iron out. Of course, there comes a last time for
each one of us to go South, and every season I
think, on the morning of the second day, when I
try to work my muscles, that this one is my last.
The bushers lend variety to the life in a spring
camp. Many of them try hard to "horn in"
with the men who have made good as Big Leaguers.
When a young player really seems to want to know
something, any of the older men will gladly help
him, but the trouble with most of them is that
they think they are wonders when they arrive.
"How do you hold a curve?" a young fellow
asked me last spring.
214 Pitching in a Pinch
* I showed him.
" Do you think Hans Wagner is as good as Ty
Cobb?" he asked me next.
"Listen!" I answered. "Did you come down
here to learn to play ball or with the idea that you
are attending some sort of a conversational
soiree?"
Many recruits think that, if they can get
friendly with the veterans, they will be retained
on account of their social standing, and I cannot
"go" young ball-players who attempt to become
the bootblacks for the old ones.
I have seen many a youngster ruin himself, even
for playing in the minors, through his too vigorous
efforts to make good under the large tent. He
will come into camp, and the first day out put
everything he has on the ball to show the manager
"he 's got something. " The Giants had a young
pitcher with them in 1911, named Nagle, who tried
to pick up the pace, on the first day in camp,
at which he had left off on the closing day of the
previous year. He started to shoot the ball over
to the batters with big, sharp breaking curves
on it. He had not been South three days before
he developed a sore arm that required a sling to
Teams in Spring Training 215
help him carry it around, and he never was able
to twirl again before he was shunted back into the
lesser leagues.
But hope springs eternal in the breast of the
bush leaguer in the spring, and many a young
fellow, when he gets his send-off from the little,
old home town, with the local band playing at
the station, knows that the next time the populace
of that place hears of him,it will be through seeing
his name in the headlines of the New York papers.
And then along about the middle of April, he
comes sneaking back into the old burg, crest-
fallen and disappointed. There are a lot of humor
and some pathos in a spring training trip. Many
a busher I have seen go back who has tried hard
to make good and just could not, and I have felt
sorry for him. It is just like a man in any other
business getting a chance at a better job than the
one he is holding and not being big enough to fit
it. It is the one time that opportunity has knocked,
and most of the bush leaguers do not know the
combination to open the door, and, as has been
pointed out, opportunity was never charged with
picking locks. Many are called in the spring,
but few get past. Most of them are sincere young
216 Pitching in a Pinch
fellows, too, trying to make good, and I have
them work until their tongues were hanging out
and the perspiration was starting all over them,
only to hear McGraw say:
" I 'm sorry, but you will have to go back again.
I Ve let you out to Kankakee. "
"Steve" Evans, who now plays right field on
the St. Louis club, was South with the Giants
one season and worked hard to stick. But Mc-
Graw had a lot of young out-fielders, and some
minor league magnate from Montreal came into
camp one day who liked "Steve's" action. Mc-
Graw started for the outfield where Evans was
chasing flies and tried to get to "Steve," but
every time the manager approached him with the
minor league man, Evans would rush for a ball
on another corner of the field, and he became sud-
denly hard of hearing. Finally McGraw abandoned
the chase and let another out-fielder go to Montreal,
retaining Evans.
"Say, 'Steve,'" said "Mac," that night,
"why did n't you come, when I called you out on
the field there this afternoon?"
"Because I could hear the rattle of the tin can
you wanted to tie to me, all over the lot," replied
Teams in Spring Training 217
Evans. And eventually, by that subtle dodging,
he landed in the Big League under Bresnahan and
has made good out there.
I believe that a pitcher by profession has the
hardest time of any of the specialists who go into
a spring camp. His work is of a more routine
nature than that which attaches to any of the
other branches of the baseball art. It is nothing
but a steady grind.
The pitcher goes out each morning and gets a
catcher with a big mitt and a loud voice and, with
a couple of his fellow artists, starts to warm up
with this slave-driver. The right sort of a catcher
for spring rehearsing is never satisfied with any-
thing you do. I never try to throw a curve for
ten days at least after I get South, for a misplaced
curve early in the season may give a man a sore
arm for the greater part of the summer, and Big
League clubs are not paying pitchers for wearing
crippled whips.
After warming up for an hour or so, three or four
pitchers throw slow ones to a batter and try to get
the ball on the half bounce and compete as to the
number of fumbles. This is great for limbering
up.
2i 8 Pitching in a Pinch
Then comes the only real enjoyment of the day.
It is quick in passing, like a piece of great scenery
viewed out of the window of a railroad coach
going sixty miles an hour. Each afternoon the
regulars play the Yannigans (the spring name
of the second team) a game of six innings, and each
pitcher has a chance to work about one inning.
The batters are away off form and are missing the
old round-house curve by two feet that they would
hit out of the lot in mid-season. This makes you
think for a few minutes that you are a good pitcher.
But there is even a drawback to this brief bit of
enjoyment, for the diamond at Marlin is skinned
that is, made of dirt, although it is billed as a
grass infield, and the ball gets "wingy. " Little
pieces of the cover are torn loose by contact with
the rough dirt, and it is not at all like the hard,
smooth, grass-stained ball that is prevalent around
the circuit in mid-season. Grass seed has been
planted on this infield, but so far, like a lot of
bushers, it has failed to make good its promises.
After that game comes the inevitable run around
the park which has been a headliner in spring
training ever since the institution was discovered.
A story is told of "Cap" Anson and his famous
Teams in Spring Training 219
old White Stockings.* According to the reports
I have heard, training with the "Cap" when he
was right was no bed of roses. After hours of
practice, he would lead the men in long runs, and
the better he felt, the longer the runs. One hot
day, so the story goes, Anson was toiling around
the park, with his usual determination, at the head
of a string of steaming, sweating players, when
" Bill " Dahlen, a clever man at rinding an opening,
discovered a loose board in the fence on the back
stretch, pulled it off, and dived through the hole.
On the next lap two more tired athletes followed
him, and at last the whole squad was on the other
side of the fence, watching their leader run on
tirelessly. But "Cap" must have missed the
"plunk, plunk" of the footsteps behind him, for
he looked around and saw that his players were
gone. He kept grimly on, alone, until he had
finished, and then he pushed his red face through
the hole in the fence and saw his men.
"Your turn now, boys," he said, and while
he sat in the grand-stand as the sole spectator, he
made that crowd of unfortunate athletes run
around the track twice as many times as he himself
had done.
220 Pitching in a Pinch
"Guess I won't have to nail up that hole in the
fence, boys," "Cap" remarked when it was all
over.
Speaking of the influence of catchers on pitchers
during the training trip, there is the well-known
case of Wilbert Robinson, the old catcher, and
"Rube" Marquard, the great left-handed pitcher
of the Giants. "Robbie" devoted himself almost
entirely in the spring of 1911 to the training of
the then erratic "Rube," and he handed back to
McGraw at the end of the rehearsal the man who
turned out to be the premier pitcher of his League,
according to the official figures, and figures are not
in the habit of lying.
"Robbie" used to take Marquard off into some
corner every day and talk to him for hours. Draw
up close, for I am going to tell you the secret of
how Marquard became a great pitcher and that,
too, at just about the time the papers were men-
tioning him as the "$i 1,000 lemon, " and imploring
McGraw to let him go to some club in exchange for
a good capable bat boy.
"Now 'Rube,'" would be "Robbie's" first line
in the daily lecture, "you Ve got to start on the
first ball to get the batter. Always have some-
Teams in Spring Training 221
thing on him and never let him have anything on
you. This is the prescription for a great pitcher. "
One of the worst habits of Marquard's early
days was to get a couple of strikes on a batter and
then let up until he got himself "into a hole"
and could not put the ball over. Robinson by his
coaching gave him the confidence he lacked.
"'Rube,' you've got a lot of stuff to-day,"
"Robbie" would advise, "but don't try to get it
all on the ball. Mix it with a little control, and
it will make a great blend. Now, this guy is a
high ball hitter. Let 's see you keep it low for
him. He waits, so you will have to get it over. "
And out there in the hot Texas sun, with much
advice and lots of patience, Wilbert Robinson was
manufacturing a great pitcher out of the raw
material. One of Marquard's worst faults, when
he first broke into the League, was that he did not
know the batters and their grooves, and these
weaknesses Robinson drilled into his head not
that a drill was required to insert the information.
Robinson was the coacher, umpire, catcher and
batter rolled into one, and as a result look at the
"Rube."
When Marquard began to wabble a little
222 Pitching in a Pinch
toward the end of 1911 and to show some of his
old shyness while the club was on its last tripJWest,
Robinson hurried on to Chicago and worked with
him for two days. The "Rube" had lost the
first game of the series to the Cubs, but he turned
around after Robinson joined us and beat them to
death in the last contest.
Pitchers, old and young, are always trying for
new curves in the spring practice, and out of the
South, wafted over the wires by the fertile imagi-
nations of the flotilla of correspondents, drift
tales each spring of the "fish" ball and the new
"hook" jump and the "stop" ball and many more
eccentric curves which usually boil down to modi-
fications of the old ones. I worked for two weeks
once on a new, slow, spit ball that would wabble,
but the trouble was that I could never tell just
when or where it was going to wabble, and so at
last I had to abandon it because I could not
control it.
After sending out fake stories of new and won-
derful curves for several years, at last the corre-
spondents got a new one when the spit ball was
first discovered by Stricklett, a Brooklyn pitcher,
several seasons ago. One Chicago correspondent
Teams in Spring Training 223
sent back to his paper a glowing tale of the wonder-
ful new curve called the "spit ball," which was
obtained by the use of saliva, only to get a wire
from his office which read:
"It 's all right to 'fake' about new curves, but
when it comes to being vulgar about it, that 's
going too far. Either drop that spit ball or mail
us your resignation. "
The paper refused to print the story and a real
new curve was born without its notice. As a
matter of fact, Bowerman, the old Giant catcher,
was throwing the spit ball for two or three years
before it was discovered to be a pitching asset.
He used to wet his fingers when catching, and as he
threw to second base the ball would take all
sorts of eccentric breaks which fooled the baseman,
and none could explain why it did it until Stricklett
came through with the spit ball.
Many good pitchers, who feel their arms begin
to weaken, work on certain freak motions or forms
of delivery to make themselves more effective or
draw out their baseball life in the Big Leagues for
a year or two. A story is told of "Matty"
Kilroy, a left-hander, who lived for two years
through the development of what he called the
224 Pitching in a Pinch
"Bazzazaz" balk, and it had the same effect on
his pitching as administering oxygen often has on
a patient who is almost dead.
"My old soup bone," says Kilroy, "was so
weak that I couldn't break a pane of glass at
fifty feet. So one winter I spent some time every
day out in the back yard getting that balk motion
down. I had a pretty fair balk motion when my
arm was good, but I saw that it had to be better,
so I put one stone in the yard for a home plate
and another up against the fence for first base.
Then I practised looking at the home plate stone
and throwing at first base with a snap of the wrist
and without moving my feet. It was stare steady
at the batter, then the arm up to about my ear,
and zip, with a twist of the wrist at first base, and
you 've got him!
" I got so I could throw 'em harder to the bag
with that wrist wriggle than I could to the batter,
and I had them stickin 'closer to the base for two
years than a sixteen-year-old fellow does to his gal
when they 've just decided they would do for each
other."
As a rule McGraw takes charge of the batters
and general team work at spring practice, and he is
Teams in Spring Training 225
one of the busiest little persons in seven counties,
for he says a lot depends on the start a club gets
in a league race. He always wants the first jump
because it is lots easier falling back than catching
up.
After a week or so of practice, the team is divided
up into two squads, and one goes to San Antonio
and the other to Houston each Saturday and
Sunday to play games. One of the older men takes
charge of the younger players, and there is a lot
of rivalry between the two teams to see which one
will make the better record, I remember one year
I was handling the youngsters, and we went to
Houston to play the team there and just managed
to nose out a victory. McGraw thought that for
the next Saturday he had better strengthen the
Yannigans up a bit, so he sent Roger Bresnahan
along to play third base instead of Henderson,
the young fellow we had the week before. Play-
ing third base could not exactly have been called
a habit with "Rog" at that time. He was still
pretty fat, and bending over quick after grounders
was not his regular line. He booted two or three
and finally managed to lose the game for us. We
sent McGraw the following telegram that night:
226 Pitching in a Pinch
"John McGraw, manager of the Giants, San
Antonio, Texas:
"Will trade Bresnahan for Henderson. Rush
answer. "
McGraw does not like to have any of his clubs
beaten by the minor leaguers, because the bushers
are inclined to imitate pouter pigeons right away
after beating the Big Leaguers.
The social side of a training trip consists of
kicking about the grub, singing songs at night,
and listening to the same old stories that creep
out of the bushes on crutches year after year.
Last spring the food got so bad that some of the
newspaper men fixed up a fake story they said
they were going to send to New York, displayed
it to the proprietor, and he came through with
beefsteak for three nights in succession, thus
establishing a record and proving the power of the
press. The trouble with the diet schedule on a
spring trip is that almost invariably those hotels
on the bush-league circuits serve dinner in the
middle of the day, just when a ball-player does not
feel like eating anything much. Then at night
they have a pick-up supper when one's stomach
feels as if it thought a fellow's throat had been cut.
Teams in Spring Training 227
The Giants had an umpire with them in the
spring of 1911, named Hansell, who enlivened
the long, weary, training season some. Like a lot
of the recruits who thought that they were great
ball-players, this Hansell firmly believed he was a
great umpire. He used to try to put players who
did not agree with his decisions out of the game
and, of course, they would not go.
"Why don't you have them arrested if they
won't leave?" McGraw asked him one day. "I
would. "
So the next afternoon Hansell had a couple of
the local constables out at the grounds and tried
to have Devore pinched for kicking on a decision.
" Josh " got sore and framed it up to have a camera
man at the park the next day to take a moving
picture of a mob scene, Hansell, the umpire, to be
the hero and mobbed. Hansell fell for it until he
saw all the boys picking up real clods and digging
the dirt out of their spikes, and then he made a
run for it and never came back. That is how we
lost a great umpire.
"You boys made it look too realistic for him, "
declared McGraw.
Hansell had a notion that he was a runner and
228 Pitching in a Pinch
offered to bet Robinson, who is rather corpulent
now, that he could beat him running across the
field. Robinson took him, and walked home ahead
of the umpire in the race.
"I don't see where I get off on this deal, " com-
plained McGraw when it was over. "I framed
up this race for you two fellows, and then Han-
sell comes to me and borrows the ten to pay
'Robbie.'"
Somebody fixed up a Turkish bath in the hotel
one day by stuffing up the cracks in one of the
bathrooms and turning the hot water into the tub
and the steam into the radiator full blast.
Several towels were piled on the radiator and
the players sat upon this swathed in blankets to
take off weight. They entered the impromptu
Turkish bath, wearing only the well-known smile.
McGraw still maintains that it was "Bugs"
Raymond who pulled out the towels when it came
the manager's turn to sit on the radiator, and, if
he could have proved his case, Raymond would not
have needed a doctor. It would have been time
for the undertaker.
Finally comes the long wending of the way up
North. "Bugs" Raymond always depends on his
Teams in Spring Training 229
friends for his refreshments, and as he had few
friends in Marlin in 1911, he got few drinks.
But when we got to Dallas cocktails were served
with the dinner and all the ball-players left them
untouched, McGraw enforcing the old rule that
lips that touch "licker" shall never moisten a spit
ball for him. "Bugs" was missed after supper
and some one found him out in the kitchen licking
up all the discarded Martinis. That was the
occasion of his first fine of the season, and after
that, as "Bugs" himself admitted, "life for him
was just one fine after another. "
At last, after the long junket through the South,
on which all managers are Simon Legrees, is
ended, comes a welcome day, when the new uni-
forms are donned and the band plays and "them
woids" which constitute the sweetest music to
the ears of a ball-player, roll off the tongue of
the umpire:
" The batteries for to-day are Rucker and Bergen
for Brooklyn, Marquard and Meyers for New
York. Play ball!"
The season is on.
XI
Jinxes and What They Mean to a
Ball-Player
A Load of Empty Barrels, Hired by John McGraw,
once Pulled the Giants out of a Losing Streak
The Child of Superstition Appears to the Batt-
Player in Many Forms Various Ways in which
the Influence of the Jinx can be Overcome The
True Story of "Charley " Faust The Necktie that
Helped Win a Pennant.
A FRIEND of mine, who took a different fork
** in the road when we left college from the
one that I have followed, was walking down
Broadway in New York with me one morning after
I had joined the Giants, and we passed a cross-eyed
man. I grabbed off my hat and spat in it. It was
a new 'hat, too. "What 's the matter with you,
Matty?" he asked, surprised.
"Spit in your hat quick and kill that jinx,"
230
Jinxes and What They Mean 231
I answered, not thinking for the minute, and he
followed my example.
I forgot to mention, when I said he took another
fork in the road, that he had become a pitcher,
too, but of a different kind. He had turned out to
be sort of a conversational pitcher, for he was a
minister, and, as luck would have it, on the morning
we met that cross-eyed man he was wearing a
silk hat. I was shocked, pained, and mortified
when I saw what I had made him do. But he
was the right sort, and wanted to go through with
the thing according to the standards of the pro-
fessional man with whom he happened to be at
the time.
"What 's the idea?" he asked as he replaced his
hat.
"Worst jinx in the world to see a cross-eyed
man, " I replied. "But I hope I did n't hurt your
silk hat, " I quickly apologized.
"Not at all. But how about these ball-players
who masticate the weed? Do they kill jinxes,
too?" he wanted to know. And I had to admit
that they were the main exterminators of the jinx.
"Then," he went on, "I 'm glad that the per-
centage of wearers of cross eyes is small. "
232 Pitching in a Pinch
I have just looked into one of my favorite works
for that word "jinx," and found it not. My
search was in Webster's dictionary. But any ball-
player can give a definition of it with his hands
tied behind him that is, any one except "Arlie"
Latham, and, with his hands bound, he is deaf and
dumb. A jinx is something which brings bad luck
to a ball-player, and the members of the profession
have built up a series of lucky and unlucky omens
that should be catalogued. And besides the com-
mon or garden variety of jinxes, many stars have a
series of private or pet and trained ones that are
more malignant in their forms than those which
come out in the open.
A jinx is the child of superstition, and ball-
players are among the most superstitious persons
in the world, notwithstanding all this conversation
lately about educated men breaking into the
game and paying no attention whatever to the
good and bad omens. College men are coming
into both the leagues, more of them each year, and
they are doing their share to make the game better
and the class of men higher, but they fall the
hardest for the jinxes. And I don't know as it is
anything to be ashamed of at that.
Jinxes and What They Mean 233
A really true, on-the-level, honest-to-jiminy
jinx can do all sorts of mean things to a profes-
sional ball-player. I have seen it make a bad
pitcher out of a good one, and a blind batter out
of a three-hundred hitter, and I have seen it make
a ball club, composed of educated men, carry a
Kansas farmer, with two or three screws rattling
loose in his dome, around the circuit because he
came as a prophet and said that he was accom-
panied by Miss Fickle Fortune. And that is
almost a jinx record.
Jinx and Miss Fickle Fortune never go around
together. And ball-players are always trying to
kill this jinx, for, once he joins the club, all hope
is gone. He dies hard, and many a good hat has
been ruined in an effort to destroy him, as I have
said before, because the wearer happened to be
chewing tobacco when the jinx dropped around.
But what 's a new hat against a losing streak or a
batting slump?
Luck is a combination of confidence and getting
the breaks. Ball-players get no breaks without
confidence in themselves, and lucky omens inspire
this confidence. On the other hand, unlucky
signs take it away. The lucky man is the one who
234 Pitching in a Pinch
hits the nail on the head and not his fingers, and
the ability to swat the nail on its receptive end
is a combination of self-confidence and an aptitude
for hammering. Good ball-playing is the com-
bination of self-confidence and the ability to play.
The next is "Red" Ames, although designated
as "Leon" by his family when a very small boy
before he began to play ball. (He is still called
" Leon " in the winter.) Ames is of Warren, Ohio,
and the Giants, and he is said to hold the Marathon
record for being the most unlucky pitcher that
ever lived, and I agree with the sayers. For
several seasons, Ames could n't seem to win a ball
game, no matter how well he pitched. In 1909,
"Red" twirled a game on the opening day of the
season against Brooklyn that was the work of a
master. For nine innings he held his opponents
hitless, only to have them win in the thirteenth.
Time and again Ames has pitched brilliantly, to
be finally beaten by a small score, because one of
the men behind him made an error at a critical
moment, or because the team could not give him
any runs by which to win. No wonder the news-
papers began to speak of Ames as the "hoodoo"
pitcher and the man "who could n't win."
Jinxes and What They Mean 235
There was a cross-eyed fellow who lived between
Ames and the Polo Grounds, and "Red" used to
make a detour of several blocks en route to the
park to be sure to miss him in case he should be
out walking. But one day in 1911, when it was
his turn to pitch, he bumped into that cross-eyed
man and, in spite of the fact that he did his duty
by his hat and got three or four small boys to help
him out, he failed to last two innings. When it
came time to go West on the final trip of the 1911
season, Ames was badly discouraged.
"I don't see any use in taking me along, Mac,"
he said to McGraw a few days before we left.
11 The club can't win with me pitching if the other
guys don't even get a foul."
The first stop was in Boston, and on the day
we arrived it rained. In the mail that day,
addressed to Leon Ames, came a necktie and a four-
leaf clover from a prominent actress, wishing
Ames good luck. The directions were inside the
envelope. The four-leaf clover, if the charm were
to work, must be worn on both the uniform and
street clothes, and the necktie was to be worn
with the street clothes and concealed in the
uniform, if that necktie could be concealed any-
236 Pitching in a Pinch
where. It would have done for a headlight and
made Joseph's coat of many colors look like a
mourning garment.
" Might as well wish good luck to a guy on the
way to the morgue, " murmured Ames as he sur-
veyed the layout, but he manfully put on the neck-
tie, taking his first dose of the prescription, as
directed, at once, and he tucked the four-leaf clover
away carefully in his wallet.
"You Ve got your work cut out for you, old
boy," he remarked to the charm as he put it
away, " but I 'd wear you if you were a horseshoe. "
The first day that Ames pitched in Boston he
won, and won in a stroll.
"The necktie," he explained that night at din-
ner, and pointed to the three-sheet, colored-supple-
ment affair he was wearing around his collar,
"I don't change her until I lose."
And he did n't lose a game on that trip. Once
he almost did, when he was taken out in the sixth
inning, and a batter put in for him, but the
Giants finally pulled out the victory and he got
the credit for it. He swept through the West
unbeatable, letting down Pittsburg with two or
three hits, cleaning up in St. Louis, and finally
Jinxes and What They Mean 237
breaking our losing streak in Chicago after two
games had gone against us. And all the time he
wore that spectrum around his collar for a necktie.
As it frayed with the wear and tear, more colors
began to show, although I did n't think it possible.
If he had had occasion to put on his evening
clothes, I believe that tie would have gone with
it.
For my part, I would almost rather have lost
a game and changed the necktie, since it gave one
the feeling all the time that he was carrying it
around with him because he had had the wrong
end of an election bet, or something of the sort.
But not Ames! He was a game guy. He stuck
with the necktie, and it stuck with him, and the
combination kept right on winning ball games.
Maybe he did n't mind it because he could not
see it himself, unless he looked in a mirror, but it
was rough on the rest of the team, except that we
needed the games the necktie won, to take the
pennant.
Columns were printed in the newspapers about
that necktie, and it became the most famous scarf
in the world. Ames used to sleep with it under his
pillow alongside of his bank roll, and he did n't
238 Pitching in a Pinch
lose another game until the very end of the season,
when he dropped one against Brooklyn.
"I don't hardly lay that up against the tie,"
he said afterwards. "You see, Mac put all those
youngsters into it, and I did n't get any support. "
Analyzing is a distasteful pastime to me, but
let 's see what it was that made Ames win. Was
it the necktie? Perhaps not. But some sliver of
confidence, which resulted from that first game
when he was dressed up in the scarf and the four-
leaf clover, got stuck in his mind. And after
that the rest was easy.
Frank Chance, the manager of the Cubs, has a
funny superstition which is of the personal sort.
Most ball-players have a natural prejudice against
the number "13" in any form, but particularly
when attached to a Pullman berth. But Chance
always insists, whenever possible, that he have
"lower 13." He says that if he can just crawl
in under that number he is sure of a good night's
rest, a safe journey, and a victory the next day.
He has been in two or three minor railroad acci-
dents, and he declares that all these occurred
when he was sleeping on some other shelf besides
"lower 13." He can usually satisfy his hobby,
Jinxes and What They Mean 239
too, for most travellers steer clear of the
berth.
McGraw believes a stateroom brings him good
luck, or at least he always insists on having one
when he can get it.
"Chance can have 'lower 13,'" says "Mac,"
"but give me a stateroom for luck."
Most ball-players nowadays treat the super-
stitions of the game as jokes, probably because
they are a little ashamed to acknowledge their
weaknesses, but away down underneath they
observe the proprieties of the ritual. Why, even
I won't warm up with the third baseman while I
am waiting for the catcher to get on his mask and
the rest of his paraphernalia. Once, when I first
broke in with the Giants, I warmed up with the
third baseman between innings and in the next
round they hit me hard and knocked me out of
the box. Since then I have had an uncommon
prejudice against the practice, and I hate to hear
a man even mention it. Devlin knows of my
weakness and never suggests it when he is playing
the bag, but occasionally a new performer will
drill into the box score at third base and
yell:
24 Pitching in a Pinch
"Come on, Matty! Warm up here while
you 're waiting. "
It gets me. I '11 pitch to the first baseman or a
substitute catcher to keep warm, but I woiild
rather freeze to death than heat up with the third
baseman. That is one of my pet jinxes.
And speaking of Arthur Devlin, he has a few
hand-raised jinxes of his own, too. For instance,
he never likes to hear a player hum a tune on the
bench, because he thinks it will keep him from
getting a base hit. He nearly beat a youngster
to death one day when he kept on humming after
Devlin had told him to stop.
"Cut that out, Caruso," yelled Arthur, as the
recruit started his melody. "You are killing
base hits. "
The busher continued with his air until Devlin
tried another form of persuasion.
Arthur also has a favorite seat on the bench
which he believes is luckier than the rest, and he
insists on sitting in just that one place.
But the worst blow Devlin ever had was when
some young lady admirer of his in his palmy days,
who unfortunately wore her eyes crossed, insisted
on sitting behind third base for each game, so as
Jinxes and What They Mean 241
to be near him. Arthur noticed her one day and,
after that, it was all off. He hit the worst slump
of his career. For a while no one could under-
stand it, but at last he confessed to McGraw.
"Mac," he said one night in the club-house,
"it 's that jinx. Have you noticed her? She
sits behind the bag every day, and she has got me
going. She has sure slid the casters under me.
I wish we could bar her out, or poison her, or shoot
her,' or chloroform her, or kill her in some nice,
mild way because, if it is n't done, this League
is going to lose a ball-player. How can you
expect a guy to play with that overlooking him
every afternoon ? ' '
McGraw took Devlin out of the game for a time
after that, and the newspapers printed several
yards about the cross-eyed jinx who had ruined
the Giants' third baseman.
With the infield weakened by the loss of Devlin,
the club began to lose with great regularity. But
one day the jinxess was missing and she never
came back. She must have read in the newspapers
what she was doing to Devlin, her hero, and quit
the national pastime or moved to another part of
the stand. Witk this weight off his shoulders,
242 Pitching in a Pinch
Arthur went back into the game and played like
mad.
"If she'd stuck much longer," declared Mc-
Graw, joyous in his rejuvenated third baseman,
"I would have had her eyes operated on and
straightened. This club could n't afford to keep
on losing ball games because you are such a Romeo,
Arthur, that even the cross-eyed ones fall for
you. "
Ball-players are very superstitious about the
bats. Did you ever notice how the clubs are all
laid out in a neat, even row before the bench and
are scrupulously kept that way by the bat boy?
If one of the sticks by any chance gets crossed, all
the players will shout:
"Uncross the bats! Uncross the bats!"
It's as bad as discovering a three-alarm fire
in an excelsior factory. Don't believe it? Then
listen to what happened to the Giants once because
a careless bat boy neglected his duty. The team
was playing in Cincinnati in the season of 1906
when one of the bats got crossed through the
carelessness of the boy. What was the result?
"Mike" Donlin, the star slugger of the team, slid
into third base and came up with a broken ankle.
Jinxes and What They Mean 243
Ever since that time we have carried our own
boy with us, because a club with championship
aspirations cannot afford to take a chance with
those foreign artists handling the bats. They are
likely to throw you down at any time.
The Athletics have a funny superstition which
is private or confined to their team as far as I
know. When luck seems to be breaking against
them in a game, they will take the bats and throw
them wildly into the air and let them lie around in
front of their bench, topsy-turvy. They call this
changing the luck, but any other club would
consider that it was the worst kind of a jinx.
It is the same theory that card-players have about
shuffling the deck vigorously to bring a different
run of fortune. Then, if the luck changes, the
Athletics throw the bats around some more to keep
it. This act nearly cost them one of their best
ball-players in the third game of the 1911 world's
series.
The Philadelphia players had tossed their bats
to break their run of luck, for the score was I to o
against them, when Baker came up in the ninth
inning. He cracked his now famous home run
into the right-field bleachers, and the men on the
244 Pitching in a Pinch
bench hurled the bats wildly into the air. In
jumping up and reaching for a bat to throw, Jack
Barry, the shortstop, hit his head on the concrete
roof of the structure and was stunned for a minute.
He said that little black specks were floating in
front of his eyes, but he gamely insisted on playing
the contest out. "Connie" Mack was so worried
over his condition that he sent Ira Thomas out
on the field to inquire if he were all right, and this
interrupted the game in the ninth inning. A lot
of the spectators thought that Thomas was out
there, bearing some secret message from "Con-
nie" Mack. None knew that he was ascertaining
the health of a player who had almost killed him-
self while killing a jinx.
The Athletics, for two seasons, have carried
with them on all their trips a combination bat boy
and mascot who is a hunchback, and he outjinxed
our champion jinx killer, Charley Faust, in the
1911 world's series. A hunchback is regarded by
ball-players as the best luck in the world. If a
man can just touch that hump on the way to the
plate, he is sure to get a hit, and any observant
spectator will notice the Athletics' hitters rubbing
the hunchback boy before leaving the bench.
Jinxes and What They Mean 245
So attached to this boy have the players become
that they voted him half a share of the prize money
last year after the world's series. Lots of ball-
players would tell you that he deserved it because
he has won two world's pennants for them.
Another great piece of luck is for a ball-player
to rub a colored kid's head. I 've walked along
the street with ball-players and seen them stop a
young negro and take off his hat and run their
hands through his kinky hair. Then I Ve seen
the same ball-player go out and get two or three
hits that afternoon and play the game of his life.
Again, it is the confidence inspired, coupled with
the ability.
Another old superstition among ball-players is
that a load of empty barrels means base hits.
If an athlete can just pass a flock of them on the
way to the park, he is sure to step right along
stride for stride with the three-hundred hitters that
afternoon.
McGraw once broke up a batting slump of the
Giants with a load of empty barrels. That is why
I maintain he is the greatest manager of them all.
He takes advantage of the little things, even the
superstitions of his men, and turns them to his
246 Pitching in a Pinch
account. He played this trick in one of the first
years that he managed the New York club. The
batting of all the players had slumped at the
same time. None could hit, and the club was
losing game after game as a result, because the
easiest pitchers were making the best batters
look foolish. One day Bowerman came into the
clubhouse with a smile on his face for the first
time in a week.
"Saw a big load of empty barrels this afternoon,
boys," he announced, "and just watch me pickle
the pill out there to-day. "
Right at that point McGraw got an idea, as he
frequently does. Bowerman went out that after-
noon and made four hits out of a possible five.
The next day three or four more of the players
came into the park, carrying smiles and the
announcement that fortunately they, too, had met
a load of empty barrels. They, then, all went out
and regained their old batting strides, and we won
that afternoon for the first time in a week. More
saw a load of barrels the next day and started to
bat. At last all the members of the team had
met the barrels, and men with averages of .119
were threatening to chisel into the three-hundred
Jinxes and What They Mean 247
set. With remarkable regularity the players were
meeting loads of empty barrels on their way to the
park, and, with remarkable regularity and a
great deal of expedition, the pitchers of opposing
clubs were being driven to the shower bath.
"Say," asked "Billy" Gilbert, the old second
baseman, of "Bill" Lauder, formerly the protector
o f the third corner, one day, "is one of that team
of horses sorrel and the other white?"
" Sure, " answered " Bill. "
"Sure," echoed McGraw. "I hired that load
of empty barrels by the week to drive around and
meet you fellows on the way to the park, and you
don't think I can afford to have them change
horses every day, do you?"
Everybody had a good laugh and kept on swat-
ting. McGraw asked for waivers on the load of
empty barrels soon afterwards, but his scheme had
stopped a batting slump and put the club's hitters
on their feet again. He plays to the little personal
qualities and superstitions in the men to get the
most out of them. And just seeing those barrels
gave them the idea that they were bound to get
the base hits, and they got them. Once more, the
old confidence, hitched up with ability.
248 Pitching in a Pinch
What manager would have carried a Kansas
farmer around the circuit with him besides Mc-
Graw? I refer to Charles Victor Faust of Marion,
Kansas, the most famous jinx killer of them all.
Faust first met the Giants in St. Louis on the next
to the last trip the club made West in the season
of 1911, when he wandered into the Planter's
Hotel one day, asked for McGraw and announced
that a fortune teller of Marion had informed him he
would be a great pitcher and that for $5 he could
have a full reading. This pitching announcement
piqued Charles, and he reached down into his
jeans, dug out his last five, and passed it over.
The fortune teller informed Faust that all he had to
do to get into the headlines of the newspapers and
to be a great pitcher was to join the New York
Giants. He joined, and, after he once joined, it
would have taken the McNamaras in their best
form to separate him from the said Giants.
" Charley " came out to the ball park and amused
himself warming up. Incidentally, the Giants
did not lose a game while he was in the neighbor-
hood. The night the club left for Chicago on
that trip, he was down at the Union Station ready
to go along.
Jinxes and What They Mean 249
"Did you get your contract and transporta-
tion?" asked McGraw, as the lanky Kansan
appeared.
"No," answered "Charley."
"Pshaw," replied McGraw. "I left it for you
with the clerk at the hotel. The train leaves in
two minutes, " he continued, glancing at his watch.
"If you can run the way you say you can, you
can make it and be back in time to catch it. "
It was the last we saw of "Charley" Faust for
a time galloping up the platform in his angular
way with that contract and transportation in sight.
"I 'm almost sorry we left him, " remarked Mc-
Graw as "Charley" disappeared in the crowd.
We played on around the circuit with indifferent
luck and got back to New York with the pennant
no more than a possibility, and rather a remote
one at that. The first day we were in New York
"Charley" Faust entered the clubhouse with
several inches of dust and mud caked on him, for
he had come all the way either by side-door
special or blind baggage.
"I'm here, all right," he announced quietly,
and started to climb into a uniform.
"I see you are," answered McGraw.
250 Pitching in a Pinch
"Charley" stuck around for two or three days,
and we won. Then McGraw decided he would
have to be dropped and ordered the man on the
door of the clubhouse to bar this Kansas kid out.
Faust broke down and cried that day, and we lost.
After that he became a member of the club, and we
won game after game until some busy newspaper
man obtained a vaudeville engagement for him at
a salary of $100 a week. We lost three games
the week he was absent from the grounds, and
Faust saw at once he was not doing the right
thing by the club, so, with a wave of his hand that
would have gone with J. P. Morgan's income, he
passed up some lucrative vaudeville contracts,
much to the disgust of the newspaper man, who
was cutting the remuneration with him, and settled
down to business. The club did not lose a game
after that, and it was decided to take Faust West
with us on the last and famous trip in 1911.
Daily he had been bothering McGraw and Mr.
Brush for his contract, for he wanted to pitch.
The club paid him some money from time to time
to meet his personal expenses.
The Sunday night the club left for Boston, a
vaudeville agent was at the Grand Central Station
Jinxes and What They Mean 251
with a contract offering Faust $100 a week for
five weeks, which "Charley" refused in order to
stick with the club. It was the greatest trip
away from home in the history of baseball. Start-
ing with the pennant almost out of reach, the
Giants won eighteen and lost four games. One
contest that we dropped in St. Louis was when
some of the newspaper correspondents on the trip
kidnapped Faust and sat him on the St. Louis
bench.
Another day in St. Louis the game had gone
eleven innings, and the Cardinals needed one run
to win. They had several incipient scores on the
bases and "Rube" Marquard, in the box, was
apparently going up in the air. Only one was out.
Faust was warming up far in the suburbs when,
under orders from McGraw, I ran out and sent
him to the bench, for that was the place from which
his charm seemed to be the most potent. "Char-
ley" came loping to the bench as fast as his long
legs would transport him and St. Louis did n't
score and we won the game. It was as nice a
piece of pinch mascoting as I ever saw.
The first two games that "Charley" really lost
were in Chicago. And all through the trip, he
252 Pitching in a Pinch
reiterated his weird prophecies that "the Giants
with Manager McGraw were goin' ta win. " The
players believed in him, and none would have let
him go if it had been necessary to support him out
of their own pockets. And we did win.
"Charley," with his monologue and great good
humor, kept the players in high spirits throughout
the journey, and the feeling prevailed that we
couldn't lose with him along. He was adver-
tised all over the circuit, and spectators were going
to the ball park to see Faust and Wagner. " Char-
ley" admitted that he could fan out Hans because
he had learned how to pitch out there in Kansas
by correspondence school and had read of " Hans's"
weakness in a book. His one "groove" was
massages and manicures. He would go into the
barber shop with any member of the team who
happened to be getting shaved and take a massage
and manicure for the purposes of sociability, as a
man takes a drink. He easily was the record
holder for the manicure Marathon, hanging up
the figures of five in one day in St. Louis. He also
liked pie for breakfast, dinner and supper, and a
small half before retiring.
But, alas! "Charley" lost in the world's
Jinxes and What They Mean 253
series. He could n't make good. And a jinx
killer never comes back. He is gone. And his
expansive smile and bump-the-bumps slide are
gone with him. That is, McGraw hopes he is
gone. But he was a wonder while he had it.
And he did a great deal toward giving the players
confidence. With him on the bench, they thought
they could n't lose, and they could n't. It has
long been a superstition among ball-players that
when a "bug" joins a club, it will win a champion-
ship, and the Giants believed it when "Charley"
Faust arrived. Did "Charley" Faust win the
championship for the Giants?
Another time-honored superstition among ball-
players is that no one must say to a pitcher as he
goes to the box for the eighth inning:
"Come on, now. Only six more men."
Or for the ninth:
" Pitch hard, now. Only three left. "
Ames says that he lost a game in St. Louis
once because McGraw forgot himself and urged
him to pitch hard because only three remained to
be put out. Those three batters raised the mis-
chief with Ames's prospects ; he was knocked out
254 Pitching in a Pinch
of the box in that last inning, and we lost the game.
That was before the days of the wonder necktie.
Ames won the third game played in Chicago on
the last trip West. Coming into the ninth inning,
he had the Cubs beaten, when McGraw began:
"Come on, 'Red,' only "
"Nix, Mac," cut in Ames, "for the love of
Mike, be reasonable. "
And then he won the game. But the chances
are that if McGraw had got that "only three
more" out, he would have lost, because it would
have been working on his strained nerves.
XII
Base Runners and How They Help a
Pitcher to Win
The Secret of Successful Base Running is Getting the
Start A Club Composed of Good Base Runners Is
Likely to do More to Help a Pitcher Win Games
than a Batting Order of Hard Hitters Stealing
Second Is an Art in Taking Chances The Giants
Stole their Way to a Pennant, but "Connie" Mack
Stopped the Grand Larceny when it Came to a
World's Championship.
IV A ANY times have the crowds at the Polo
T** Grounds seen a man get on first base in a
close game, and, with the pitcher's motion, start
to steal second, only to have the catcher throw
him out. The spectators groan and criticise the
manager.
"Why did n't he wait for the hitters to bat him
around? " is the cry.
255
256 Pitching in a Pinch
Then, again, a man starts for the base, times his
get-away just right, and slides into the bag in a
cloud of dust while the umpire spreads out his
hands indicating that he is safe. The crowd
cheers and proclaims McGraw a great manager
and the stealer a great base runner. Maybe
the next batter comes along with a hit, and the
runner scores. It wins the game, and mention
is made in the newspapers the next morning of
the fast base running of the club. A man has
covered ninety feet of ground while the ball is
travelling from the pitcher to the catcher and back
to the fielder who is guarding second base. It is
the most important ninety feet in baseball. From
second base just one hit scores the runner. Steal-
ing second, one of the most picturesque plays of
the game, is the gentle art of taking a chance.
In 1911, the Giants stole more bases than any
other Big League club has had to its credit since
the Pirates established the record in 1903. De-
vore, Snodgrass, Murray, Merkle and Doyle,
once they got on the bases were like loose mercury.
They couldn't be caught. And McGraw stole
his way to a pennant with this quintet of runners,
not alone because of the number of bases they
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 257
pilfered, but because of the edge it gave the Giants
on the rest of the clubs, with the men with base-
stealing reputations on the team. I should say
that holding these runners up on the bases and
worrying about what they were going to do
reduced the efficiency of opposing pitchers one-
third.
It was n't the speed of the men that accounted
for the record. A sprinter may get into the Big
League and never steal a base. But it was the
McGraw system combined with their natural
ability.
"Get the start," reiterates McGraw. "Half
of base stealing is leaving the bag at the right time.
Know when you have a good lead and then never
stop until you have hit the dirt. "
It is up to the pitcher as much as the catcher
to stop base stealing, for once a club begins
running wild on another, the bats might as well be
packed up and the game conceded. Pitchers
make a study of the individual runners and their
styles of getting starts. In my mind, I know just
how much of a lead every base runner in the
National League can take on me with impunity.
"Bob" Bescher of the Cincinnati club was the
258 Pitching in a Pinch
leading, bright, particular base-stealing star of
the National League in the season of 1911, and
the secret of his success was in his start. He tries
to get as big a lead as possible with each pitch, and
then, when he intends to leave, edges a couple of
feet farther than usual, catching the pitcher
unawares. With the two extra feet, Bescher is
bound to get to second base at the same time as
the ball, and no catcher in the world can stop him.
Therefore, it is up to the pitcher to keep him from
getting this start the two more feet he seeks.
I know that Bescher can take ten feet from the
bag when I am pitching and get back safely. But,
I am equally sure that, if he makes his lead twelve
feet and I notice it, I can probably catch him.
As a good ribbon salesman constantly has in his
mind's eye the answer to the question, "How far
is a yard?" so I know at a glance exactly how far
Bescher can lead and get back safely, when he is
on first base. If I glance over and see him twelve
feet away from the bag and about to start, I turn
and throw and catch him flat-footed. The crowd
laughs at him and says :
"Bescher asleep at the switch again!"
The real truth is that Bescher was not asleep,
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 259
but trying to get that old jump which would have
meant the stolen base. Again, he takes the twelve
feet, and I don't perceive it. He gets started
with my arm and goes into the bag ahead of the
ball.
"Great base runner,*' comments the fickle
crowd.
Bescher has only accomplished what he was
trying to do before, but he has gotten away with it
this time. Being a great ball-player is the gentle
art of getting away with it.
Spectators often wonder why a pitcher wearies
them with throwing over to the first base many
times, when it is plain to see that he has no chance
of catching his quarry. "Bill " Dahlen used to be
one of the best men in the game for getting back
in some way when on base, employing a straddle
slide and just hooking the bag with his toe,
leaving "a shoe-string to touch. " The result was
that he was always handing the pitcher the laugh
as he brushed himself off, for none can say
Dahlen was not an immaculate ball-player.
But the pitchers found out that they could tire
Dahlen out by repeatedly throwing over to the
bag, and that, after five throws, which required
260 Pitching in a Pinch
five dashes and slides back to the base, he was all
in and could not steal because he did n't have the
physical strength left. Thus, as soon as Dahlen
got on, a pitcher began throwing over until he had
him tired out, and then he pitched to the batter.
So "Bill" crossed them by living on the bag until
he thought he saw his opportunity to get the jump,
and then he would try to steal.
Few good base runners watch the ball after
they have once left the bag. They look at the
baseman to see how he is playing and make the
slide accordingly. If Devore sees Huggins of
St. Louis behind the base, he slides in front and
pulls his body away from the bag, so that he leaves
the smallest possible area to touch. If he observes
the baseman cutting inside to block him off, he
goes behind and hooks it with just one toe, again
presenting the minimum touching surface. If the
ball is hit while the runner is en route, he takes
one quick glance at the coacher on the third base
line and can tell by his motions whether to turn
back or to continue.
McGraw devotes half his time and energy in the
spring to teaching his men base running and the
art of sliding, which, when highly cultivated,
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 261
means being there with one toe and somewhere
else with the rest of the body. But most of all he
impresses on the athletes the necessity of getting
the start before making the attempt to steal. As
long as I live I shall believe that if Snodgrass had
known he had the jump in the third game of the
world's series in 1911, when he really had it, and
if he had taken advantage of it, we would have
won the game and possibly the championship.
It was in the contest that Baker balanced by
banging the home run into the right field bleachers
in the ninth inning, when I was pitching. That
tied the score, I to I.
For nine innings I had been pitching myself out,
putting everything that I had on every ball,
because the team gave me no lead to rest on.
When Baker pushed that ball into the bleachers
with only two more men to get out to win the
game, I was all in. But I managed to live through
the tenth with very little on the ball, and we came
to the bat. Snodgrass got a base on balls and
journeyed to second on a sacrifice. He was taking
a big lead off the middle base with the pitcher's
motion, and running back before the catcher got
the ball, because a quick throw would have caught
262 Pitching in a Pinch
him. It was bad baseball, but he was nervous
with the intense strain and over-eager to score.
Then came the time when he took a longer lead
than any other, and Lapp, the Athletics' catcher,
seeing him, was sure he was going to steal, and
in his hurry to get the ball away and save the
game, let it past him. Snodgrass had the jump,
and probably would have made the base had he
kept on going, but he had no orders to steal and
had turned and taken a step or two back toward
second when he saw Lapp lose the ball. Again
he turned and retraced his steps, and I never saw
a man turn so slowly, simply because I realized
how important a turn that was going to be. Next
I looked at Lapp and saw him picking up the ball,
which had rolled only about three feet behind him.
He snapped it to third and had Snodgrass by
several feet. Snodgrass realized this as he plunged
down the base line, but he could not stop and
permit himself to be tagged and he could not go
back, so he made that historic slide which was
heard almost around the world, cut off several
yards of Frank Baker's trousers, and more im-
portant than the damage to the uniform, lost us
the game.
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 263
Snodgrass had the jump in his first start, and if
he had kept right on going he would have made the
bag without the aid of the passed ball, in my
opinion. But he did not know that he had this
advantage and was on his way back, when it looked
for a minute as if the Athletics' catcher had made
a mistake. This really turned out to be the
"break" in the game, for it was on that passed
ball that Snodgrass was put out. He would
probably have scored the run which would have
won the game had he lived either on second or
third base, for a hit followed.
After losing the contest after watching the
opportunity thrown away, some fan called me on
the te ephone that night, when I was feeling in
anything but a conversational mood, and asked
me:
"Was that passed ball this afternoon part of the
Athletics' inside game? Did Lapp do it on pur-
pose?"
In passing I want to put in a word for Snodgrass,
not because he is a team-mate of mine, but on
account of the criticism which he received for
spiking Baker, and which was not deserved. And
in that word I do not want to detract from Baker's
264 Pitching in a Pinch
reputation a scintilla, if I could, for he is a great
ball-player. But I want to say that if John
Murray had ever been called upon to slide into
that bag with Baker playing it as he did, Baker
would probably have been found cut in halves,
and only Murray's own style of coasting would
have been responsible for it. If Fred Clarke of
Pittsburg had been the man coming in, Baker
would probably have been neatly cut into thirds,
one third with each foot.
Clarke is known as one of the most wicked
sliders in the National League. He jumps into the
air and spreads his feet apart, showing his spikes
as he comes in. The Giants were playing in
Pittsburg several years ago, before I was married,
and there was a friend of mine at the ball park
with whom I was particularly eager to make a hit.
The game was close, as are all contests which lend
themselves readily to an anecdote, and Clarke
got as far as third base in the eighth inning, with
the score tied and two out. Warner, the Giants'
catcher, let one get past him and I ran in to cover
the plate. Clarke came digging for home and, as
I turned to touch him, he slid and cut my trousers
off, never touching my legs. It was small consola-
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 265
tion to me that my stems were still whole and that
the umpire had called Clarke out and that the
game was yet saved. My love for my art is keen,
but it stops at a certain point, and that point is
where I have to send a hurry call for a barrel and
the team's tailor. The players made a sort of
group around me while I did my Lady Godiva act
from the plate to the bench.
Murray has the ideal slide for a base gatherer,
but one which commands the respect of all the
guardians of the sacks in the National League.
When about eight feet from the bag, he jumps into
the air, giving the fielder a vision of two sets of
nicely honed spikes aimed for the base. As
Murray hits the bag, he comes up on his feet and
is in a position to start for the next station in case
of any fumble or slip. He is a great man to use
this slide to advantage against young players, who
are inclined to be timid when they see those spikes.
It 's all part of the game as it is played in the large
leagues.
The Boston team was trying out a young player
two years ago. Murray remarked to McGraw
before the game :
"The first time I get on, I bet I can
266 Pitching in a Pinch
make that fellow fumble and pick up an extra
base."
"Theatre tickets for the crowd on Saturday
night?" inquired McGraw.
"You Ve said it, " answered Murray.
Along about the second or third inning John
walked, and started for second on the first ball
pitched. The busher came in to cover the base,
and Murray leaped clear of the ground and yelled :
"Look out!"
The newcomer evidently thought that Murray
had lost control of his legs, got one look at those
spikes, and bent all his energies toward dodging
them, paying no attention whatever to the ball,
which continued its unmolested journey to centre
field. The new man proved to be one of the best
little dodgers I ever saw. John was in a perfect
position to start and went along to third at his
leisure.
"Didn't I call the turn?" Murray yelled at
McGraw as he came to the bench.
"What show do you want to see?" asked
McGraw.
But on an old campaigner this show of spikes
has no effect whatever. The capable basemen
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 267
in the League know how to cover the bag so as to
get the runner out and still give him room to come
in without hurting any one. In spite of an im-
pression that prevails to the contrary, ball-players
never spike a man on purpose. At present, I
don't believe there is a runner in the National
League who would cut down another man if he had
the opportunity. If one man does spike another
accidentally, he is heartily sorry, and often such an
event affects his own playing and his base running
ability.
The feet-first slide is now more in vogue in the
Big Leagues than the old head-first coast, and I
attribute this to two causes. One is that the show
of the spikes is a sort of assurance the base runner
is going to have room to come into the bag, and
the second is that the great amount of armor
which a catcher wears in these latter days makes
some such formidable slide necessary when coming
into the plate.
If a base runner hits a catcher squarely with his
shin guards on, he is likely to be badly injured,
and he must be sure that the catcher is going to
give him a clear path. Some catchers block off
the plate so that a man has got to shoot his spikes
268 Pitching in a Pinch
at them to get through, and I 'm not saying that
it 's bad catching, because that is the way to keep
a man from scoring. Make him go around if
possible.
But the game has changed in the last few years
as far as intentional spiking goes. Many a time
when I first started with the Giants, I heard
a base runner shout at a fielder:
"Get out of the way there or I '11 cut you in
two!"
And he would not have hesitated to do it,
either. That was part of the game. But nowa-
days, if a player got the reputation of cutting men
down and putting star players out of the game in-
tentionally, he would soon be driven out of the
League, probably on a stretcher.
When John Hummel of the Brooklyn club
spiked Doyle in 1908, and greatly lessened the
Giants' chances of winning the pennant, which the
club ultimately lost, he came around to our club-
house after the game and inquired for Larry.
When he found how badly Doyle was cut, he was
as broken up as any member of our team.
"If I 'd known I was goin' to cut you, Larry,
I would n't have slid, " he said.
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 269
"That 's all right, " answered Doyle. "I guess
I was blockin' you."
Ball-players don't say much in a situation of that
kind. But each one who witnessed the incident
knew that when Doyle doubled down, spiked,
most of our chances of the pennant went down
with him, for it broke up the infield of the team
at a most important moment. It takes some time
for a new part to work into a clock so that it keeps
perfect time again, no matter how delicate is the
workmanship of the new part. So the best in-
fielder takes time to fit into the infield of a Big
League club and have it hit on all four cylinders
again.
Fred Merkle is one of the few ball-players who
still prefers the head-first slide, and he sticks to it
only on certain occasions. He is the best man to
steal third base playing ball to-day. He declares
that, when he is going into the bag, he can see
better by shooting his head first and that he can
swing his body away from the base and just hook
it with one finger nail, leaving just that to touch.
And he keeps his nails clipped short in the season,
so that there is very little exposed to which the
ball can be applied. If he sees that the third
270 Pitching in a Pinch
baseman is playing inside the bag, he goes behind
it and hooks it with his finger, and if the man is
playing back, he cuts through in front, pulling his
body away from the play. But the common or
garden variety of player will take the hook slide,
feet first, because he can catch the bag with one
leg, and the feet are n't as tender a portion of the
anatomy to be roughly touched as the head and
shoulders.
A club of base runners will do more to help a
pitcher win than a batting order of hard hitters, I
believe. Speed is the great thing in the baseball
of to-day. By speed I do not mean that good men
must be sprinters alone. They must be fast
starters, fast runners and fast thinkers. Remem-
ber that last one fast thinkers.
Harry McCormick, formerly the left-fielder on
the Giants, when he joined the club before his
legs began to go bad, was a sprinter, one of the
fastest men who ever broke into the League.
Before he took up baseball as a profession, he had
been a runner in college. But McCormick was
never a brilliant base stealer because he could
not get the start.
When a man is pitching for a club of base
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 271
runners he knows that every time a player with a
stealing reputation gets on and there is an outside
chance of his scoring, the run is going to be hung
up. The tallies give a pitcher confidence to
proceed. Then, when the club has the reputation
of possessing a great bunch of base runners, the
other pitcher is worried all the time and has to
devote about half his energies to watching the
bases. This makes him easier to hit.
But put a hard hitter who is a slow base runner
on the club, and he does little good. There used to
be a man on the Giants, named "Charley" Hick-
man, who played third base and then the outfield.
He was one of the best natural hitters who ever
wormed his way into baseball, but when he got on,
the bases were blocked. He could not run, and it
took a hit to advance him a base. Get a fast man
on behind him and, because the rules of the game
do not permit one runner to pass another, it was
like having a freight train preceding the Twentieth
Century Limited on a single track road. Hickman
was not so slow when he first started, but after a
while his legs went bad and his weight increased,
so that he was built like a box car, to carry out the
railroad figure.
272 Pitching in a Pinch
Hickman finally dropped back into the minor
leagues and continued to bat three hundred, but
he had to lose the ball to make the journey clear
around the bases on one wallop. Once he hit
the old flag pole in centre field at the Polo Grounds
on the fly, and just did nose the ball out at the
plate. It was a record hit for distance. At last,
while still maintaining the three-hundred pace,
Hickman was dropped by the Toledo club of the
American Association.
"Why did you let Charley Hickman go?" I
asked the manager one day.
"Because he was tyin* up traffic on the bases,"
he replied.
Merkle is not a particularly fast runner, but he
is a great base stealer because he has acquired the
knack of "getting away. " He never tries to steal
until he has his start. He is also a good arriver,
as I have pointed out. It was like getting a steam-
roller in motion to start Hickman.
Clever ball-players and managers are always
trying to evolve new base-running tactics that will
puzzle the other team, but "there ain't no new
stuff." It is a case of digging up the old ones.
Pitchers are also earnest in their endeavors to
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 273
discover improved ways to stop base running.
Merkle and I worked out a play during the spring
training season in 1911 which caught perhaps a
dozen men off first base before the other teams
began to watch for the trick. And it was not
original with me. I got the idea from "Patsy"
Flaherty, a Boston pitcher who has his salary
wing fastened to his left side.
Flaherty would pitch over to first base quickly,
and the fielder would shoot the ball back. Then
Flaherty would pop one through to the batter,
often catching him off his guard, and sneaking a
strike over besides leaving the runner flat on the
ground in the position in which he had been when
he slid back to the bag. If the batter hit the ball,
the runner was in no attitude to get a start, and,
on an infield tap, it was easy to make a double play.
The next time that the man got on base, Flaherty
would shoot the ball over to first as before, and the
runner would be up on his feet and away from the
bag, expecting him to throw it to the plate. But
as the first baseman whipped it back quickly
Flaherty returned the ball and the runner was
caught flat footed and made to look foolish. Ball-
players do certainly hate to appear ridiculous, and
274 Pitching in a Pinch
the laugh from the crowd upsets a Big Leaguer
more than anything else, even a call from McGraw,
because the crowd cannot hear that and does not
know the man is looking foolish.
It was almost impossible to steal bases on
" Patsy " Flaherty because he had the men hugging
the bag all the time, and if he had had other essen-
tials of a pitcher, he would have been a great one.
He even lived in the Big League for some time with
this quick throw as his only asset. I adopted the
Flaherty movement, but it is harder for a right-
hander to use, as he is not in such a good position
to whip the ball to the bag. Merkle and I
rehearsed it in spring practice. As soon as a man
got on first base, I popped the ball over to Merkle,
and without even making a stab at the runner, he
shot it to me. Then back again, just as the runner
had let go of the bag and was getting up. The
theoretical result: He was caught flat-footed.
Sometimes it worked. Then they began to play
for me.
Another play on which the changes have often
been rung is the double steal with men on first and
third bases. That is McGraw's favorite situation
in a crisis.
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 275
"Somebody 's got to look foolish on the play,"
says "Mac," "and I don't want to furnish any
laughs."
The old way to work it was to have the man on
first start for second, as if he were going to make a
straight steal. Then as soon as the catcher drew
his arm back to throw, the runner on third started
home. No Big League club can have a look into
the pennant set without trying to interrupt the
journey of that man going to second in a tight
place, because if no play is made for him and a hit
follows, it nets the club two runs instead of one.
Most teams try to stop this play by having the
shortstop or second baseman come in and take a
short throw, and if the man on third breaks for
home, the receiver of the ball whips it back. If
both throws are perfect, the runner is caught at
the plate.
But the catchers found that certain clubs were
making this play in routine fashion, the runner on
first starting with the pitch, and the one on third
making his break just as soon as the catcher drew
back his arm. Then the backstops began making
a bluff throw to second and whipping the ball to
third, often getting the runner by several feet,
276 Pitching in a Pinch
as he had already definitely started for the
plate.
"Tommy" Leach of the Pittsburg club was
probably caught of tener on this bluff throw than
any other man in baseball. For some time he had
been making the play against clubs which used the
short throw, and starting as the catcher drew back
his arm, as that was the only chance he had to
score. One day in the season of 1908, when the
Pirates were playing against the Giants, Clarke
was on first and Leach on third, with one run
required to balance the game. McGraw knew the
double steal was to be expected, as two were out.
Bresnahan was aware of this, too.
McGinnity was pitching, and with his motion,
Clarke got his start. Bresnahan drew back his
arm as if to throw to second, and true to form,
Leach was on his way to the plate. But Bresna-
han had not let go of the ball, and he shot it to
Devlin, Leach being run down in the base line and
the Pittsburg club eventually losing the game.
Again and again Leach fell for this bluff throw,
until the news spread around the circuit that once
a catcher drew back his arm with a man on first
base and "Tommy" Leach on third, there would
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 277
be no holding him on the bag. He was caught
time and again indeed as frequently as the play
came up. It was his "groove." He could not
be stopped from making his break. At last
Clarke had to order him to abandon the play until
he could cure himself of this self-starting habit.
"What you want to do on that play is cross 'em,"
is McGraw's theory, and he proceeded to develop
the delayed steal with this intent.
Put the men back on first and third bases.
Thank you. The pitcher has the ball. The
runner on first intentionally takes too large a lead.
The pitcher throws over, and he moves a few steps
toward second. Then a few more. All that time
the man on third is edging off an inch, two inches,
a foot. The first baseman turns to throw to
second to stop that man. The runner on third
plunges for the plate, and usually gets there. It 's
a hard one to stop, but that 's its purpose.
Then, again, it can be worked after the catcher
gets the ball. The runner starts from first slowly
and the catcher hesitates, not knowing whether
to throw to first or second. Since the runner did
not start with the pitch, theoretically no one has
come in to take a short throw, and the play cannot
278 Pitching in a Pinch
be made back to the plate if the ball is thrown to
second. This form of the play is usually success-
ful. Miller Huggins is one of the hardest second
basemen in the League to work it against success-
fully. With men on first and third, he always
comes in for the short throw on the chance, and
covers himself up.
After we had stolen our way to a pennant in the
National League in the season of 1911, and after
our five leading base runners had been "mugged"
by the police in St. Louis so that the catchers
would know them, many fans expected to see us
steal a world's championship, and we" half ex-
pected it ourselves.
But so did "Connie" Mack, and there lies the
answer. He knew our strong point, and his
players had discussed and rehearsed ways and
means to break up our game. Mack had been
watching the Giants for weeks previous to the
series and had had his spies taking notes.
"We 've got to stop them running bases," he
told his men before the first game, I have learned
since. And they did. Guess the St. Louis police
must have sent Thomas and Lapp copies of those
pictures.
How Base Runners Help a Pitcher 279
Mack's pitchers cut their motions down to
nothing with men on the bases, microscopic
motions, and they watched the runners like hawks.
Thomas had been practising to get the men. The
first time that Devore made a break to steal, he
was caught several feet from the bag.
"And you call yourself fast!" commented
Collins as he threw the ball back to the pitcher
and jogged to his job? "You remind me of
a cop on a fixed post," he flung over his
shoulder.
Pitchers have a great deal to do with the defen-
sive efficiency of the club. If they do not hold the
runners up, the best catcher in the world cannot
stop them at their destination. That is the reason
why so many high-class catchers have been devel-
oped by the Chicago Cubs. The team has always
had a good pitching staff, and men like Overall,
Brown and Reulbach force the runners to stick
to the oases of safety.
The Giants stole their way to a pennant in 191 1 ,
and it was n't on account of the speedy material,
but because McGraw had spent days teaching his
men to slide and emphasizing the necessity of
getting the jump. Then he picked the stages of
28o Pitching in a Pinch
the game when the attempts to steal were to be
made. But McGraw, with his all-star cast of
thieves, was stopped in the world's series by one
Cornelius McGillicuddy.
XIII
Notable Instances Where the "Inside"
Game Has Failed
The "Inside" Game is of Little Avail when a Batter
Knocks a Home Run with the Bases Full Many
Times the Strategies of Managers have Failed
because Opposing Clubs "Doctored" their
Grounds " Rube" Waddell Once Cost the Athletics
a Game by Failing to Show up after the Pitcher's
Box had been Fixed for Him But, although the
"Inside" Game Sometimes Fails, no Manager
Wants a Player who will Steal Second with the
Bases Full
'"THERE is an old story about an altercation
* which took place during a wedding ceremony
in the backwoods of the Virginia mountains. The
discussion started over the propriety of the best
man holding the ring, and by the time that it had
been finally settled the bride gazed around on a
281
282 Pitching in a Pinch
dead bridegroom, a dead father, and a dead best
man, not to mention three or four very dead
ushers and a clergyman.
"Them new f angled self-cockin' automatic guns
has sure raised hell with my prospects, " she sighed.
That 's the way I felt when John Franklin Baker
popped that home run into the right-field stand in
the ninth inning of the third game of the 1911
world's series with one man already out. For
eight and one-third innnings the Giants had played
"inside" ball, and I had carefully nursed along
every batter who came to the plate, studying his
weakness and pitching at it. It looked as if we
were going to win the game, and then zing ! And
also zowie ! The ball went into the stand on a line
and I looked around at my fielders who had had
the game almost within their grasp a minute
before. Instantly, I realized that I had been pitch-
ing myself out, expecting the end to come in nine
innings. My arm felt like so much lead hanging
to my side after that hit. I wanted to go and get
some crape and hang it on my salary whip. Then
that old story about the wedding popped into my
head, and I said to myself :
" He has sure raised hell with your prospects. "
Failures of the " Inside" Game 283
"Sam" Strang, the official pinch hitter of the
Giants a few seasons ago, was one of the best in the
business. McGraw sent him to the bat in the
ninth inning of a game the Giants were playing
in Brooklyn. We were two runs behind and two
were already out, with one runner on the bases, and
he was only as far as second. "Doc" Scanlon
was pitching for Brooklyn, and, evidently intimi-
dated by Sam's pinch-hitting reputation or some-
thing, suddenly became wild and gave the Giant
batter three balls. With the count three and
nothing, McGraw shouted from the bench:
"Wait it out, Sam!"
But Sam did not hear him, and he took a nice
masculine, virile, full-armed swing at the ball
and fouled it out of the reach of all the local
guardians of the soil.
"Are you deaf?" barked McGraw. "Wait it
out, I tell you."
As a matter of fact, Strang was a little deaf and
did not hear the shouted instructions the second
time. But "Doc" Scanlon was sensitive as to
hearing and, feeling sure Strang would obey the
orders of McGraw, thought he would be taking no
chances in putting the next ball over the centre of
284 Pitching in a Pinch
the plate. It came up the "groove, " and Strang
admired it as it approached. Then he took his
swing, and the next place the ball touched was
in the Italian district just over the right field fence.
The hit tied the score.
McGraw met Strang at the plate, and instead
of greeting him with shouts of approbation,
exclaimed :
"I ought to fine you $25, and would, except for
those two runs and the few points' difference the
game will make in the percentage. Come on now,
boys. Let 's win this one." And we did in the
eleventh inning.
That was a case of the "inside" game failing.
Any Big League pitcher with brains would have
laid the ball over after hearing McGraw shout
earnest and direct orders at the batter to "wait
it out." Scanlon was playing the game and
Strang was not, but it broke for Sam. It was the
first time in his life that he ever hit the ball over
the right field fence in Brooklyn, and he has never
done it since. If he had not been lucky in con-
necting with that ball and lifting it where it did
the most good, his pay envelope would have been
lighter by $25 at the end of the month, and he
Failures of the " Inside" Game 285
would have obtained an accurate idea of McGraw's
opinion of his intellectuality.
In the clubhouse after the victory, McGraw
said:
"Honest, Sam, why did you swing at that ball
after I had told you not to? "
"I did n't hear you, " replied Strang.
" Well, it 's lucky you hit it where they were n't, "
answered McGraw, "because if any fielder had
connected with the ball, there would have been a
rough greeting waiting for you on the bench.
And as a tip, Sam, direct from me : You got away
with it once, but don't try it again. It was bad
baseball."
"But that straight one looked awful good to me
coming up the 'groove,' " argued Sam.
"Don't fall for all the good lookers, Sam,"
suggested McGraw, the philosopher.
Strang is now abroad having his voice cultivated
and he intends to enter the grand-opera field as
soon as he can finish the spring training in Paris
and get his throat into shape for the big league
music circuit. But I will give any orchestra leader
who faces Sam a tip. If he does n't want him to
come in strong where the music is marked "rest,"
286 Pitching in a Pinch
don't put one in the "groove," because Strang
just naturally can't help swinging at it. He is a
poor waiter.
The Boston club lost eighteen straight games in
the season of 1910, and as the team was leaving
the Polo Grounds after having dropped four
in a row, making the eighteen, I said to
Tenney:
"How does it seem, Fred, to be on a club that
has lost eighteen straight?"
"It's what General Sherman said war is,"
replied Tenney, who seldom swears. "But for
all-around entertainment I would like to see John
McGraw on a team which had dropped fifteen or
sixteen in a row. "
As if Tenney had put the curse on us, the Giants
hit a losing streak the next day that totalled six
games straight. Everything that we tried broke
against us. McGraw would attempt the double
steal, and both throws would be accurate, and the
runner caught at the plate. A hit and a run sign
would be given, and the batter would run up
against a pitch-out.
McGraw was slowly going crazy. All his pet
"inside" tricks were worthless. He, the king of
Failures of the " Inside " Game 287
baseball clairvoyants, could not guess right. It
began to look to me as if Tenney would get his
entertainment. After the sixth one had gone
against us and McGraw had not spoken a friendly
word to any one for a week, he called the players
around him in the clubhouse.
"I ought to let you all out and get a gang of
high-school boys in here to defend the civic honor
of this great and growing city whose municipal
pride rests on your shoulders," he said. "But
I 'm not going to do it. Hereafter we will cut out
all 'inside' stuff and play straight baseball.
Every man will go up there and hit the ball just
as you see it done on the lots. "
Into this oration was mixed a judicious amount
of sulphur. The Cubs had just taken the first
three of a four-game series from us without any
trouble at all. The next day we went out and
resorted to the wallop, plain, untrimmed slugging
tactics, and beat Chicago 17 to i. Later we
returned to the hand-raised, cultivated hot-house
form of baseball, but for a week we played the old-
fashioned game with a great deal of success. It
changed our luck.
Another method which has upset the "inside"
288 Pitching in a Pinch
game of many visiting teams is "doping" the
grounds.
The first time in my baseball career that I ever
encountered this was in Brooklyn when Hanlon
was the manager. Every time he thought I was
going to pitch there, he would have the diamond
doctored for me in the morning. The ground-
keeper sank the pitcher's box down so that it was
below the level of all the bases instead of slightly
elevated as it should be.
Hanlon knew that I used a lot of speed when I
first broke into the League, getting some of it
from my elevation on the diamond. He had a
team of fast men who depended largely on a
bunting game and their speed in getting to first
base to win. With me fielding bunts out of the
hollow, they had a better chance of making their
goal. Then pitching from the lower level would
naturally result in the batters getting low balls,
because I would be more apt to misjudge the
elevation of the plate. Low ones were made to
bunt. Finally, Hanlon always put into the box
to work against me a little pitcher who was not
affected as much as I by the topographical changes.
"Why," I said to George Davis, the Giants'
Failures of the "Inside" Game 289
manager, the first time I pitched out of the cellar
which in Brooklyn was regarded as the pitcher's
box, " I 'm throwing from a hollow instead of off a
mound."
"Sure," replied Davis. "They 'doped' the
grounds for you. But never mind. When we are
entertaining, the box at the Polo Grounds will be
built up the days you are going to pitch against
Brooklyn, and you can burn them over and at
their heads if you like. "
The thing that worried the Athletics most before
the last world's series was the reputation of the
Giants as base stealers. When we went to Phila-
delphia for the first game, I was surprised at the
heavy condition of the base lines.
"Did it rain here last night?" I inquired from
a native.
"No," he answered.
Then I knew that the lines had been wet down
to slow up our fast runners and make it harder for
them to steal. As things developed, this pre-
caution was unnecessary, but it was an effort to
break up what was known to be our strongest
"inside" play.
Baseball men maintain that the acme of doctor-
290 Pitching in a Pinch
ing grounds was the work of the old Baltimore
Orioles. The team was composed of fast men who
were brilliant bunters and hard base runners. The
soil of the infield was mixed with a form of clay
which, when wet and then rolled, was almost as
hard as concrete. The ground outside the first
and third base lines was built up slightly to keep
well placed bunts from rolling foul, while toward
first base there was a distinct down grade to aid
the runner in reaching that station with all possible
expedition. Toward second there was a gentle
slope, and it was down hill to third. But coming
home from third was up-hill work. A player had
to be a mountain climber to make it. This all
benefited fast men like Keeler, McGraw, Kelley
and Jennings whose most dangerous form of
attack was the bunt.
The Orioles did not stop at doctoring the infield.
The grass in the outfield was permitted to grow
long and was unkempt. Centre and left fields
were kept level, but in right field there was a sharp
down grade to aid the fast Keeler. He had made
an exhaustive study of all the possible angles at
which the ball might bound and had certain paths
that he followed, but which were not marked out
Failures of the "Inside" Game 291
by sign posts for visiting right-fielders. He was
sure death on hits to his territory, while usually
wallops got past visiting right-fielders. And so
great was the grade that "Wee Willie" was barely
visible from the batter's box. A hitting team
coming to Baltimore would be forced to fall into
the bunting game or be entirely outclassed. And
the Orioles did not furnish their guests with topo-
graphical maps of the grounds either.
The habit of doctoring grounds is not so much
in vogue now as it once was. For a long time it
was considered fair to arrange the home field to the
best advantage of the team which owned it, for
otherwise what was the use in being home? It
was on the same principle that a general builds his
breastworks to best suit the fighting style of his
army, for they are his breastworks.
But lately among the profession, sentiment and
baseball legislation have prevailed against the
doctoring of grounds, and it is done very little.
Occasionally a pitching box is raised or lowered to
meet the requirements of a certain man, but they
are not altered every day to fit the pitcher, as they
once were. Such tactics often hopelessly upset
the plan of battle of the visiting club unless this
292 Pitching in a Pinch
exactly coincided with the habits of the home teanv
Many strategic plans have been wasted on care
fully arranged grounds, and many "inside" plays
have gone by the boards when the field was fixed
so that a bunt was bound to roll foul if the ball
followed the laws of gravitation, as it usually does,
because the visiting team was known to have the
bunting habit.
A good story of doctored grounds gone wrong
is told of the Philadelphia Athletics. The eccen-
tric "Rube" Waddell had bundles of speed in his
early days, and from a slightly elevated pitcher's
box the batter could scarcely identify "Rube's"
delivery from that of a cannon. He was scheduled
to pitch one day and showed around at morning
practice looking unusually fit for George.
"How are you feeling to-day, George?" asked
"Connie" Mack, his boss.
"Never better," replied the light-hearted
"Rube."
"Well, you work this afternoon."
"All right," answered Waddell.
Then the ground-keeper got busy and built the
pitcher's box up about two feet, so that Waddell
would have a splendid opportunity to cut loose
Failures of the " Inside " Game 293
all his speed. At that time he happened to be the
only tall man on the pitching staff of the Philadel-
phia club, and, as a rule, the box was kept very
low. The scheme would probably have worked
out as planned, if it had not been that Waddell, in
the course of his noon-day wanderings, met several
friends in whose society he became so deeply
absorbed that he neglected to report at the ball
park at all. He also forgot to send word, and here
was the pitcher's box standing up out of the infield
like one of the peaks of the Alps.
As the players gathered, and Waddell failed to
show up, the manager nervously looked at his
watch. At last he sent out scouts to the ' ' Rube's ' '
known haunts, but no trace of the temperamental
artist could be found. The visitors were already
on the field, and it was too late to lower the box.
A short pitcher had to work in the game from this
peak of progress, while the opposing team installed
a skyscraper on the mound. The Philadelphia
club was badly beaten and Waddell heavily fined
for his carelessness in disrupting the "inside"
play of his team.
An old and favorite trick used to be to soap the
soil around the pitcher's box, so that when a mail
294 Pitching in a Pinch
was searching for some place to dry his perspiring
hands and grabbed up this soaped earth, it made
his palm slippery and he was unable to control
the ball.
Of course, the home talent knew where the good
ground lay and used it or else carried some unadul-
terated earth in their trousers' pockets, as a sort
of private stock. But our old friend "Bugs"
Raymond hit on a scheme to spoil this idea and
make the trick useless. Arthur always perspired
profusely when he pitched, and several managers,
perceiving this, had made it a habit to soap the
dirt liberally whenever it was his turn to work.
While he was pitching for St. Louis, he went into
the box against the Pirates one day in Pittsburg.
His hands were naturally slippery, and several
times he had complained that he could not dry
them in the dirt, especially in Pittsburg soil.
As Raymond worked in the game in question,
he was noticed, particularly by the Pittsburg
batters and spectators, to get better as he went
along. Frequently, his hand slipped into his back
pocket, and then his control was wonderful.
Sometimes, he would reach down and apparently
pick up a handful of earth, but it did no damage.
Failures of the "Inside" Game 295
After the game, he walked over to Fred Clarke,
and reached into his back pocket. His face
broke into a grin.
"Ever see any of that stuff, Fred?" he asked
innocently, showing the Pittsburg manager a
handful of a dark brown substance. "That's
rosin. It 's great lots better than soaped ground.
Wish you 'd keep a supply out there in the box
for me when I 'm going to work instead of that
slippery stuff you Ve got out there now. Will
you, as a favor to me?"
Thereafter, all the pitchers got to carrying rosin
or pumice stone in their pockets, for the story
quickly went round the circuit, and it is useless co
soap the soil in the box any more. There are many
tricks by which the grounds or ball are "fixed,"
but for nearly all an antidote has been discovered,
and these questionable forms of the "inside"
game have failed so often that they have largely
been abandoned.
One Big League manager used always to give his
men licorice or some other dark and adhesive and
juicy substance to chew on a dingy day. The
purpose was to dirty the ball so that it was harder
for the batters to see when the pitcher used his
296 Pitching in a Pinch
fast one. As soon as a new ball was thrown into
the game, it was quickly passed around among the
fielders, and instead of being the lily-white thing
that left the umpire's hands, when it finally got
to the pitcher's box it was a very pronounced
brunette. But some eagle-eyed arbiter detected
this, and kept pouring new balls into the game
when the non-licorice chewers were at the bat,
while he saved the discolored ones for the consump-
tion of the masticators. It was another trick that
failed.
Frequently, backgrounds are tampered with if
the home club is notably weak at the bat. The
best background for a batter is a dull, solid green.
Many clubs have painted backgrounds in several
contrasting, broken colors so that the sunlight,
shining on them, blinds the batter. The Chicago
White Sox are said to have done this, and for many
years the figures showed that the batting of both
the Chicago players and the visitors at their park
was very light. The White Sox's hitting was weak
anywhere, so that the poor background was an
advantage to them.
Injuries have often upset the "inside" play of a
club. Usually a team's style revolves around one
Failures of the " Inside " Game 297
or two men, and the taking of them out of the
game destroys the whole machine. The substitute
does not think as quickly ; neither does he see and
grasp the opportunities as readily. This was true
of the Cubs last season. Chance and Evers used
to be the "inside" game of the team. Evers was
out of the game most of the summer and Chance
was struck in the head with a pitched ball and had
to quit. The playing of the Chicago team fell
down greatly as a result.
Chance is the sort of athlete who is likely to
get injured. When he was a catcher he was
always banged up because he never got out
of the way of anything. He is that kind of
player. If he has to choose between accepting
a pair of spikes in a vital part of his anatomy and
getting a put-out, or dodging the spikes and
losing the put-out, he always takes the put-out
and usually the spikes. He never dodges away
from a ball when at bat that may possibly break
over the plate and cost him a strike. That is why
he was hit in the head. He lingered too long to
ascertain whether the ball was going to curve and
found out that it was not, which put him out
of the game, the Cubs practically out of the
298 Pitching in a Pinch
pennant race, and broke up their "inside"
play.
Roger Bresnahan is the same kind of a man. He
thinks quickly, and is a brilliant player, but he
never dodges anything. He is often hurt as a
result. Once, when he was with the Giants, he
was hit in the face with a pitched ball, and Mc-
Graw worried while he was laid up, for fear that
it would make him bat shy. After he came back,
he was just as friendly with the plate as ever. The
injury of men like Chance and Bresnahan, whose
services are of such vital importance to the "inside"
play of a team, destroys the effectiveness of the
club.
Once, in 1908, when we were fighting the Cubs
for the pennant at every step, McGraw planned
a bunting game against Overall, who is big and not
very fast in covering the little rollers. Bresnahan
and O'Day had been having a serial argument
through two games, and Roger, whose nerves
were worn to a frazzle, like those of the rest of us
at that time, thought "Hank" had been shading
his judgment slightly toward the Cubs. In
another story I have pointed out that O'Day, the
umpire, was stubborn and that nothing could be
Failures of the " Inside " Game 299
gained by continually picking on him. When
the batteries were announced for that game,
McGraw said as the team went to the field:
"We can beat this guy Overall by bunting."
Bresnahan went out to put on his chest pro-
tector and shin guards. O'Day happened to be
adjusting his makeup near him. Roger could not
resist the temptation.
"Why don't you put on a Chicago uniform,
'Hank', instead of those duds?" he asked. "Is
it true, if the Cubs win the pennant, they 've
promised to elect you alderman in Chicago?"
"Get out of the game and off the field," said
O'Day.
Bresnahan had to obey the injunction and Need-
ham, the only other available catcher, went
behind the mat. "Tom" Needham never beat
out a bunt in his life, and he destroyed all Mc-
Graw's plans because, with him in the game in-
stead of Bresnahan, the style had to be switched.
We lost. Bresnahan, a fast man and a good bunter
batted third and would have been valuable in
the attack best adapted to beat Overall. But his
sudden demise and the enforced substitution of
the plodding Needham ruined the whole plan of
300 Pitching in a Pinch
campaign. Therefore, frequently umpires upset
a team's "inside" game.
One of McGraw's schemes back-fired on him
when Luderus, the hard-hitting Philadelphia first
baseman, broke into the League. Some one had
tipped "Mac" off, and tipped him wrong, that this
youngster could be disconcerted in a pinch by the
catcher discussing signs and what-not with him,
thus distracting his attention.
"Chief," said McGraw before the game, "if
this Luderus gets up in a tight place, slip him a
little talk."
The situation came, and Meyers obeyed instruc-
tions. The game was in Philadelphia, and three
men were on the bases with two out. Ames was
pitching.
"What are you bringing the bat up with you
for?" asked the "Chief" as Luderus arranged
himself at the plate.
No answer.
Then Meyers gave Ames his sign. Next he
fixed his fingers in a fake signal and addressed the
young batter.
"The best hitters steal signs, " said the "Chief. "
"Just look down in my glove and see the signals. "
Failures of the "Inside" Game 301
But Luderus was not caught and kept his eyes
glued on Ames. He hit the next ball over the right
field wall and won the game. As he crossed the
plate, he said to the "Chief":
" It 's too easy. I don't need your signs. They
pulled that one on me in the bushes long ago."
"After this, when that fellow bats," said Mc-
Graw to Meyers later, "do as exact an imitation
of the sphinx as you know how. The tip was no
good."
The trick of talking to the hitter is an old one.
The idea is for the catcher to give a wrong sign,
for his benefit, after having flashed the right one,
induce the batter, usually a youngster, to look
down at it, and then have the pitcher shoot one
over the plate while he is staring in the glove.
"Steve" Evans, the St. Louis right-fielder, tells
a story of a fan who sat in the same box at the
Cardinals' park every day and devoted most of
his time to roasting him (S. Evans). His favorite
expressions in connection with Evans were "bone
dead," "wooden head," and so on. He loudly
claimed that "Steve" had no knowledge of the
game and spoiled every play that Bresnahan tried
to put through. One day, when the Giants were
302 Pitching in a Pinch
playing in St. Louis, some one knocked up a high
foul which landed in this orator's box. He saw
it coming, tried to dodge, used poor judgment, and,
realizing that the ball was going to strike him,
snatched his hat off, and took it full on an im-
modestly bald head. ' ' Steve ' ' Evans was waiting
to go to the bat. He shifted his chew to his other
cheek and exclaimed in a voice that could not
have been heard more than two miles away:
"That 's the 'gink* who has been calling me a
'bone head.'"
"Steve" got a great laugh from the crowd, but
right there the St. Louis club lost a patron, for
the bald-headed one has never been seen at the
grounds since, according to Evans, and his obitu-
ary has not been printed yet, either.
"Al" Bridwell, formerly the Giants' shortstop,
was one of the cleverest men at the "inside"
game that ever broke into the Big Leagues, and
it was this that made him valuable. Then suddenly
his legs went bad, and he slowed up. It was
his speed and his ability to bunt and his tireless
waiting at the plate to make all toilers in the box
pitch that had made him a great player. He
seldom swung at a bad ball. As soon as he slowed
Failures of the " Inside " Game 303
up, McGraw knew he would have to go if the
Giants were to win the pennant. He deeply
regretted letting the gritty, little shortstop, whose
legs had grown stiff in his service, leave the club,
but sentiment never won any pennants.
"Al," he said to Bridwell, "I f m going to let
you go to Boston. Your legs will be all right
eventually, but I Ve got to have a fast man now
while you are getting back your old speed. "
"That's all right, 'Mac,' " replied Bridwell.
" It 's all part of the game. "
He did not rave and swear that he had been
double-crossed, as many players do under the
same circumstances. I never heard Bridwell
swear, and I never found any one else who did.
He had been playing for weeks, when every time
he moved it pained him, because he thought he
might have a share of the money that winning a
pennant would mean. It was a staggering blow
to him, this sending him from a pennant possibility
to a hopeless tail-ender, but he took it gamely.
"I guess I was 'gumming' the inside stuff," he
said.
And he did get some of the prize money. The
boys voted him a share.
304 Pitching in a Pinch
It will be seen that the "inside " game sometimes
fails. Many a time I have passed a catcher or
good batter to take a chance on a pitcher, and then
have had him make a hit just when hits were not
at all welcome. I walked a catcher once and had
the pitcher shove the ball over first base for a
single, when he closed his eyes and dodged back
in an effort to get his head out of the line he
thought it was pursuing before it curved. In
ducking, he got his bat in front of the ball, a
result he had never obtained with his eyes open.
Once I started to pass "Hans" Wagner in a
pinch to take a chance on the next batter, and
was a little careless in throwing the ball too close
to the plate. He reached out and slapped it for
a single. Again the "inside" game had failed.
Speaking pretty generally, most managers prefer
to use this "inside" game, though, and there are
few vacancies in the Big Leagues right now for the
man who is liable to steal second with the bases full.
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