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 attempted 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 eventually won the game by the score of 3 to 0. That
was once when passing a man to get a weak batter did not work.
I have always been against a twirler pitching himself out, when there is
no necessity for it, as so many youngsters do. They burn 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
assortment 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 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 I had on every ball. We were
playing at the Polo Grounds, and the Giants had the visitors beaten 2 to
0, 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 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 1, 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.
"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 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 Cincinnati 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'll bring Mike up, and we'll see what he can do."
I deliberately passed Hoblitzell without even 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. According 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 1911, 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 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 temperament of batters and pitchers in a pinch,
few persons realize that it was a little bit of carelessly placed
conversation belonging to "Chief" Bender, the Indian pitcher on the
Athletics, that did as much as anything to give the Giants the first game
in the 1911 world's series.
"Josh" Devore, the left-fielder 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 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 wasn'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,
steaming 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'll 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 unawares 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
baseman 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.
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 temperamental. "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 manager is never sure. He does
not know, when they come into the ball park, whether or not they are 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, goes back to the minors. A crack in the temperament 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.
"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 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 "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.
"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.
"'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 instruction 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 makeup ever since."
"I wish I'd known it last fall about the first of September," declared
McGraw.
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 umpires, 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 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 finger 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 better known by that appellation than by
his real name.
Brown beat the Giants a hard game one day in 1911, pitching against me. He
had a big curve, lots of speed, and absolute control. The Giants could
not touch him. Next day McGraw was out warming 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 the 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 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 Giant 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 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 permitted catchers like Kling and
Archer to make such great records as throwers. This pitcher can afford 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.