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 watching 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 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 1. 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.
"Curve ball," echoed Clarke. "He never had any curve that it didn'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
Pittsburg in 1903. The old pitcher was wise 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
that it is hard for a hitter to tell when and from where the ball is
coming. "Slim" Sallee of the St. Louis Nationals hasn'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 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 shooting the first ball, a fast
one, at his head to increase his 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 southpaws can keep a runner close to the bag because they are
facing first base when in a position to 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. If 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.
"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 impenetrable,
for there are seven clubs always looking for flaws in the manufacture, and
"every little movement has a meaning of its own."
V
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_
The 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 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 Bresnahan 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
responsibilities 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 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 19 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 McGraw 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 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" 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 hit
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 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 tear him apart. I have seen him take all sorts
of personal chances. He doesn'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 immediately 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 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 wasn'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 protesting 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. In the interim,
Adams had had an opportunity to warm up, and Clarke raised his arm and
ordered 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. Rockefeller 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 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 McGraw 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. 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, particularly a new one in the League.
The St. Louis club had a young pitcher last fall, named Laudermilk, 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
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 as a whole. But in the crises he was
the 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 clubhouse
and addressed them in this wise:
"Because you fellows have won two championships 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, 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 regulars 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'll 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 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 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 unfolded
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.