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 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 multitude 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 couldn't get anything on it.
"What's the matter, Rog?" I asked Bresnahan. "They won't break for me."
"It'll 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
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'll bet they stood outside the park all night to get in, only to be run
out before it started."
I forgot the crowd, forgot the fights, and didn't hear the howling after
the game started. I knew only one thing, and that was my curved ball
wouldn't break for me. It surprised me that the Cubs didn'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.
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'll 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 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 his speed. As the innings
dragged by, the spectators 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.
It was a glum lot of players in the clubhouse. Merkle came up to McGraw
and said:
"Mac, I've lost you one pennant. 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 newspapers
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.
X
When the Teams Are in Spring Training
_The Hardships of the Preliminary Practice in Limbering up Muscles
and Reducing Weight for the Big Campaign--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._
Spring training! The words probably remind 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.
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 greeting, "appearing with a show as the stout lady?
You'll have to take a lot of that off."
"Taking it off" meant running several miles every day so bundled up that
the Indiana agriculturist looked like the pictures published of "Old Doc"
Cook which showed him discovering the north pole. Ever since, Crandall's
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.
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. Thousands 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 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 themselves 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 profession--in
short, to become a Big Leaguer or go back to the bushes for good--have
already been 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 listening to that terse speech from McGraw,
for I know what it means. Nothing looms on the horizon 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 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,
Texas. My idea of no setting for a pleasure party is Marlin Springs,
Texas.
[Illustration: Photo by L. Van Oeyen, Cleveland, Ohio
Close Play at the Plate
This picture illustrates how easily the base runner, with his deceptive
slide, can get away from the catcher, who has the ball waiting for him. It
is always a hard decision for the umpire. Shown in the picture are, left
to right, Conroy of Washington, Umpire Evans, and Catcher Land of
Cleveland.]
The morning of the second day is always a pleasant occasion. The muscles
which have remained idle so long begin to rebel at the unaccustomed
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.
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 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, crestfallen 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 fellows, too,
trying to make good, and I have seen 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 McGraw had a lot
of young out-fielders, and some minor league magnate from Montreal came
into camp one day who liked "Steve's" action. McGraw 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
suddenly 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 didn'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 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 anything 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.
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 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 finding 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.
"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 mentioning him as the "$11,000 lemon," and imploring McGraw to
let him go to some club in exchange for a good capable bat boy.