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 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 impression 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 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'll cut you in two!"
And he would not have hesitated to do it, either. That was part of the
game. But nowadays, if a player got the reputation of cutting men down and
putting star players out of the game intentionally, 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 clubhouse 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 wouldn't have slid," he
said.
"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 infielder 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 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 aren'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. Remember 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 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"
Hickman, 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.
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 steamroller 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 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 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
essentials 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.
"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, as he had already
definitely started for the plate.
"Tommy" Leach of the Pittsburg club was probably caught oftener 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 Bresnahan 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 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 be made back to the plate if the ball is thrown to second. This
form of the play is usually successful. Miller Huggins is one of the
hardest second basemen in the League to work it against successfully. 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 expected 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.
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 defensive 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 developed 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 1911, and it wasn'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 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 dead bridegroom, a dead father, and a dead best man, not to mention
three or four very dead ushers and a clergyman.
"Them new fangled 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 innings
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 pitching 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."
"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 intimidated by Sam's pinch-hitting reputation or something,
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
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 connecting
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 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 didn't hear you," replied Strang.
"Well, it's lucky you hit it where they weren'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 doesn't want
him to come in strong where the music is marked "rest," 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 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 1. 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" 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' 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."