Part 10

"There is no luck in Big League baseball. In a schedule of one hundred and fifty-four games, the lucky and unlucky plays break about even, except in the matter of injuries."

But Mack's theory does not include a schedule of one hundred and fifty-five games, with the result depending on the one hundred and fifty-fifth. Chicago had a lot of injured athletes early in the season of 1908, and the Giants had shot out ahead in the race in grand style. In the meantime the Cubs' cripples began to recuperate, and that lamentable event on September 23 seemed to be the turning-point in the Giants' fortunes.

Almost within a week afterwards, Bresnahan had an attack of sciatic rheumatism and "Mike" Donlin was limping about the outfield, leading a great case of "Charley horse." Tenney was bandaged from his waist down and should have been wearing crutches instead of playing first base on a Big League club. Doyle was badly spiked and in the hospital. McGraw's daily greeting to his athletes when he came to the park was:

"How are the cripples? Any more to add to the list of identified dead to-day?"

Merkle moped. He lost flesh, and time after time begged McGraw to send him to a minor league or to turn him loose altogether.

"It wasn't your fault," was the regular response of the manager who makes it a habit to stand by his men.

We played on with the cripples, many double-headers costing the pitchers extra effort, and McGraw not daring to take a chance on losing a game if there were any opportunity to win it. He could not rest any of his men. Merkle lost weight and seldom spoke to the other players as the Cubs crept up on us day after day and more men were hurt. He felt that he was responsible for this change in the luck of the club. None of the players felt this way toward him, and many tried to cheer him up, but he was inconsolable. The team went over to Philadelphia, and Coveleski, the pitcher we later drove out of the League, beat us three times, winning the last game by the scantiest of margins. The result of that series left us three to play with Boston to tie the Cubs if they won from Pittsburg the next day, Sunday. If the Pirates had taken that Sunday game, it would have given them the pennant. We returned to New York on Saturday night very much downhearted.

"Lose me. I'm the jinx," Merkle begged McGraw that night.

"You stick," replied the manager.

While we had been losing, the Cubs had been coming fast. It seemed as if they could not drop a game. At last Cincinnati beat them one, which was the only thing that made the famous season tie possible. There is an interesting anecdote connected with that Cincinnati contest which goes to prove the honesty of baseball. Two of the closest friends in the game are "Hans" Lobert, then with the Reds, and Overall, the former Chicago pitcher. It looked as if Chicago had the important game won up to the ninth inning when Lobert came to the bat with two men out and two on the bases. Here he had a chance to overcome the lead of one run which the Cubs had gained, and win the contest for the home club, but he would beat his best friend and maybe put the Cubs out of the running for the pennant.

Lobert had two balls and two strikes when he smashed the next pitch to center field, scoring both the base runners. The hit came near beating the Cubs out of the championship. It would have if we had taken one of those close games against Philadelphia. Lobert was broken-hearted over his hit, for he wanted the Cubs to win. On his way to the clubhouse, he walked with Overall, the two striding side by side like a couple of mourners.

"I'm sorry, 'Orvie,'" said Lobert. "I would not have made that hit for my year's salary if I could have helped it."

"That's all right, 'Hans,'" returned Overall. "It's all part of the game."

Next came the famous game in Chicago on Sunday between the Cubs and the Pittsburg Pirates, when a victory for the latter club would have meant the pennant and the big game would never have been played. Ten thousand persons crowded into the Polo Grounds that Sunday afternoon and watched a little electric score board which showed the plays as made in Chicago. For the first time in my life I heard a New York crowd cheering the Cubs with great fervor, for on their victory hung our only chances of ultimate success. The same man who was shouting himself hoarse for the Cubs that afternoon was for taking a vote on the desirability of poisoning the whole Chicago team on the following Thursday. Even the New York players were rooting for the Cubs.

The Chicago team at last won the game when Clarke was called out at third base on a close play, late in the contest. With the decision, the Pirates' last chance went glimmering. The Giants now had three games to win from Boston on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, to make the deciding game on Thursday necessary. We won those, and the stage was cleared for the big number.

The National Commission gave the New York club the option of playing three games out of five for the championship or risking it all on one contest. As more than half of the club was tottering on the brink of the hospital, it was decided that all hope should be hung on one game. By this time, Merkle had lost twenty pounds, and his eyes were hollow and his cheeks sunken. The newspapers showed him no mercy, and the fans never failed to criticise and hiss him when he appeared on the field. He stuck to it and showed up in the ball park every day, putting on his uniform and practising. It was a game thing to do. A lot of men, under the same fire, would have quit cold. McGraw was with him all the way.

But it was not until after considerable discussion that it was decided to play that game. All the men felt disgruntled because they believed they would be playing for something they had already won. Even McGraw was so wrought up, he said in the clubhouse the night before the game:

"I don't care whether you fellows play this game or not. You can take a vote."

A vote was taken, and the players were not unanimous, some protesting it ought to be put up to the League directors so that, if they wanted to rob the team of a pennant, they would have to take the blame. Others insisted it would look like quitting, and it was finally decided to appoint a committee to call upon Mr. Brush, the president of the club, who was ill in bed in the Lambs club at the time. Devlin, Bresnahan, Donlin, Tenney, and I were on that committee.

"Mr. Brush," I said to my employer, having been appointed the spokesman, "McGraw has left it up to us to decide whether we shall meet the Chicago team for the championship of the National League to-morrow. A lot of the boys do not believe we ought to be forced to play over again for something we have already won, so the players have appointed this committee of five to consult with you and get your opinion on the subject. What we decide goes with them."

Mr. Brush looked surprised. I was nervous, more so than when I am in the box with three on the bases and "Joe" Tinker at the bat. Bresnahan fumbled with his hat, and Devlin coughed. Tenney leaned more heavily on his cane, and Donlin blew his nose. We five big athletes were embarrassed in the presence of this sick man. Suddenly it struck us all at the same time that the game would have to be played to keep ourselves square with our own ideas of courage. Even if the Cubs had claimed it on a technicality, even if we had really won the pennant once, that game had to be played now. We all saw that, and it was this thin, ill man in bed who made us see it even before he had said a word. It was the expression on his face. It seemed to say, "And I had confidence in you, boys, to do the right thing."

"I'm going to leave it to you," he answered "You boys can play the game or put it up to the directors of the League to decide as you want. But I shouldn't think you would stop now after making all this fight."

The committee called an executive session, and we all thought of the crowd of fans looking forward to the game and of what the newspapers would say if we refused to play it and of Mr. Brush lying there, the man who wanted us to play, and it was rapidly and unanimously decided to imitate "Steve" Brodie and take a chance.

"We'll play," I said to Mr. Brush.

"I'm glad," he answered. "And, say, boys," he added, as we started to file out, "I want to tell you something. Win or lose, I'm going to give the players a bonus of $10,000."

That night was a wild one in New York. The air crackled with excitement and baseball. I went home, but couldn't sleep for I live near the Polo Grounds, and the crowd began to gather there early in the evening of the day before the game to be ready for the opening of the gates the next morning. They tooted horns all night, and were never still. When I reported at the ball park, the gates had been closed by order of the National Commission, but the streets for blocks around the Polo Grounds were jammed with persons fighting to get to the entrances.

The players in the clubhouse had little to say to one another, but, after the bandages were adjusted, McGraw called his men around him and said:

"Chance will probably pitch Pfiester or Brown. If Pfiester works there is no use trying to steal. He won't give you any lead. The right-handed batters ought to wait him out and the left-handers hit him when he gets in a hole. Matty is going to pitch for us."

Pfiester is a left-hand pitcher who watches the bases closely.

Merkle had reported at the clubhouse as usual and had put on his uniform. He hung on the edge of the group as McGraw spoke, and then we all went to the field. It was hard for us to play that game with the crowd which was there, but harder for the Cubs. In one place, the fence was broken down, and some employees were playing a stream of water from a fire hose on the cavity to keep the crowd back. Many preferred a ducking to missing the game and ran through the 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.