Part 2

If a pitcher is going to talk to a batter, he must size up his man. An irritable, nervous young player often will fall for the conversation, but most seasoned hitters will not answer back. The Athletics, other than Bender, will not talk in a game. We tried to get after them in the first contest in 1911, and we could not get a rise out of one of them, except when Snodgrass spiked Baker, and I want to say right here that this much discussed incident was accidental. Baker was blocking Snodgrass out, and the New York player had a perfect right to the base line.

Sherwood Magee of the Philadelphia National League team is one of the hardest batters that I ever have had to face, because he has a great eye, and is of the type of free swingers who take a mad wallop at the ball, and are always liable to break up a game with a long drive. Just once I talked to him when he was at the bat, more because we were both worked up than for any other reason, and he came out second best. It was while the Giants were playing at American League Park in 1911 after the old Polo Grounds had burned. Welchonce, who was the centre-fielder for the Phillies at the time, hit a slow one down the first base line, and I ran over to field the ball. I picked it up as the runner arrived and had no time to straighten up to dodge him. So I struck out my shoulder and he ran into it. There was no other way to make the play, but I guess it looked bad from the stand, because Welchonce fell down.

Magee came up to bat next, threw his hat on the ground, and started to call me names. He is bad when irritated--and tolerably easy to irritate, as shown by the way in which he knocked down Finnegan, the umpire, last season because their ideas on a strike differed slightly. I replied on that occasion, but remembered to keep the ball away from the centre of the plate. That is about all I did do, but he was more wrought up than I and hit only a slow grounder to the infield. He was out by several feet. He took a wild slide at the bag, however, feet first, in what looked like an attempt to spike Merkle. We talked some more after that, but it has all been forgotten now.

To be a successful pitcher in the Big League, a man must have the head and the arm. When I first joined the Giants, I had what is known as the "old round-house curve," which is no more than a big, slow outdrop. I had been fooling them in the minor leagues with it, and I was somewhat chagrined when George Davis, then the manager of the club, came to me and told me to forget the curve, as it would be of no use. It was then that I began to develop my drop ball.

A pitcher must watch all the time for any little unconscious motion before he delivers the ball. If a base runner can guess just when he is going to pitch, he can get a much better start. Drucke used to have a little motion with his foot just before he pitched, of which he himself was entirely unconscious, but the other clubs got on to it and stole bases on him wildly. McGraw has since broken him of it.

The Athletics say that I make a motion peculiar to the fade-away. Some spit-ball pitchers announce when they are going to throw a moist one by looking at the ball as they dampen it. At other times, when they "stall," they do not look at the ball. The Big League batter is watching for all these little things and, if a pitcher is not careful, he will find a lot of men who are hard to pitch to. There are plenty anyway, and, as a man grows older, this number increases season by season.

II

"Take Him Out"

_Many a Pitcher's Heart has been Broken by the Cry from the Stands, "Take Him Out"--Russell Ford of the New York Yankees was Once Beaten by a Few Foolish Words Whispered into the Batter's Ear at a Critical Moment--Why "Rube" Marquard Failed for Two Years to be a Big Leaguer--The Art of Breaking a Pitcher into Fast Company._

A pitcher is in a tight game, and the batter makes a hit. Another follows and some fan back in the stand cries in stentorian tones:

"Take him out!"

It is the dirge of baseball which has broken the hearts of pitchers ever since the game began and will continue to do so as long as it lives. Another fan takes up the shout, and another, and another, until it is a chorus.

"Take him out! Take him out! Take him out!"

The pitcher has to grin, but that constant cry is wearing on nerves strung to the breaking point. The crowd is against him, and the next batter hits, and a run scores. The manager stops the game, beckons to the pitcher from the bench, and he has to walk away from the box, facing the crowd--not the team--which has beaten him. It is the psychology of baseball.

Some foolish words once whispered into the ear of a batter by a clever manager in the crisis of one of the closest games ever played in baseball turned the tide and unbalanced a pitcher who had been working like a perfectly adjusted machine through seven terrific innings. That is also the "psychology of pitching." The man wasn't beaten because he weakened, because he lost his grip, because of any physical deficiency, but because some foolish words--words that meant nothing, had nothing to do with the game--had upset his mental attitude.

The game was the first one played between the Giants and the Yankees in the post-season series of 1910, the batter was Bridwell, the manager was John McGraw, and the pitcher, Russell Ford of the Yankees. The cast of characters having been named, the story may now enter the block.

Spectators who recall the game will remember that the two clubs had been battling through the early innings with neither team able to gain an advantage, and the Giants came to bat for the eighth inning with the score a tie. Ford was pitching perfectly with all the art of a master craftsman. Each team had made one run. I was the first man up and started the eighth inning with a single because Ford slackened up a little against me, thinking that I was not dangerous. Devore beat out an infield hit, and Doyle bunted and was safe, filling the bases. Then Ford went to work. He struck out Snodgrass, and Hemphill caught Murray's fly far too near the infield to permit me to try to score. It looked as if Ford were going to get out of the hole when "Al" Bridwell, the former Giant shortstop, came to the bat. Ford threw him two bad balls, and then McGraw ran out from the bench, and, with an autocratic finger, held up the game while he whispered into Bridwell's ear.

"Al" nodded knowingly, and the whole thing was a pantomime, a wordless play, that made _Sumurun_ look like a bush-league production. Bridwell stepped back into the batter's box, and McGraw returned to the bench. On the next pitch, "Al" was hit in the leg and went to first base, forcing the run that broke the tie across the plate. That run also broke Ford's heart. And here is what McGraw whispered into the attentive ear of Bridwell:

"How many quail did you say you shot when you were hunting last fall, Al?"

John McGraw, the psychologist, baseball general and manager, had heard opportunity knock. With his fingers on the pulse of the game, he had felt the tenseness of the situation, and realized, all in the flash of an eye, that Ford was wabbling and that anything would push him over. He stopped the game and whispered into Bridwell's ear while Ford was feeling more and more the intensity of the crisis. He had an opportunity to observe the three men on the bases. He wondered what McGraw was whispering, what trick was to be expected. Was he telling the batter to get hit? Yes, he must be. Then he did just that--hit the batter, and lost the game.

Why can certain pitchers always beat certain clubs and why do they look like bush leaguers against others? To be concrete, why can Brooklyn fight Chicago so hard and look foolish playing against the Giants? Why can the Yankees take game after game from Detroit and be easy picking for the Cleveland club in most of their games? Why does Boston beat Marquard when he can make the hard Philadelphia hitters look like blind men with bats in their hands? Why could I beat Cincinnati game after game for two years when the club was filled with hard hitters? It is the psychology of baseball, the mental attitudes of the players, some intangible thing that works on the mind. Managers are learning to use this subtle, indescribable element which is such a factor.

The great question which confronts every Big League manager is how to break a valuable young pitcher into the game. "Rube" Marquard came to the Giants in the fall of 1908 out of the American Association heralded as a world-beater, with a reputation that shimmered and shone. The newspapers were crowded with stories of the man for whom McGraw had paid $11,000, who had been standing them on their heads in the West, who had curves that couldn't be touched, and was a bargain at the unheard-of price paid for him.

"Rube" Marquard came to the Giants in a burst of glory and publicity when the club was fighting for the pennant. McGraw was up against it for pitchers at that time, and one win, turned in by a young pitcher, might have resulted in the Giants winning the pennant as the season ended.

"Don't you think Marquard would win? Can't you put him in?" Mr. Brush, the owner of the club, asked McGraw one day when he was discussing the pitching situation with the manager.

"I don't know," answered McGraw. "If he wins his first time out in the Big Leagues, he will be a world-beater, and, if he loses, it may cost us a good pitcher." But Mr. Brush was insistent. Here a big price had been paid for a pitcher with a record, and pitchers were what the club needed. The newspapers declared that the fans should get a look at this "$11,000 beauty" in action. A double header was scheduled to be played with the Cincinnati club in the month of September, in 1908, and the pitching staff was gone. McGraw glanced over his collection of crippled and worked-out twirlers. Then he saw "Rube" Marquard, big and fresh.

"Go in and pitch," he ordered after Marquard had warmed up.

McGraw always does things that way, makes up his mind about the most important matters in a minute and then stands by his judgment. Marquard went into the box, but he didn't pitch much. He has told me about it since.

"When I saw that crowd, Matty," he said, "I didn't know where I was. It looked so big to me, and they were all wondering what I was going to do, and all thinking that McGraw had paid $11,000 for me, and now they were to find out whether he had gotten stuck, whether he had picked up a gold brick with the plating on it very thin. I was wondering, myself, whether I would make good."

What Marquard did that day is a matter of record, public property, like marriage and death notices. Kane, the little rightfielder on the Cincinnati club, was the first man up, and, although he was one of the smallest targets in the league, Marquard hit him. He promptly stole second, which worried "Rube" some more. Up came Lobert, the man who broke Marquard's heart.

"Now we'll see," said Lobert to "Rube," as he advanced to the plate, "whether you're a busher." Then Lobert, the tantalizing Teuton with the bow-legs, whacked out a triple to the far outfield and stopped at third with a mocking smile on his face which would have gotten the late Job's goat.

"You're identified," said "Hans"; "you're a busher."

Some fan shouted the fatal "Take him out." Marquard was gone. Bescher followed with another triple, and, after that, the official scorer got writer's cramp trying to keep track of the hits and runs. The number of hits, I don't think, ever was computed with any great amount of exactitude. Marquard was taken out of the box in the fifth inning, and he was two years recovering from the shock of that beating. McGraw had put him into the game against his better judgment, and he paid for it dearly.

Marquard had to be nursed along on the bench finishing games, starting only against easy clubs, and learning the ropes of the Big Leagues before he was able to be a winning pitcher. McGraw was a long time realizing on his investment. All Marquard needed was a victory, a decisive win, over a strong club.

The Giants played a disastrous series with the Philadelphia club early in July, 1911, and lost four games straight. All the pitchers were shot to pieces, and the Quakers seemed to be unbeatable. McGraw was at a loss for a man to use in the fifth game. The weather was steaming hot, and the players were dragged out, while the pitching staff had lost all its starch. As McGraw's eye scanned his bedraggled talent, Marquard, reading his thoughts, walked up to him.

"Give me a chance," he asked.

"Go in," answered McGraw, again making up his mind on the spur of the moment. Marquard went into the game and made the Philadelphia batters, whose averages had been growing corpulent on the pitching of the rest of the staff, look foolish. There on that sweltering July afternoon, when everything steamed in the blistering heat, a pitcher was being born again. Marquard had found himself, and, for the rest of the season, he was strongest against the Philadelphia team, for it had been that club which restored his confidence.

There is a sequel to that old Lobert incident, too. In one of the last series in Philadelphia, toward the end of the season, Marquard and Lobert faced each other again. Said Marquard:

"Remember the time, you bow-legged Dutchman, when you asked me whether I was a busher? Here is where I pay you back. This is the place where you get a bad showing up."

And he fanned Lobert--whiff! whiff! whiff!--like that. He became the greatest lefthander in the country, and would have been sooner, except for the enormous price paid for him and the widespread publicity he received, which caused him to be over-anxious to make good. It's the psychology of the game.

"You can't hit what you don't see," says "Joe" Tinker of Marquard's pitching. "When he throws his fast one, the only way you know it's past you is because you hear the ball hit the catcher's glove."

Fred Clarke, of the Pittsburg club, was up against the same proposition when he purchased "Marty" O'Toole for $22,500 in 1911. The newspapers of the country were filled with figures and pictures of the real estate and automobiles that could be bought with the same amount of money, lined up alongside of pictures of O'Toole, as when the comparative strengths of the navies of the world are shown by placing different sizes of battleships in a row, or when the length of the _Lusitania_ is emphasized by printing a picture of it balancing gracefully on its stern alongside the Singer Building.

Clarke realized that he had all this publicity with which to contend, and that it would do his expensive new piece of pitching bric-a-brac no good. O'Toole, jerked out of a minor league where he had been pitching quietly, along with his name in ten or a dozen papers, was suddenly a national figure, measuring up in newspaper space with Roosevelt and Taft and J. Johnson.

When O'Toole joined the Pirates near the end of the season, Clarke knew down in his heart the club had no chance of winning the pennant with Wagner hurt, although he still publicly declared he was in the race. He did not risk jumping O'Toole right into the game as soon as he reported and taking the chance of breaking his heart. Opposing players, if they are up in the pennant hunt, are hard on a pitcher of this sort and would lose no opportunity to mention the price paid for him and connect it pointedly with his showing, if that showing was a little wobbly. Charity begins at home, and stays there, in the Big Leagues. At least, I never saw any of it on the ball fields, especially if the club is in the race, and the only thing that stands between it and a victory is the ruining of a $22,500 pitcher of a rival.

Clarke nursed O'Toole along on the bench for a couple of weeks until he got to be thoroughly acclimated, and then he started him in a game against Boston, the weakest club in the league, after he had sent for Kelly, O'Toole's regular catcher, to inspire more confidence. O'Toole had an easy time of it at his Big League debut, for the Boston players did not pick on him any to speak of, as they were not a very hard bunch of pickers. The Pittsburg team gave him a nice comfortable, cosy lead, and he was pitching along ahead of the game all the way. In the fifth or sixth inning Clarke slipped Gibson, the regular Pittsburg catcher, behind the bat, and O'Toole had won his first game in the Big League before he knew it. He then reasoned I have won here. I belong here. I can get along here. It isn't much different from the crowd I came from, except for the name, and that's nothing to get timid about if I can clean up as easily as I did to-day.

Fred Clarke, also a psychologist and baseball manager, had worked a valuable pitcher into the League, and he had won his first game. If he had started him against some club like the Giants, for instance, where he would have had to face a big crowd and the conversation and spirit of players who were after a pennant and hot after it, he might have lost and his heart would have been broken. Successfully breaking into the game an expensive pitcher, who has cost a club a large price, is one of the hardest problems which confronts a manager. Now O'Toole is all right if he has the pitching goods. He has taken his initial plunge, and all he has to do is to make good next year. The psychology element is eliminated from now on.

I have been told that Clarke was the most relieved man in seven counties when O'Toole came through with that victory in Boston.

"I had in mind all the time," said Fred, "what happened to McGraw when he was trying to introduce Marquard into the smart set, and I was afraid the same thing would happen to me. I had a lot of confidence in the nerve of that young fellow though, because he stood up well under fire the first day he got into Pittsburg. One of those lady reporters was down to the club offices to meet him the morning he got into town, and they always kind of have me, an old campaigner, stepping away from the plate. She pulled her pad and pencil on Marty first thing, before he had had a chance to knock the dirt out of his cleats, and said:

"'Now tell me about yourself.'

"He stepped right into that one, instead of backing away.

"'What do you want me to tell?' he asks her.

"Then I knew he was all right. He was there with the 'come-back.'"

But the ideal way to break a star into the Big League is that which marked the entrance of Grover Cleveland Alexander, of the Philadelphia club. The Cincinnati club had had its eye on Alexander for some time, but "Tacks" Ashenbach, the scout, now dead, had advised against him, declaring that he would be no good against "regular batters." Philadelphia got him at the waiver price and he was among the lot in the newspapers marked "Those who also joined." He started out in 1911 and won two or three games before anyone paid any attention to him. Then he kept on winning until one manager was saying to another:

"That guy, Alexander, is a hard one to beat."

He had won ten or a dozen games before it was fully realized that he was a star. Then he was so accustomed to the Big League he acted as if he had been living in it all his life, and there was no getting on his nerves. When he started, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. If he didn't last, the newspapers wouldn't laugh at him, and the people wouldn't say:

"$11,000, or $22,500, for a lemon." That's the dread of all ball players.

Such is the psychology of introducing promising pitchers into the Big Leagues. The Alexander route is the ideal one, but it's hard to get stars now without paying enormous prices for them. Philadelphia was lucky.

There is another element which enters into all forms of athletics. Tennis players call it nervousness, and ball players, in the frankness of the game, call it a "yellow streak." It is the inability to stand the gaff, the weakening in the pinches. It is something ingrained in a man that can't be cured. It is the desire to quit when the situation is serious. It is different from stage fright, because a man may get over that, but a "yellow streak" is always with him. When a new player breaks into the League, he is put to the most severe test by the other men to see if he is "yellow." If he is found wanting, he is hopeless in the Big League, for the news will spread, and he will receive no quarter. It is the cardinal sin in a ball player.

For some time after "Hans" Wagner's poor showing in the world's series of 1903, when the Pittsburg club was defeated for the World's Championship by the Boston American League club, it was reported that he was "yellow." This grieved the Dutchman deeply, for I don't know a ball player in either league who would assay less quit to the ton than Wagner. He is always there and always fighting. Wagner felt the inference which his team mates drew very keenly. This was the real tragedy in Wagner's career. Notwithstanding his stolid appearance, he is a sensitive player, and this hurt him more than anything else in his life ever has.

When the Pittsburg club played Detroit in 1909 for the championship of the world, many, even of Wagner's admirers, said, "The Dutchman will quit." It was in this series he vindicated himself. His batting scored the majority of the Pittsburg runs, and his fielding was little short of wonderful. He was demonstrating his gameness. Many men would have quit under the reflection. They would have been unable to withstand the criticism, but not Wagner.

Many persons implied that John Murray, the rightfielder on the Giants, was "yellow" at the conclusion of the 1911 world's series because, after batting almost three hundred in the season, he did not get a hit in the six games. But there isn't a man on the team gamer. He hasn't any nerves. He's one of the sort of ball players who says:

"Well, now I've got my chew of tobacco in my mouth. Let her go."

There is an interesting bit of psychology connected with Wagner and the spit-ball. It comes as near being Wagner's "groove" as any curve that has found its way into the Big Leagues. This is explained by the fact that the first time Wagner ever faced "Bugs" Raymond he didn't get a hit with Arthur using the spitter. Consequently the report went around the circuit that Wagner couldn't hit the spit-ball. He disproved this theory against two or three spit-ball pitchers, but as long as Raymond remained in the League he had it on the hard-hitting Dutchman.

"Here comes a 'spitter,' Hans. Look out for it," Raymond would warn Wagner, with a wide grin, and then he would pop up a wet one.

"Guess I'll repeat on that dose, Hans; you didn't like that one."

And Wagner would get so worked up that he frequently struck out against "Bugs" when the rest of his club was hitting the eccentric pitcher hard. It was because he achieved the idea on the first day he couldn't hit the spit-ball, and he wasn't able to rid his mind of the impression. Many fans often wondered why Raymond had it on Wagner, the man whose only "groove" is a base on balls. "Bugs" had the edge after that first day when Wagner lost confidence in his ability to hit the spit-ball as served by Raymond.