Part 6

McGraw is always studying a pitcher, particularly a new one in the League. The St. Louis club had a young pitcher last fall, named Laudermilk, who was being tried out. He had a brother on the team. In his first game against the Giants, played in St. Louis, he held us to a few scattered hits and gave us a terrific battle, only losing the game because one of his fielders made a costly error behind him. The papers of St. Louis boosted him as another "Rube" Waddell. He was left-handed. McGraw laughed.

"All I want," he said, "is another crack at that Buttermilk after what I learned about him this afternoon. He can't control his curve, and all you fellows have got to do is wait for his fast one. He gave you that fight to-day because he had you all swinging at bad curve balls."

Laudermilk made another appearance against the Giants later, and he made his disappearance in that game in the fourth inning, when only one was out to be exact, after we had scored five runs off him by waiting for his fast one, according to McGraw's orders.

After winning the pennant in 1904 by sitting on the bench, keeping away from the coaching lines, and making every play himself, McGraw decided that his men were older and knew the game and that he would give them more rein in 1905. He appeared oftener on the coaching lines and attended more to the base runners than to the game as a whole. But in the crises he was the man who decided what was to be done. The club won the pennant that year and the world's championship. The players got very chesty immediately thereafter, and the buttons on their vests had to be shifted back to make room for the new measure. They knew the game and had won two pennants, besides a championship of the world.

So in the season of 1906 McGraw started with a team of veterans, and it was predicted that he would repeat. But these men, who knew the game, were making decisions for themselves because McGraw was giving them more liberty. The runners went wild on the bases and tried things at the wrong stages. They lost game after game. At last, after a particularly disastrous defeat one day, McGraw called his men together in the clubhouse and addressed them in this wise:

"Because you fellows have won two championships and beaten the Athletics is no reason for you all to believe that you are fit to write a book on how to play baseball. You are just running wild on the bases. You might as well not have a manager. Now don't any one try to pull anything without orders. We will begin all over again."

But it is hard to teach old ball-players new tricks, and several fines had to be imposed before the orders were obeyed. The club did not win the championship that year.

When McGraw won the pennant in 1911, he did it with a club of youngsters, many of them playing through their first whole season as regulars in the company. There were Snodgrass and Devore and Fletcher and Marquard. Every time a batter went to the plate, he had definite orders from the "bench" as to what he was to attempt--whether to take two, or lay the ball down, or swing, or work the hit and run. Each time that a man shot out from first base like a catapulted figure and slid into second, he had been ordered by McGraw to try to steal. If players protested against his judgment, his invariable answer was:

"Do what I tell you, and I'll take the blame for mistakes."

One of McGraw's laments is, "I wish I could be in three places at once."

I never heard him say it with such a ring to the words as after Snodgrass was touched out in the third game of the 1911 world's series, in the tenth inning, when his life might have meant victory in that game anyway. I have frequently referred to the incident in these stories, so most of my readers are familiar with the situation. Snodgrass was put out trying to get to third base on a short passed ball, after he had started back for second to recover some of the ground he had taken in too long a lead before the ball got to Lapp. McGraw's face took on an expression of agony as if he were watching his dearest friend die.

"If I could only have been there!" he said. "I wish I could be in three places at once."

He meant the bench, the first base coaching line, and the third base line. At this particular time he was giving the batters orders from the bench. It was one of those incidents which come up in a ball game and have to be decided in the drawing of a breath, so that a manager cannot give orders unless he is right on the spot.

It is my opinion that it is a big advantage to a team to have the manager on the bench rather than in the game. Frank Chance of the Chicago Cubs is a great leader, but I think he would be a greater one if he could find one of his mechanical ability to play first base, and he could sit on the bench as the director general. He is occupied with the duties of his position and often little things get by him. I believe that we beat the Cubs in two games in 1909 because Chance was playing first base instead of directing the game from the bench.

In the first contest Ames was pitching and Schlei catching. Now, Schlei was no three hundred hitter, but he was a good man in a pinch and looked like Wagner when compared to Ames as a swatter. Schlei came up to the bat with men on second and third bases, two out, and a chance to win or put us ahead if he could make a hit. The first time it happened, McGraw unfolded his arms and relaxed, which is a sign that he is conceding something for the time being.

"No use," he said. "All those runners are going to waste. We'll have to make another try in the next inning. They will surely pass Schlei to take a chance on Ames."

Then Overall, who was pitching, whistled a strike over the plate and McGraw's body tightened and the old lines around the mouth appeared. Here was a chance yet.

"They're going to let him hit," he cried joyfully.

Schlei made a base hit on the next pitch and scored both men. Almost the same thing happened later on in the season with men on second and third bases, and Raymond, another featherweight hitter, pitching. It struck me as being an oversight on the part of Chance on both occasions, probably because he was so busy with his own position and watching the players on the field that he didn't notice the pitcher was the next batter. He let Schlei hit each time, which probably cost him two games.

The Giants were playing St. Louis at the Polo Grounds in 1910, and I was pitching against Harmon. I held the Cardinals to one hit up to the ninth inning, and we had the game won by the score of 1 to 0, when their first batter in the ninth walked. Then, after two had been put out, another scratched a hit. It looked as if we still had the game won, since only one man was left to be put out and the runners were on first and second bases. Mowrey, the red-headed third baseman, came to the bat.

"Murray's playing too near centre field for this fellow," remarked McGraw to some of the players on the bench.

Hardly had he said it when Mowrey shoved a long fly to right field, which soared away toward the stand. Murray started to run with the ball. For a minute it looked as if he were going to get there, and then it just tipped his outstretched hands as it fell to the ground. It amounted to a three-base hit and won the game for the Cardinals by the score of 2 to 1.

"I knew it," said McGraw, one of whose many roles is as a prophet of evil. "Didn't I call the turn? I ought to have gone out there and stopped the game and moved Murray over. I blame myself for that hit."

That was a game in which the St. Louis batters made three hits and won it. It isn't the number of hits, so much as when they come, that wins ball games.

Frequently, McGraw will stop a game--bring it to a dead standstill--by walking out from the bench as the pitcher is about to wind up.

"Stop it a minute, Meyers," he will shout. "Pull Snodgrass in a little bit for this fellow."

The man interested in statistics would be surprised at how many times little moves of this sort have saved games. But for the McGraw system to be effective, he must have working for him a set of players who are taking the old look around for orders all the time. He has a way of inducing the men to keep their heads up which has worked very well. If a player has been slow or has not taken all the distance McGraw believes is possible on a hit, he often finds $10 less in his pay envelope at the end of the month. And the conversation on the bench at times, when men have made errors of omission, would not fit into any Sunday-school room.

During a game for the most part, McGraw is silent, concentrating his attention on the game, and the players talk in low tones, as if in church, discussing the progress of the contest. But let a player make a bad break, and McGraw delivers a talk to him that would have to be written on asbestos paper.

Arthur Wilson was coaching at third base in one of the games in a series played in Philadelphia the first part of September, 1911. There were barely enough pitchers to go around at the time, and McGraw was very careful to take advantage of every little point, so that nothing would be wasted. He feels that if a game is lost because the other side is better, there is some excuse, but if it goes because some one's head should be used for furniture instead of thinking baseball, it is like losing money that might have been spent. Fletcher was on second base when Meyers came to bat. The Indian pushed the ball to right field along the line. Fletcher came steaming around third base and could have rolled home safely, but Wilson, misjudging the hit, rushed out, tackled him, and threw him back on the bag. Even the plodding Meyers reached second on the hit and McGraw was boiling. He promptly sent a coacher out to relieve Wilson, and his oratory to the young catcher would have made a Billingsgate fishwife sore. We eventually won the game, but at this time there was only a difference of something like one, and it would have been a big relief to have seen that run which Wilson interrupted across the plate.

McGraw is always on Devore's hip because he often feels that this brilliant young player does not get as much out of his natural ability as he might. He is frequently listless, and, often, after a good hit, he will feel satisfied with himself and fan out a couple of times. So McGraw does all that he can to discourage this self-satisfaction. "Josh" is a great man in a pinch, for he hangs on like a bulldog, and instead of getting nervous, works the harder. If the reader will consult past history, he will note that it was a pinch hit by Devore which won the first world-series game, and one of his wallops, combined with a timely bingle by Crandall, was largely instrumental in bringing the second victory to the Giants. McGraw has made Devore the ball-player that he is by skilful handling.

The Giants were having a nip and tuck game with the Cubs in the early part of last summer, when Devore came to the bat in one of those pinches and shot a three bagger over third base which won the game. As he slid into third and picked himself up, feeling like more or less of a hero because the crowd was announcing this fact to him by prolonged cheers, McGraw said:

"Gee, you're a lucky guy. I wish I had your luck. You were shot full of horseshoes to get that one. When I saw you shut your eyes, I never thought you would hit it."

This was like pricking a bubble, and "Josh's" chest returned to its normal measure.

Marquard is another man whom McGraw constantly subjects to a conversational massage. Devore and Marquard room together on the road, and they got to talking about their suite at the hotel during a close game in Philadelphia one day. It annoys McGraw to hear his men discussing off-stage subjects during a critical contest, because it not only distracts their attention, but his and that of the other players.

"Ain't that room of ours a dandy, Rube?" asked Devore.

"Best in the lot," replied Marquard.

"It's got five windows and swell furniture," said Devore.

"Solid mahogany," said McGraw, who apparently had been paying no attention to the conversation. "That is, judging by some of the plays I have seen you two pull. Now can the conversation."

Devore went down into Cuba with the Giants, carrying quite a bank roll from the world's series, and the idea that he was on a picnic. He started a personally conducted tour of Havana on his first night there and we lost the game the next day, "Josh" overlooking several swell opportunities to make hits in pinches. In fact he didn't even get a foul.

"You are fined $25," said McGraw to him after the game.

"You can't fine me," said Devore. "I'm not under contract."

"Then you take the next boat home," replied the manager. "I didn't come down here to let a lot of coffee-colored Cubans show me up. You've got to either play ball or go home."

Devore made four hits the next day.

In giving his signs from the bench to the players, McGraw depends on a gesture or catch word. When "Dummy" Taylor, the deaf and dumb twirler, was with the club, all the players learned the deaf and dumb language. This medium was used for signing for a time, until smart ball players, like Evers and Leach, took up the study of it and became so proficient they could converse fluently on their fingers. But they were also great "listeners," and we didn't discover for some time that this was how they were getting our signs. Thereafter we only used the language for social purposes.

Evers and McGraw got into a conversation one day in the deaf and dumb language at long range and "Johnny" Evers threw a finger out of joint replying to McGraw in a brilliant flash of repartee.

Every successful manager is a distinct type. Each plays the game from the bench. "Connie" Mack gives his men more liberty than most. Chance rules for the most part with an iron hand. Bresnahan is ever spurring his men on. Chance changes his seat on the bench, and there is a double steal. "Connie" Mack uncrosses his legs, and the hit and run is tried.

Most managers transmit their signs by movements or words. Jennings is supposed to have hidden in his jumble of jibes some catch words.

The manager on the bench must know just when to change pitchers. He has to decide the exact time to send in a substitute hitter, when to install another base runner. All these decisions must be made in the "batting" of an eye. It takes quick and accurate judgment, and the successful manager must be right usually. That's playing the game from the bench.

VI

Coaching Good and Bad

_Coaching is Divided into Three Parts: Offensive, Defensive, and the Use of Crowds to Rattle Players--Why McGraw Developed Scientific Coaching--The Important Role a Coacher Plays in the Crisis of a Big League Ball Game when, on his Orders, Hangs Victory or Defeat._

Critical moments occur in every close ball game, when coaching may win or lose it. "That wasn't the stage for you to try to score," yelled John McGraw, the manager of the Giants, at "Josh" Devore, as the New York left-fielder attempted to count from second base on a short hit to left field, with no one out and the team one run behind in a game with the Pirates one day in 1911, when every contest might mean the winning or losing of the pennant.

"First time in my life I was ever thrown out trying to score from second on a base hit to the outfield," answered Devore, "and besides the coacher sent me in."

"I don't care," replied McGraw, "that was a two out play."

As a matter of fact, one of the younger players on the team was coaching at third base at the time and made an error of judgment in sending Devore home, of which an older head would not have been guilty. And the Pirates beat us by just that one run the coacher sacrificed. The next batter came through with an outfield fly which would have scored Devore from third base easily.

Probably no more wily general ever crouched on the coaching line at third base than John McGraw. His judgment in holding runners or urging them on to score is almost uncanny. Governed by no set rules himself, he has formulated a list of regulations for his players which might be called the "McGraw Coaching Curriculum." He has favorite expressions, such as "there are stages" and "that was a two out play," which mean certain chances are to be taken by a coacher at one point in a contest, while to attempt such a play under other circumstances would be nothing short of foolhardy.

With the development of baseball, coaching has advanced until it is now an exact science. For many years the two men who stood at first and third bases were stationed there merely to bullyrag and abuse the pitchers, often using language that was a disgrace to a ball field. When they were not busy with this part of their art, they handed helpful hints to the runners as to where the ball was and whether the second baseman was concealing it under his shirt (a favorite trick of the old days), while the pitcher pretended to prepare to deliver it. But as rules were made which strictly forbade the use of indecent language to a pitcher, and as the old school of clowns passed, coaching developed into a science, and the sentries stationed at first and third bases found themselves occupying important jobs.

For some time McGraw frowned down upon scientific coaching, until its value was forcibly brought home to him one day by an incident that occurred at the Polo Grounds, and since then he has developed it until his knowledge of advising base runners is the pinnacle of scientific coaching.

A few years ago, the Giants were having a nip and tuck struggle one day, when Harry McCormick, then the left-fielder, came to the plate and knocked the ball to the old centre-field ropes. He sped around the bases, and when he reached third, it looked as if he could roll home ahead of the ball. "Cy" Seymour was coaching and surprised everybody by rushing out and tackling McCormick, throwing him down and trying to force him back to third base. But big McCormick got the best of the struggle, scrambled to his feet, and finally scored after overcoming the obstacle that Seymour made. That run won the game.

"What was the matter with you, Cy?" asked McGraw as Seymour came to the bench after he had almost lost the game by his poor coaching.

"The sun got in my eyes, and I couldn't see the ball," replied Seymour.

"You'd better wear smoked glasses the next time you go out to coach," replied the manager. The batter was hitting the ball due east, and the game was being played in the afternoon, so Seymour had no alibi. From the moment "Cy" made that mistake, McGraw realized the value of scientific coaching, which means making the most of every hit in a game.

I have always held that a good actor with a knowledge of baseball would make a good coacher, because it is the acting that impresses a base runner, not the talking. More often than not, the conversation of a coacher, be it ever so brilliant, is not audible above the screeching of the crowd at critical moments. And I believe that McGraw is a great actor, at least of the baseball school.

The cheering of the immense crowds which attend ball games, if it can be organized, is a potent factor in winning or losing them. McGraw gets the most out of a throng by his clever acting. Did any patron of the Polo Grounds ever see him turn to the stands or make any pretence that he was paying attention to the spectators? Does he ever play to the gallery? Yet it is admitted that he can do more with a crowd, make it more malleable, than any other man in baseball to-day.

The attitude of the spectators makes a lot of difference to a ball club. A lackadaisical, half-interested crowd often results in the team playing slovenly ball, while a lively throng can inject ginger into the men and put the whole club on its toes. McGraw is skilled in getting the most out of the spectators without letting them know that he is doing it.

Did you ever watch the little manager crouching, immovable, at third base with a mitt on his hand, when the New York club goes to bat in the seventh inning two runs behind? The first hitter gets a base on balls. McGraw leaps into the air, kicks his heels together, claps his mitt, shouts at the umpire, runs in and pats the next batter on the back, and says something to the pitcher. The crowd gets it cue, wakes up and leaps into the air, kicking its heels together. The whole atmosphere inside the park is changed in a minute, and the air is bristling with enthusiasm. The other coacher, at first base, is waving his hands and running up and down the line, while the men on the bench have apparently gained new hope. They are moving about restlessly, and the next two hitters are swinging their bats in anticipation with a vigor which augurs ill for the pitcher. The game has found Ponce de Leon's fountain of youth, and the little, silent actor on the third base coaching line is the cause of the change.

"Nick" Altrock, the old pitcher on the Chicago White Sox, was one of the most skilful men at handling a crowd that the game has ever developed. As a pitcher, Altrock was largely instrumental in bringing a world's championship to the American League team in 1906, and, as a coacher, after his Big League pitching days were nearly done, he won many a game by his work on the lines in pinches. Baseball has produced several comedians, some with questionable ratings as humorists. There is "Germany" Schaefer of the Washington team, and there were "Rube" Waddell, "Bugs" Raymond and others, but "Nick" Altrock could give the best that the game has brought out in the way of comic-supplement players a terrible battle for the honors.

At the old south side park in Chicago, I have seen him go to the lines with a catcher's mitt and a first-baseman's glove on his hands and lead the untrained mob as skilfully as one of those pompadoured young men with a megaphone does the undergraduates at a college football game.

My experience as a pitcher has been that it is not the steady, unbroken flood of howling and yelling, with the incessant pounding of feet, that gets on the nerves of a ball-player, but the broken, rhythmical waves of sound or the constant reiteration of one expression. A man gets accustomed to the steady cheering. It becomes a part of the game and his surroundings, as much as the stands and the crowd itself are, and he does not know that it is there. Let the coacher be clever enough to induce a crowd to repeat over and over just one sentence such as "Get a hit," "Get a hit," and it wears on the steadiest nerves. Nick Altrock had his baseball chorus trained so that, by a certain motion of the arm, he could get the crowd to do this at the right moment.

But the science of latter-day coaching means much more than using the crowd. All coaching, like all Gaul and four or five other things, is divided into three parts, defensive coaching, offensive coaching and the use of the crowd. Offensive coaching means the handling of base runners, and requires quick and accurate judgment. The defensive sort is the advice that one player on the field gives another as to where to throw the ball, who shall take a hit, and how the base runner is coming into the bag. There is a sub-division of defensive coaching which might be called the illegitimate brand. It is giving "phoney" advice to a base runner by the fielders of the other side that may lead him, in the excitement of the moment, to make a foolish play. This style has developed largely in the Big Leagues in the last three or four years.