Christy Mathewson

“ Being a great ball-player is the gentle art of getting away with it.
Spectators often wonder why a pitcher wearies them with throwing over to the first base many times, when it is plain to see that he has no chance of catching his quarry. “Bill” Dahlen used to be one of the best men in the game for getting back in some way when on base, employing a straddle slide and just hooking the bag with his toe, leaving “a shoe-string to touch.” The result was that he was always handing the pitcher the laugh as he brushed himself off, for none can say Dahlen was not an immaculate ball-player. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it was the base running of the Giants that won the pennant for the club, then it was the coaching of McGraw, employing the speed of his men and his opportunities, which brought the championship to New York.
The first thing that every manager teaches his players now is to obey absolutely the orders of the coacher, and then he selects able men to give the advice. The brain of McGraw is behind each game the Giants play, and he plans every move, most of the hitters going to the plate with definite instructions from him as to what to try to do. ”

“ Each game has its own recognized standards of fairness. For instance, no tricks are tolerated in tennis, yet the baseball manager who can devise some scheme by which he disconcerts his opponents is considered a great leader. I was about to say that all is fair in love, war, and baseball, but will modify that too comprehensive statement by saying all is fair in love, war, and baseball except stealing signals dishonestly, which listens like another paradox. ”

“ The batter was hitting the ball due east, and the game was being played in the afternoon, so Seymour [Pg 121] 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have always been against a twirler pitching himself out, when there is no necessity for it, as so many youngsters do. They burn them through for eight innings and then, when the pinch comes, something is lacking. A pitcher must remember that there are eight other men in the game, drawing more or less salary to stop balls hit at them, and he must have confidence in them. Some pitchers will put all that they have on each ball. ”

“ 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, [Pg 36] 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.” ”

“ Know when you have a good lead and then never stop until you have hit the dirt.”
It is up to the pitcher as much as the catcher to stop base stealing, for once a club begins running wild on another, the bats might as well be packed up and the game conceded. Pitchers make a study of the individual runners and their styles of getting starts. In my mind, I know just how much of a lead every base runner in the National League can take on me with impunity. ”

“ In most Big League ball games, there comes an inning on which hangs victory or defeat. Certain intellectual fans call it the crisis; college professors, interested in the sport, have named it the psychological moment; Big League managers mention it as the “break,” and pitchers speak of the “pinch.”
This is the time when each team is straining every nerve either to win or to prevent defeat. The players and spectators realize that the outcome of the inning is of vital importance. And [Pg 55] in most of these pinches, the real burden falls on the pitcher. ”

“ And ball-players are always trying to kill this jinx, for, once he joins the club, all hope is gone. He dies hard, and many a good hat has been ruined in an effort to destroy him, as I have said before, because the wearer happened to be chewing tobacco when the jinx dropped around. But what’s a new hat against a losing streak or a batting slump?
Luck is a combination of confidence and getting the breaks. Ball-players get no breaks without confidence in themselves, and lucky omens inspire this confidence. ”

“ A man has to be a pretty smart ball player to dispense accurate information about others, because the Big Leaguers know their own “grooves” and are naturally trying to cover them up. Then a batter may be weak against one pitcher on a certain kind of a ball, and may whale the same sort of delivery, with a different twist to it, out of the lot against another.
That was the experience I had with “Ed” Delehanty, the famous slugger of the old Philadelphia National League team, who is now dead. ”

“ Personally I do not believe that Connie Mack’s players steal as much information as they get the credit for, but the reputation itself, if they never get a sign, is valuable. If a prizefighter is supposed to have a haymaking punch in his left hand, the other fellow is going to be constantly looking out for that left. If the players on a club have great reputations as signal stealers, their opponents are going to be on their guard all the time, which gives the team with the reputation just that much advantage. If a pitcher has a reputation, he has the percentage on the batter. ”

“ Most ball-players nowadays treat the superstitions of the game as jokes, probably because they are a little ashamed to acknowledge their weaknesses, but away down underneath they observe the proprieties of the ritual. Why, even I won’t warm up with the third baseman while I am waiting for the catcher to get on his mask and the rest of his paraphernalia. Once, when I first broke in with the Giants, I warmed up with the third baseman between innings and in the next round they hit me hard and knocked me out of the box. ”

“ Offensive coaching, in my opinion, is the most important. For a man to be a good coacher he must be trained for the work. The best coachers are the seasoned players, the veterans of the game. A man must know the throwing ability of each outfielder on the opposing club, he must be familiar with the speed of the base runner whom he is handling, and he must be so closely acquainted with the game as a whole that he knows the stages at which to try a certain play and the circumstances under which the same attempt would be foolish. ”

“ There are many fair ways to steal the signs of the enemy, so many that the smart ball-player is always kept on the alert by them. Baseball geniuses, some almost magicians, are constantly looking for new schemes to find out what the catcher is telling the pitcher, what the batter is tipping the base runner to, or what the coacher’s instructions are. The Athletics have a great [Pg 150] reputation as being a club able to get the other team’s signs if they are obtainable. This is their record all around the American League circuit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as he jumped, I realized what he hoped to do, and, fearing that Merkle would miss him, I grabbed the first baseman and hurled him at Collins. It was an old-fashioned, football shove, Merkle landing on Collins and touching him out. A great many of the spectators believed that I had interfered with Merkle on the play. As a matter of fact, I thought that it was the crisis of the game and knew that, if Collins was not put out, we would probably lose. That football shove was a brand new play to me in baseball, invented on the spur of the second, but it worked. ”

“ Roger Bresnahan is the same kind of a man. He thinks quickly, and is a brilliant player, but he never dodges anything. He is often hurt as a result. Once, when he was with the Giants, he was hit in the face with a pitched ball, and McGraw worried while he was laid up, for fear that it would make him bat shy. After he came back, he was just as friendly with the plate as ever. The injury of men like Chance and Bresnahan, whose services are of such vital importance to the “inside” play of a team, destroys the effectiveness of the club. ”

“ A jinx is something which brings bad luck to a ball-player, and the members of the profession have built up a series of lucky and unlucky omens that should be catalogued. And besides the common or garden variety of jinxes, many stars have a series of private or pet and trained ones that are more malignant in their forms than those which come out in the open. ”

“ The batter naturally thinks it is another fast ball and swings too soon—that is, before the ball gets to him. But when a man like Clarke is at the bat and a pitcher tries to work a change of pace, what is the result? He naturally swings late and so hits a fast ball to left field. Then as the slow one comes up to the plate, he strikes at it, granted he is deceived by it, timing his swing as he would at a fast ball. If it had been a fast ball, as he thought, he would have hit it to left field, being naturally a late swinger. ”

“ There are many tricks to the coacher’s trade, both offensive and defensive, and it is the quickest-witted man who is the best coacher. The sentry at first yells as the pitcher winds up, “There he goes!” imitating the first baseman as nearly as [Pg 139] possible, in the hope that the twirler will waste one by pitching out and thus give the batter an advantage. The coacher on third base will shout at the runner on a short hit to the outfield, “Take your turn!” in the dim hope that the fielder, seeing the man rounding third, will throw the ball home, and the hitter can thus make an extra base. ”

“ Many fans wonder why, when the Giants get behind in a game, McGraw takes to the bench, after having been out on the coaching lines inning after inning while the club was holding its own or winning. Time and again I have heard him criticised for this by spectators and even by players on other clubs.
“McGraw is ‘yellow,’” players have said to me. “Just as soon as his club gets behind, he runs for cover.”
The crime of being “yellow” is the worst in the Big Leagues. It means that a man is afraid, that he lacks the nerve to face the music. ”

“ When luck seems to be breaking against them in a game, they will take the bats and throw them wildly into the air and let them lie around in front of their bench, topsy-turvy. They call this changing the luck, but any other club would consider that it was the worst kind of a jinx. It is the same theory that card-players have about shuffling the deck vigorously to bring a different run of fortune. Then, if the luck changes, the Athletics throw the bats around some more to keep it. This act nearly cost them one of their best ball-players in the third game of the 1911 world’s series. ”

“ Many times have I, in the excitement of the moment, protested against the decision of an umpire, but fundamentally I know that the umpires are honest and are doing their best, as all ball-players are. The umpires make mistakes and the players make errors. ”