At the Old Ballgame

by Jeff Silverman

  “How do I know? Hogan was in here last night with an article on th’ ‘Mysthries iv Baseball.’ It’s be a larned man. Here it is: “Th’ ordhinary observer or lunk-head who knows nawthin’ about base-ball except what he learned be playin’ it, has no idee that th’ game as played to-day is wan iv th’ most inthricate sciences known to mankind. In th’ first place th’ player must have an absolute masthry iv th’ theery iv ballistic motion. This is especially true iv th’ pitcher. A most exact knowledge is mathymatics is required f’r th’ position. What is vulgarly known as th’ spitball on account iv th’ homely way in which th’ op’rator procures his effects is in fact a solution iv wan iv th’ most inthricate problems in mechanics. Th’ purpose iv th’ pitcher is to project th’ projectile so that at a pint between his position an’ th’ batsman th’ tindincy to pr-ceed on its way will be countheracted be an impulse to return whence it come. Th’ purpose iv th’ batsman is, afther judgin’ be scientific methods th’ probable coorse or thrajecthry iv th’ missile, to oppose it with sufficyent foorce at th’ proper moment an’ at th’ most efficient point, first to retard its forward movement, thin to correct th’ osseylations an’ fin’ly to propel it in a direction approximately opposite fr’m its original progress. This, I am informed, is technically known as ‘bustin’ th’ ball on th’ nose (or bugle).’ In a gr-reat number iv cases which I observed th’ experiment iv th’ batsman failed an’ th’ empire was obliged so to declare, th’ ball havin’ actually crossed th’ plate but eluded th’ (intended) blow. In other cases where no blow was attimpted or aven meditated I note that th’ empire erred an’ in gin’ral I must deplore an astonishin’ lack in thrained scientific observation on th’ part iv this officyal. He made a number iv grievous blundhers an’ I was not surpised to larn fr’m a gintleman who sat next to me that he (th’ empire) had sprint th’ arly part iv his life as a fish in the Mammoth Cave iv Kentucky. I thried me best to show me disapproval iv his unscientific an’ infamous methods be hittin’ him over th’ head with me umbrella as he left th’ grounds. At th’ request iv th’ iditor iv th’ magazine I intherviewed Misther Bugs Mulligan th’ pitcher iv th’ Kangaroos afther th’ game. I found th’ cillybrated expert in th’ rotundy iv th’ Grand Palace Hotel where he was settin’ with other players polishin’ his finger nails. I r-read him my notes on th’ game an’ he expressed his approval addin’ with a show at laste iv enthusyasm: ‘Bo, ye have a head like a dhrum.’ I requested him to sign th’ foregoin’ statement but he declined remarkin’ that th’ last time he wrote his name he sprained his wrist an’ was out iv the game f’r a week.

  “What’d I be doin’ at th’ likes iv a game like that? I’d come away with a narvous headache. No, sir, whin I take a day off, I take a day off. I’m not goin’ to a base-ball game. I’m goin’ to take a bag iv peanuts an’ spind an afthernoon at th’ chimical labrytory down at th’ colledge where there’s something goin’ on I can undherstand.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Mr. Hennessy, “if ’twas as mysteryous as all that how cud Tom Donahue’s boy Petie larn it that was fired fr’m th’ Brothers School because he cuddn’t add? . . .”

  “Annyhow ’tis a gr-rand game, Hinnissy, whether ’tis played th’ way th’ pro-fissor thinks or th’ way Petie larned to play it in th’ backyard an’ I shuddn’t wondher if it’s th’ way he’s still playin’. Th’ two gr-reat American spoorts are a good deal alike—polyticks an’ baseball. They’re both played be pro-fissyonals, th’ teams ar-re r-run be fellows that cuddn’t throw a base-ball or stuff a ballot box to save their lives an’ ar-re on’y intherested in countin’ up th’ gate receipts, an’ here ar-re we settin’ out in the sun on th’ bleachin’ booards, payin’ our good money f’r th’ spoort, hot an’ uncomfortable but hapy, injying ivry good play, hottin’ ivry bad wan, knowin’ nathin’ about th’ inside play an’ not carin’, but all jinnin’ in th’ cry iv ‘Kill th’ empire.’ They’re both grand games.”

  “Speakin iv polyticks,” said Mr. Hennessy, “who d’ye think’ll be ilicted?”

  “Afther lookin’ th’ candydates over,” said Mr. Dooley, “an’ studyin’ their qualifications carefully I can’t thruthfully say that I see a prisidintial possibility in sight.”

  Jinxes and What They Mean to a Ball-Player

  Christy Mathewson

  A friend of mine, who took a different fork in the road when we left college from the one that I have followed, was walking down Broadway in New York with me one morning after I had joined the Giants, and we passed a cross-eyed man. I grabbed off my hat and spat in it. It was a new hat, too. “What’s the matter with you, Matty?” he asked, surprised.

  “Spit in your hat quick and kill that jinx,” I answered, not thinking for the minute, and he followed my example.

  I forgot to mention, when I said he took another fork in the road, that he had become a pitcher, too, but of a different kind. He had turned out to be sort of a conversational pitcher, for he was a minister, and, as luck would have it, on the morning we met that cross-eyed man he was wearing a silk hat. I was shocked, pained, and mortified when I saw what I had made him do. But he was the right sort, and wanted to go through with the thing according to the standards of the professional man with whom he happened to be at the time.

  “What’s the idea?” he asked as he replaced his hat.

  “Worst jinx in the world to see a cross-eyed man,” I replied. “But I hope I didn’t hurt your silk hat,” I quickly apologized.

  “Not at all. But how about these ball-players who masticate the weed? Do they kill jinxes, too?” he wanted to know. And I had to admit that they were the main exterminators of the jinx.

  “Then,” he went on, “I’m glad that the percentage of wearers of cross eyes is small.”

  I have just looked into one of my favorite works for that word “jinx,” and found it not. My search was in Webster’s dictionary. But any ball-player can give a definition of it with his hands tied behind him—that is, any one except “Arlie” Latham, and, with his hands bound, he is deaf and dumb. 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.

  A jinx is the child of superstition, and ball-players are among the most superstitious persons in the world, notwithstanding all this conversation lately about educated men breaking into the game and paying no attention whatever to the good and bad omens. College men are coming into both the leagues, more of them each year, and they are doing their share to make the game better and the class of men higher, but they fall the hardest for the jinxes. And I don’t know as it is anything to be ashamed of at that.

  A really true, on-the-level, honest-to-jiminy jinx can do all sorts of mean things to a professional ball-player. I have seen it make a bad pitcher out of a good one, and a blind batter out of a three-hundred hitter, and I have seen it make a ball club, composed of educated men, carry a Kansas farmer, with two or three screws rattling loose in his dome, around the circuit because he came as a prophet and said that he was accompanied by Miss Fickle Fortune. And that is almost a jinx record.

  Jinx and Miss Fickle Fortune never go around together. 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. On the other hand, unlucky signs take it away. The lucky man is the one who hits the nail on the head and not his fingers, and
the ability to swat the nail on its receptive end is a combination of self-confidence and an aptitude for hammering. Good ball-playing is the combination of self-confidence and the ability to play.

  The next is “Red” Ames, although designated as “Leon” by his family when a very small boy before he began to play ball. (He is still called “Leon” in the winter.) Ames is of Warren, Ohio, and the Giants, and he is said to hold the Marathon record for being the most unlucky pitcher that ever lived, and I agree with the sayers. For several seasons, Ames couldn’t seem to win a ball game, no matter how well he pitched. In 1909, “Red” twirled a game on the opening day of the season against Brooklyn that was the work of a master. For nine innings he held his opponents hitless, only to have them win in the thirteenth. Time and again Ames has pitched brilliantly, to be finally beaten by a small score, because one of the men behind him made an error at a critical moment, or because the team could not give him any runs by which to win. No wonder the newspapers began to speak of Ames as the “hoodoo” pitcher and the man “who couldn’t win.”

  There was a cross-eyed fellow who lived between Ames and the Polo Grounds, and “Red” used to make a detour of several blocks en route to the park to be sure to miss him in case he should be out walking. But one day in 1911, when it was his turn to pitch, he bumped into that cross-eyed man and, in spite of the fact that he did his duty by his hat and got three or four small boys to help him out, he failed to last two innings. When it came time to go West on the final trip of the 1911 season, Ames was badly discouraged.

  “I don’t see any use in taking me along, Mac,” he said to McGraw a few days before we left. “The club can’t win with me pitching if the other guys don’t even get a foul.”

  The first stop was in Boston, and on the day we arrived it rained. In the mail that day, addressed to Leon Ames, came a necktie and a four-leaf clover from a prominent actress, wishing Ames good luck. The directions were inside the envelope. The four-leaf clover, if the charm were to work, must be worn on both the uniform and street clothes, and the necktie was to be worn with the street clothes and concealed in the uniform, if that necktie could be concealed anywhere. It would have done for a headlight and made Joseph’s coat of many colors look like a mourning garment.

  “Might as well wish good luck to a guy on the way to the morgue,” murmured Ames as he surveyed the layout, but he manfully put on the necktie, taking his first dose of the prescription, as directed, at once, and he tucked the four-leaf clover away carefully in his wallet.

  “You’ve got your work cut out for you, old boy,” he remarked to the charm as he put it away, “but I’d wear you if you were a horseshoe.”

  The first day that Ames pitched in Boston he won, and won in a stroll.

  “The necktie,” he explained that night at dinner, and pointed to the three-sheet, colored-supplement affair he was wearing around his collar, “I don’t change her until I lose.”

  And he did n’t lose a game on that trip. Once he almost did, when he was taken out in the sixth inning, and a batter put in for him, but the Giants finally pulled out the victory and he got the credit for it. He swept through the West unbeatable, letting down Pittsburg with two or three hits, cleaning up in St. Louis, and finally breaking our losing streak in Chicago after two games had gone against us. And all the time he wore that spectrum around his collar for a necktie. As it frayed with the wear and tear, more colors began to show, although I did n’t think it possible. If he had had occasion to put on his evening clothes, I believe that tie would have gone with it.

  For my part, I would almost rather have lost a game and changed the necktie, since it gave one the feeling all the time that he was carrying it around with him because he had had the wrong end of an election bet, or something of the sort. But not Ames! He was a game guy. He stuck with the necktie, and it stuck with him, and the combination kept right on winning ball games. Maybe he did n’t mind it because he could not see it himself, unless he looked in a mirror, but it was rough on the rest of the team, except that we needed the games the necktie won, to take the pennant.

  Columns were printed in the newspapers about that necktie, and it became the most famous scarf in the world. Ames used to sleep with it under his pillow alongside of his bank roll, and he did n’t lose another game until the very end of the season, when he dropped one against Brooklyn.

  “I don’t hardly lay that up against the tie,” he said afterwards. “You see, Mac put all those youngsters into it, and I did n’t get any support.”

  Analyzing is a distasteful pastime to me, but let’s see what it was that made Ames win. Was it the necktie? Perhaps not. But some sliver of confidence, which resulted from that first game when he was dressed up in the scarf and the four-leaf clover, got stuck in his mind. And after that the rest was easy.

  Frank Chance, the manager of the Cubs, has a funny superstition which is of the personal sort. Most ball-players have a natural prejudice against the number “13” in any form, but particularly when attached to a Pullman berth. But Chance always insists, whenever possible, that he have “lower 13.” He says that if he can just crawl in under that number he is sure of a good night’s rest, a safe journey, and a victory the next day. He has been in two or three minor railroad accidents, and he declares that all these occurred when he was sleeping on some other shelf besides “lower 13.” He can usually satisfy his hobby, too, for most travellers steer clear of the berth.

  McGraw believes a stateroom brings him good luck, or at least he always insists on having one when he can get it.

  “Chance can have ‘lower 13,’” says “Mac,” “but give me a stateroom for luck.”

  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. Since then I have had an uncommon prejudice against the practice, and I hate to hear a man even mention it. Devlin knows of my weakness and never suggests it when he is playing the bag, but occasionally a new performer will drill into the box score at third base and yell:

  “Come on, Matty! Warm up here while you’re waiting.”

  It gets me. I’ll pitch to the first baseman or a substitute catcher to keep warm, but I would rather freeze to death than heat up with the third baseman. That is one of my pet jinxes.

  And speaking of Arthur Devlin, he has a few hand-raised jinxes of his own, too. For instance, he never likes to hear a player hum a tune on the bench, because he thinks it will keep him from getting a base hit. He nearly beat a youngster to death one day when he kept on humming after Devlin had told him to stop.

  “Cut that out, Caruso,” yelled Arthur, as the recruit started his melody. “You are killing base hits.”

  The busher continued with his air until Devlin tried another form of persuasion.

  Arthur also has a favorite seat on the bench which he believes is luckier than the rest, and he insists on sitting in just that one place.

  But the worst blow Devlin ever had was when some young lady admirer of his in his palmy days, who unfortunately wore her eyes crossed, insisted on sitting behind third base for each game, so as to be near him. Arthur noticed her one day and, after that, it was all off. He hit the worst slump of his career. For a while no one could understand it, but at last he confessed to McGraw.

  “Mac,” he said one night in the club-house, “it’s that jinx. Have you noticed her? She sits behind the bag every day, and she has got me going. She has sure slid the casters under me. I wish we could bar her out, or poison her, or shoot her, or chloroform her, or kill her in some nice, mild way because, if it is
n’t done, this League is going to lose a ball-player. How can you expect a guy to play with that overlooking him every afternoon?”

  McGraw took Devlin out of the game for a time after that, and the newspapers printed several yards about the cross-eyed jinx who had ruined the Giants’ third baseman.

  With the infield weakened by the loss of Devlin, the club began to lose with great regularity. But one day the jinxess was missing and she never came back. She must have read in the newspapers what she was doing to Devlin, her hero, and quit the national pastime or moved to another part of the stand. With this weight off his shoulders, Arthur went back into the game and played like mad.

  “If she’d stuck much longer,” declared McGraw, joyous in his rejuvenated third baseman, “I would have had her eyes operated on and straightened. This club couldn’t afford to keep on losing ball games because you are such a Romeo, Arthur, that even the cross-eyed ones fall for you.”

  Ball-players are very superstitious about the bats. Did you ever notice how the clubs are all laid out in a neat, even row before the bench and are scrupulously kept that way by the bat boy? If one of the sticks by any chance gets crossed, all the players will shout:

  “Uncross the bats! Uncross the bats!”

  It’s as bad as discovering a three-alarm fire in an excelsior factory. Don’t believe it? Then listen to what happened to the Giants once because a careless bat boy neglected his duty. The team was playing in Cincinnati in the season of 1906 when one of the bats got crossed through the carelessness of the boy. What was the result? “Mike” Donlin, the star slugger of the team, slid into third base and came up with a broken ankle.