“I ought to fine you $25, and would, except for those two runs and the few points’ difference the game will make in the percentage. Come on now, boys. Let’s win this one.” And we did in the eleventh inning.
That was a case of the “inside” game failing. Any Big League pitcher with brains would have laid the ball over after hearing McGraw shout earnest and direct orders at the batter to “wait it out.” Scanlon was playing the game and Strang was not, but it broke for Sam. It was the first time in his life that he ever hit the ball over the right field fence in Brooklyn, and he has never done it since. If he had not been lucky in connecting with that ball and lifting it where it did the most good, his pay envelope would have been lighter by $25 at the end of the month, and he would have obtained an accurate idea of McGraw’s opinion of his intellectuality.
In the clubhouse after the victory, McGraw said:
“Honest, Sam, why did you swing at that ball after I had told you not to?”
“I didn’t hear you,” replied Strang.
“Well, it’s lucky you hit it where they weren’t,” answered McGraw, “because if any fielder had connected with the ball, there would have been a rough greeting waiting for you on the bench. And as a tip, Sam, direct from me: You got away with it once, but don’t try it again. It was bad baseball.”
“But that straight one looked awful good to me coming up the ‘groove,’” argued Sam.
“Don’t fall for all the good lookers, Sam,” suggested McGraw, the philosopher.
Strang is now abroad having his voice cultivated and he intends to enter the grand-opera field as soon as he can finish the spring training in Paris and get his throat into shape for the big league music circuit. But I will give any orchestra leader who faces Sam a tip. If he doesn’t want him to come in strong where the music is marked “rest,” don’t put one in the “groove,” because Strang just naturally can’t help swinging at it. He is a poor waiter.
The Boston club lost eighteen straight games in the season of 1910, and as the team was leaving the Polo Grounds after having dropped four in a row, making the eighteen, I said to Tenney: