“How does it seem, Fred, to be on a club that has lost eighteen straight?”
“It’s what General Sherman said war is,” replied Tenney, who seldom swears. “But for all-around entertainment I would like to see John McGraw on a team which had dropped fifteen or sixteen in a row.”
As if Tenney had put the curse on us, the Giants hit a losing streak the next day that totalled six games straight. Everything that we tried broke against us. McGraw would attempt the double steal, and both throws would be accurate, and the runner caught at the plate. A hit and a run sign would be given, and the batter would run up against a pitch-out.
McGraw was slowly going crazy. All his pet “inside” tricks were worthless. He, the king of baseball clairvoyants, could not guess right. It began to look to me as if Tenney would get his entertainment. After the sixth one had gone against us and McGraw had not spoken a friendly word to any one for a week, he called the players around him in the clubhouse.
“I ought to let you all out and get a gang of high-school boys in here to defend the civic honor of this great and growing city whose municipal pride rests on your shoulders,” he said. “But I’m not going to do it. Hereafter we will cut out all ‘inside’ stuff and play straight baseball. Every man will go up there and hit the ball just as you see it done on the lots.”
Into this oration was mixed a judicious amount of sulphur. The Cubs had just taken the first three of a four-game series from us without any trouble at all. The next day we went out and resorted to the wallop, plain, untrimmed slugging tactics, and beat Chicago 17 to 1. Later we returned to the hand-raised, cultivated hot-house form of baseball, but for a week we played the old-fashioned game with a great deal of success. It changed our luck.
Another method which has upset the “inside” game of many visiting teams is “doping” the grounds.
The first time in my baseball career that I ever encountered this was in Brooklyn when Hanlon was the manager. Every time he thought I was going to pitch there, he would have the diamond doctored for me in the morning. The ground-keeper sank the pitcher’s box down so that it was below the level of all the bases instead of slightly elevated as it should be.
Hanlon knew that I used a lot of speed when I first broke into the League, getting some of it from my elevation on the diamond. He had a team of fast men who depended largely on a bunting game and their speed in getting to first base to win. With me fielding bunts out of the hollow, they had a better chance of making their goal. Then pitching from the lower level would naturally result in the batters getting low balls, because I would be more apt to misjudge the elevation of the plate. Low ones were made to bunt. Finally, Hanlon always put into the box to work against me a little pitcher who was not affected as much as I by the topographical changes.
“Why,” I said to George Davis, the Giants’ manager, the first time I pitched out of the cellar which in Brooklyn was regarded as the pitcher’s box, “I’m throwing from a hollow instead of off a mound.”