“How many quail did you say you shot when you were hunting last fall, Al?”
John McGraw, the psychologist, baseball general and manager, had heard opportunity knock. With his fingers on the pulse of the game, he had felt the tenseness of the situation, and realized, all in the flash of an eye, that Ford was wabbling and that anything would push him over. He stopped the game and whispered into Bridwell’s ear while Ford was feeling more and more the intensity of the crisis. He had an opportunity to observe the three men on the bases. He wondered what McGraw was whispering, what trick was to be expected. Was he telling the batter to get hit? Yes, he must be. Then he did just that—hit the batter, and lost the game.
Why can certain pitchers always beat certain clubs and why do they look like bush leaguers against others? To be concrete, why can Brooklyn fight Chicago so hard and look foolish playing against the Giants? Why can the Yankees take game after game from Detroit and be easy picking for the Cleveland club in most of their games? Why does Boston beat Marquard when he can make the hard Philadelphia hitters look like blind men with bats in their hands? Why could I beat Cincinnati game after game for two years when the club was filled with hard hitters? It is the psychology of baseball, the mental attitudes of the players, some intangible thing that works on the mind. Managers are learning to use this subtle, indescribable element which is such a factor.
The great question which confronts every Big League manager is how to break a valuable young pitcher into the game. “Rube” Marquard came to the Giants in the fall of 1908 out of the American Association heralded as a world-beater, with a reputation that shimmered and shone. The newspapers were crowded with stories of the man for whom McGraw had paid $11,000, who had been standing them on their heads in the West, who had curves that couldn’t be touched, and was a bargain at the unheard-of price paid for him.
“Rube” Marquard came to the Giants in a burst of glory and publicity when the club was fighting for the pennant. McGraw was up against it for pitchers at that time, and one win, turned in by a young pitcher, might have resulted in the Giants winning the pennant as the season ended.
“Don’t you think Marquard would win? Can’t you put him in?” Mr. Brush, the owner of the club, asked McGraw one day when he was discussing the pitching situation with the manager.
“I don’t know,” answered McGraw. “If he wins his first time out in the Big Leagues, he will be a world-beater, and, if he loses, it may cost us a good pitcher.” But Mr. Brush was insistent. Here a big price had been paid for a pitcher with a record, and pitchers were what the club needed. The newspapers declared that the fans should get a look at this “$11,000 beauty” in action. A double header was scheduled to be played with the Cincinnati club in the month of September, in 1908, and the pitching staff was gone. McGraw glanced over his collection of crippled and worked-out twirlers. Then he saw “Rube” Marquard, big and fresh.
“Go in and pitch,” he ordered after Marquard had warmed up.
McGraw always does things that way, makes up his mind about the most important matters in a minute and then stands by his judgment. Marquard went into the box, but he didn’t pitch much. He has told me about it since.
“When I saw that crowd, Matty,” he said, “I didn’t know where I was. It looked so big to me, and they were all wondering what I was going to do, and all thinking that McGraw had paid $11,000 for me, and now they were to find out whether he had gotten stuck, whether he had picked up a gold brick with the plating on it very thin. I was wondering, myself, whether I would make good.”