“They got me worrying about myself,” he told me once. “I began to think how close I was to the car and had a moving picture of myself driving it. That settled it.”
Many promising young players are broken in their first game in the Big League by the ragging which they are forced to undergo at the hands of veteran catchers. John Kling is a very bad man with youngsters, and sometimes he can get on the nerves of older players in close games when the nerves are strung tight. The purpose of a catcher in talking to a man in this way is to distract his attention from batting, and once this is accomplished he is gone. A favorite trick of a catcher is to say to a new batter:
“Look out for this fellow. He’s got a mean ‘bean’ ball, and he hasn’t any influence over it. There’s a poor ‘boob’ in the hospital now that stopped one with his head.”
Then the catcher signs for the pitcher to throw the next one at the young batter’s head. If he pulls away, an unpardonable sin in baseball, the dose is repeated.
“Yer almost had your foot in the water-pail over by the bench that time,” says the catcher.
Bing! Up comes another “beaner.” Then, after the catcher has sized the new man up, he makes his report.
“He won’t do. He’s yellow.”
And the players keep mercilessly after this shortcoming, this ingrained fault which, unlike a mechanical error, cannot be corrected until the new player is driven out of the League. Perhaps the catcher says:
“He’s game, that guy. No scare to him.”
After that he is let alone. It’s the psychology of batting.