Pitching in a Pinch; or, Baseball from the Inside

by Christy Mathewson

But that wildly cheering crowd had worked me up to greater effort, and I struck Kling out and then Brown followed him back to the bench for the same reason. Just one batter stood between me and a tied score now. He was John Evers, and the crowd having lost its chortle of victory, was begging him to make the hit which would bring just one run over the plate. They were surprised by my recuperation after having passed two men. Evers lifted a gentle fly to left field and the three men were left on the bases. The Giants eventually won that game in the eleventh inning by the score of 4 to 1.

But that system doesn’t always work. Often I have passed a man to get a supposedly poor batter up and then had him bang out a base hit. My first successful year in the National League was 1901, although I joined the Giants in the middle of the season of 1900. The Boston club at that time had a pitcher named “Kid” Nichols who was a great twirler. The first two games I pitched against the Boston club were against this man, and I won the first in Boston and the second in New York, the latter by the score of 2 to 1.

Both teams then went west for a three weeks’ trip, and when the Giants returned a series was scheduled with Boston at the Polo Grounds. There was a good deal of speculation as to whether I would again beat the veteran “Kid” Nichols, and the newspapers, discussing the promised pitching duel, stirred up considerable enthusiasm over it. Of course, I, the youngster, was eager to make it three straight over the veteran. Neither team had scored at the beginning of the eighth inning. Boston runners got on second and third bases with two out, and Fred Tenney, then playing first base on the Boston club, was up at the bat. He had been hitting me hard that day, and I decided to pass him and take a chance on “Dick” Cooley, the next man, and a weak batter. So Tenney got his base on balls, and the sacks were full.

Two strikes were gathered on Cooley, one at which he swung and the other called, and I was beginning to congratulate myself on my excellent judgment, which was really counting my chickens while they were still in the incubator. I attempted to slip a fast one over on Cooley and got the ball a little too high. The result was that he stepped into it and made a three base hit which eventually won the game by the score of 3 to 0. That was once when passing a man to get a weak batter did not work.

I have always been against a twirler pitching himself out, when there is no necessity for it, as so many youngsters do. They burn them through for eight innings and then, when the pinch comes, something is lacking. A pitcher must remember that there are eight other men in the game, drawing more or less salary to stop balls hit at them, and he must have confidence in them. Some pitchers will put all that they have on each ball. This is foolish for two reasons.

In the first place, it exhausts the man physically and, when the pinch comes, he has not the strength to last it out. But second and more important, it shows the batters everything that he has, which is senseless. A man should always hold something in reserve, a surprise to spring when things get tight. If a pitcher has displayed his whole assortment to the batters in the early part of the game and has used all his speed and his fastest breaking curve, then, when the crisis comes, he “hasn’t anything” to fall back on.

Like all youngsters, I was eager to make a record during my first year in the Big League, and in one of the first games I pitched against Cincinnati I made the mistake of putting all that I had on every ball. We were playing at the Polo Grounds, and the Giants had the visitors beaten 2 to 0, going into the last inning. I had been popping them through, trying to strike out every hitter and had not held anything in reserve. The first man to the bat in the ninth got a single, the next a two bagger, and by the time they had stopped hitting me, the scorer had credited the Cincinnati club with four runs, and we lost the game, 4 to 2.

I was very much down in the mouth over the defeat, after I had the game apparently won, and George Davis, then the manager of the Giants, noticed it in the clubhouse.

“Never mind, Matty,” he said, “it was worth it. The game ought to teach you not to pitch your head off when you don’t need to.”

It did. I have never forgotten that lesson. Many spectators wonder why a pitcher does not work as hard as he can all through the game, instead of just in the pinches. If he did, they argue, there would be no pinches. But there would be, and, if the pitcher did not conserve his energy, the pinches would usually go against him.