It is Brown’s perfect control that has permitted catchers like Kling and Archer to make such great records as throwers. This pitcher can afford to waste a ball—that is, pitch out so the batter cannot hit it, but putting the catcher in a perfect position to throw—and then he knows he can get the next one over. A catcher’s efficiency as a thrower depends largely on the pitcher’s ability to have good enough control of the ball to be able to pitch out when it is necessary. Brown helps a catcher by the way in which he watches the bases, not permitting the runners to take any lead on him. All around, I think that he is one of the most finished pitchers of the game.
Russell Ford, of the New York American League club, has a hard pitching motion because he seems to throw a spit ball with a jerk. He cannot pitch more than one good game in four or five days. McGraw had detected this weakness from watching the Highlanders play before the post-season series in 1910, and took advantage of it.
“If Ford pitches to-day,” said McGraw to his team in the clubhouse before the first game, “wait everything out to the last minute. Make him pitch every ball you can.”
McGraw knew that the strain on Ford’s arm would get him along toward the end of the game. In the eighth inning the score was tied when Devore came to the bat. No crack in Ford was perceptible to the rest of us, but McGraw must have detected some slight sign of weakening. He stopped “Josh” on the way to the plate and ordered:
“Now go ahead and get him.”
By the time the inning was over, the Giants had made four runs, and eventually won the game by the score of 5 to 1. McGraw just played for this flaw in Ford’s pitching, and hung his whole plan of battle on the chance of it showing.
“Old Cy” Young has the absolutely perfect pitching motion. When he jumped from the National League to the Boston American League club some years ago, during the war times, many National League players thought that he was through.
“What,” said Fred Clarke, the manager of the Pittsburg club, “you American Leaguers letting that old boy make good in your set? Why, he was done when he jumped the National. He’d lost his speed.”
“But you ought to see his curve ball,” answered “Bill” Dineen, then pitching for the Boston Americans.
“Curve ball,” echoed Clarke. “He never had any curve that it didn’t take a microscope to find. He depended on his speed.”