Pitching in a Pinch; or, Baseball from the Inside

by Christy Mathewson

A line drive whistled past Mowrey’s ears, the man who plays third base on the Cardinals. He was coming in to get a bunt. Another followed. The break had come. Bresnahan removed Sallee and put another pitcher into the box, but once a ball club starts to hit the ball, it is like a skidding automobile. It can’t be stopped. The Giants kept on and piled up a ridiculous and laughable score, which McGraw had made possible in the first inning by directing his men to bunt.

The Giants won the championship of the National League in 1904 and the New York fans gave the team credit for the victory. It was a club of young players, and McGraw realized this fact when he started his campaign. Every play that season was made from the bench, made by John McGraw through his agents, his manikins, who moved according to the wires which he pulled. And by the end of the summer his hands were badly calloused from pulling wires, but the Giants had the pennant.

When the batter was at the plate in a critical stage, he would stall and look to the “bench” for orders to discover whether to hit the ball out or lay it down, whether to try the hit and run, or wait for the base runner to attempt to steal. By stalling, I mean that he would tie his shoe or fix his belt, or find any little excuse to delay the game so that he could get a flash at the “bench” for orders. A shoe lace has played an important role in many a Big League battle, as I will try to show later on in this story. If it ever became the custom to wear button shoes, the game would have to be revised.

As the batter looked toward the bench, McGraw might reach for his handkerchief to blow his nose, and the batter knew it was up to him to hit the ball out. Some days in that season of 1904 I saw McGraw blow his nose during a game until it was red and sore on the end, and then another day, when he had a cold in his head, he had to do without his handkerchief because he wanted to play a bunting game. Until his cold got better, he had to switch to another system of signs.

During that season, each coacher would keep his eye on the bench for orders. Around McGraw revolved the game of the Giants. He was the game. And most of that summer he spent upon the bench, because from there he could get the best look at the diamond, and his observations were not confined to one place or to one base runner. He was able to discover whether an out-fielder was playing too close for a batter, or too far out, and rearrange the men. He could perhaps catch a sign from the opposing catcher and pass it along to the batter. And he won the pennant from the bench. He was seldom seen on the coaching lines that year.

Many fans wonder why, when the Giants get behind in a game, McGraw takes to the bench, after having been out on the coaching lines inning after inning while the club was holding its own or winning. Time and again I have heard him criticised for this by spectators and even by players on other clubs.

“McGraw is ‘yellow,’” players have said to me. “Just as soon as his club gets behind, he runs for cover.”

The crime of being “yellow” is the worst in the Big Leagues. It means that a man is afraid, that he lacks the nerve to face the music. But McGraw and “yellow” are as far apart as the poles, or Alpha and Omega, or Fifth Avenue and the Bowery, or any two widely separated and distant things. I have seen McGraw go on to ball fields where he is as welcome as a man with the black smallpox and face the crowd alone that, in the heat of its excitement, would like to tear him apart. I have seen him take all sorts of personal chances. He doesn’t know what fear is, and in his bright lexicon of baseball there is no such word as “fear.” His success is partly due to his indomitable courage.

There is a real reason for his going to the bench when the team gets behind. It is because this increases the club’s chances of winning. From the bench he can see the whole field, can note where his fielders are playing, can get a peek at the other bench, and perhaps pick up a tip as to what to expect. He can watch his own pitcher, or observe whether the opposing twirler drops his throwing arm as if weary. He is at the helm when “on the bench,” and, noting any flaw in the opposition, he is in a position to take advantage of it at a moment’s notice, or, catching some sign of faltering among his own men, he is immediately there to strengthen the weakness. Many a game he has pulled out of the fire by going back to the bench and watching. So the idea obtained by many spectators that he is quitting is the wrong one. He is only fighting harder.

The Giants were playing Pittsburg one day in the season of 1909, and Clarke and McGraw had been having a great guessing match. It was one of those give-and-take games with plenty of batting, with one club forging ahead and then the other. Clarke had saved the game for Pittsburg in the sixth inning by a shoe-string. Leifield had been pitching up to this point, and he wasn’t there or even in the neighborhood. But still the Pirates were leading by two runs, having previously knocked Ames out of the box. Doyle and McCormick made hits with no one out in our half of the sixth.