Pitching in a Pinch; or, Baseball from the Inside

by Christy Mathewson

“The sun got in my eyes, and I couldn’t see the ball,” replied Seymour.

“You’d better wear smoked glasses the next time you go out to coach,” replied the manager. The batter was hitting the ball due east, and the game was being played in the afternoon, so Seymour had no alibi. From the moment “Cy” made that mistake, McGraw realized the value of scientific coaching, which means making the most of every hit in a game.

I have always held that a good actor with a knowledge of baseball would make a good coacher, because it is the acting that impresses a base runner, not the talking. More often than not, the conversation of a coacher, be it ever so brilliant, is not audible above the screeching of the crowd at critical moments. And I believe that McGraw is a great actor, at least of the baseball school.

The cheering of the immense crowds which attend ball games, if it can be organized, is a potent factor in winning or losing them. McGraw gets the most out of a throng by his clever acting. Did any patron of the Polo Grounds ever see him turn to the stands or make any pretence that he was paying attention to the spectators? Does he ever play to the gallery? Yet it is admitted that he can do more with a crowd, make it more malleable, than any other man in baseball to-day.

The attitude of the spectators makes a lot of difference to a ball club. A lackadaisical, half-interested crowd often results in the team playing slovenly ball, while a lively throng can inject ginger into the men and put the whole club on its toes. McGraw is skilled in getting the most out of the spectators without letting them know that he is doing it.

Did you ever watch the little manager crouching, immovable, at third base with a mitt on his hand, when the New York club goes to bat in the seventh inning two runs behind? The first hitter gets a base on balls. McGraw leaps into the air, kicks his heels together, claps his mitt, shouts at the umpire, runs in and pats the next batter on the back, and says something to the pitcher. The crowd gets it cue, wakes up and leaps into the air, kicking its heels together. The whole atmosphere inside the park is changed in a minute, and the air is bristling with enthusiasm. The other coacher, at first base, is waving his hands and running up and down the line, while the men on the bench have apparently gained new hope. They are moving about restlessly, and the next two hitters are swinging their bats in anticipation with a vigor which augurs ill for the pitcher. The game has found Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth, and the little, silent actor on the third base coaching line is the cause of the change.

“Nick” Altrock, the old pitcher on the Chicago White Sox, was one of the most skilful men at handling a crowd that the game has ever developed. As a pitcher, Altrock was largely instrumental in bringing a world’s championship to the American League team in 1906, and, as a coacher, after his Big League pitching days were nearly done, he won many a game by his work on the lines in pinches. Baseball has produced several comedians, some with questionable ratings as humorists. There is “Germany” Schaefer of the Washington team, and there were “Rube” Waddell, “Bugs” Raymond and others, but “Nick” Altrock could give the best that the game has brought out in the way of comic-supplement players a terrible battle for the honors.

At the old south side park in Chicago, I have seen him go to the lines with a catcher’s mitt and a first-baseman’s glove on his hands and lead the untrained mob as skilfully as one of those pompadoured young men with a megaphone does the undergraduates at a college football game.

My experience as a pitcher has been that it is not the steady, unbroken flood of howling and yelling, with the incessant pounding of feet, that gets on the nerves of a ball-player, but the broken, rhythmical waves of sound or the constant reiteration of one expression. A man gets accustomed to the steady cheering. It becomes a part of the game and his surroundings, as much as the stands and the crowd itself are, and he does not know that it is there. Let the coacher be clever enough to induce a crowd to repeat over and over just one sentence such as “Get a hit,” “Get a hit,” and it wears on the steadiest nerves. Nick Altrock had his baseball chorus trained so that, by a certain motion of the arm, he could get the crowd to do this at the right moment.

But the science of latter-day coaching means much more than using the crowd. All coaching, like all Gaul and four or five other things, is divided into three parts, defensive coaching, offensive coaching and the use of the crowd. Offensive coaching means the handling of base runners, and requires quick and accurate judgment. The defensive sort is the advice that one player on the field gives another as to where to throw the ball, who shall take a hit, and how the base runner is coming into the bag. There is a sub-division of defensive coaching which might be called the illegitimate brand. It is giving “phoney” advice to a base runner by the fielders of the other side that may lead him, in the excitement of the moment, to make a foolish play. This style has developed largely in the Big Leagues in the last three or four years.