Then there is that other style of defensive coaching which is the shouting of misleading advice by the fielders to the base runners. Collins and Barry, the second baseman and shortstop on the Athletics, worked a clever trick in one of the games of the 1911 world’s series which illustrates my point. The play is as old as the one in which the second baseman hides the ball under his shirt so as to catch a man asleep off first base, but often the old ones are the more effective.
Doyle was on first base in one of the contests played in Philadelphia, and the batter lifted a short foul fly to Baker, playing third base. The crowd roared and the coacher’s voice was drowned by the volume of sound. “Eddie” Collins ran to cover second base, and Barry scrabbled his hand along the dirt as if preparing to field a ground ball.
“Throw it here! Throw it here!” yelled Collins, and Doyle, thinking that they were trying for a force play, increased his efforts to reach second. Baker caught the fly, and Larry was doubled up at first base so far that he looked foolish. Yet it really was not his fault. The safest thing for a base runner to do under those circumstances is to get one glimpse of the coacher’s motions and then he can tell whether to go back or to go on.
“Johnnie” Kling, the old catcher of the Chicago Cubs, used to work a clever piece of defensive coaching with John Evers, the second baseman. This was tried on young players and usually was successful. The victim was picked out before the game, and the play depended upon him arriving at second base. Once there the schemers worked it as follows:
When the “busher” was found taking a large lead, Evers would dash to the bag and Kling would make a bluff to throw the ball, but hold it. The runner naturally scampered for the base. Then, seeing that Kling had not thrown, he would start to walk away from it again.
“If the Jew had thrown that time, he would have had you,” Evers would carelessly hurl over his shoulder at the intended victim. The man usually turned for a fatal second to reply. Tinker, who was playing shortstop, rushed in from behind, Kling whipped the ball to the bag, and the man, caught off his guard, was tagged out. The play was really made before the game, when the victim was selected.
It was this same Evers-Kling combination that turned the tide in the first inning of the most famous game ever played in baseball, the extra one between the Giants and the Cubs in the season of 1908. The Chicago club was nervous in the first inning. Tenney was hit by a pitched ball, and Herzog walked. It looked as if Pfeister, the Chicago pitcher, was losing his grip. Bresnahan struck out, and Kling, always alert, dropped the third strike, but conveniently at his feet. Thinking that here was an opportunity the crowd roared. Evers, playing deep, almost behind Herzog, shouted, “Go on!”
Herzog took the bait in the excitement of the moment and ran—and was nipped many yards from first base.
There are many tricks to the coacher’s trade, both offensive and defensive, and it is the quickest-witted man who is the best coacher. The sentry at first yells as the pitcher winds up, “There he goes!” imitating the first baseman as nearly as possible, in the hope that the twirler will waste one by pitching out and thus give the batter an advantage. The coacher on third base will shout at the runner on a short hit to the outfield, “Take your turn!” in the dim hope that the fielder, seeing the man rounding third, will throw the ball home, and the hitter can thus make an extra base. And the job of coaching is no sinecure. McGraw has told me after directing a hard game that he is as tired as if he had played.