All I can ever remember after a training trip is taking off and putting on a uniform, and running around the ball park under the inspiration of John McGraw, and he is some inspirer.
The heavier a man gets through the winter, the harder the routine work is for him, and a few years ago I almost broke down and cried out of sympathy for Otis Crandall, who arrived in camp very corpulent.
“What have you been doing this winter, Otie?” McGraw asked him after shaking hands in greeting, “appearing with a show as the stout lady? You’ll have to take a lot of that off.”
“Taking it off” meant running several miles every day so bundled up that the Indiana agriculturist looked like the pictures published of “Old Doc” Cook which showed him discovering the north pole. Ever since, Crandall’s spring training, like charity, has begun at home, and he takes exercise night and morning throughout the winter, so that when he comes into camp his weight will be somewhere near normal. In 1911 he had the best year of his career. He is the type of man who cannot afford to carry too much weight. He is stronger when he is slimmer.
In contrast to him is George Wiltse, who maps out a training course with the idea of adding several pounds, as he is better with all the real weight he can put on. By that I do not mean any fat.
George came whirling and spinning and waltzing and turkey-trotting and pirouetting across the field at Marlin Springs, Texas, the Giants’ spring training headquarters, one day in the spring of 1911, developing steps that would have ruled him off any cotillion floor in New York in the days of the ban on the grizzly bear and kindred dances. Suddenly he dove down with his left hand and reached as far as he could.
“What’s that one, George?” I yelled as he passed me.
“Getting ready to cover first base on a slow hit, Matty,” he replied, and was off on another series of hand springs that made him look more like a contortionist rehearsing for an act which he was going to take out for the “big time” than a ball-player getting ready for the season.
But perhaps some close followers of baseball statistics will recall a game that Wiltse took from the Cubs in 1911 by a wonderful one-hand reaching catch of a low throw to first base. Two Chicago runners were on the bags at the time and the loss of that throw would have meant that they both scored. Wiltse caught the ball, and it made the third out, and the Giants won the game. Thousands of fans applauded the catch, but the play was not the result of the exigencies of the moment. It was the outcome of forethought used months before.
Spectators at ball games who wonder at the marvellous fielding of Wiltse should watch him getting ready during the spring season at Marlin. He is a tireless worker, and when he is not pitching he is doing hand springs and other acrobatic acts to limber up all his muscles. It is torture then, but it pays in the end.