When I was a young fellow and read about the Big League clubs going South, I used to think what a grand life that must be. Riding in Pullmans, some pleasant exercise which did not entail the responsibility of a ball game, and plenty of food, with a little social recreation, were all parts of my dream. A young ball-player looks on his first spring training trip as a stage-struck young woman regards the theatre. She cannot wait for her first rehearsal, and she thinks only of the lobster suppers and the applause and the lights and the life, but nowhere in her dream is there a place for the raucous voice of the stage manager and the long jumps of “one night stands” with the loss of sleep and the poor meals and the cold dressing rooms. As actors begin to dread the drudgery of rehearsing, so do baseball men detest the drill of the spring training. The only thing that I can think of right away which is more tiresome and less interesting is signal practice with a college football team.
About the time that the sap starts up in the trees and the young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love and baseball, the big trek starts. Five hundred ball-players, attached more or less firmly to sixteen major league clubs, spread themselves out over the southern part of the United States, from Florida to California, and begin to prepare for the campaign that is to furnish the answer to that annual question, “Which is the best baseball club in the world?”
In the case of the Giants, McGraw, with a flock of youngsters, has already arrived when the older men begin to drift into camp. The youngsters, who have come from the bushes and realize that this is their one big chance to make good, to be a success or a failure in their chosen profession—in short, to become a Big Leaguer or go back to the bushes for good—have already been working for ten days and are in fair shape. They stare at the regulars as the veterans straggle in by twos and threes, and McGraw has a brief greeting for each. He could use a rubber stamp.
“How are you, Matty? What kind of shape are you in? Let’s see you in a uniform at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.”
When I first start South, for the spring trip, after shivering through a New York winter, I arouse myself to some enthusiasm over the prospect, but all this has evaporated after listening to that terse speech from McGraw, for I know what it means. Nothing looms on the horizon but the hardest five weeks’ grind in the world.
The next day the practice begins, and for the first time in five months, a uniform is donned. I usually start my work by limbering up slowly, and on the first day I do not pitch at all. With several other players, I help to form a large circle and the time is spent in throwing the ball at impossible and unreachable points in the anatomy. The man next to you shoots one away up over your head and the next one at your feet and off to the side while he is looking at the third man from you. This is great for limbering up, but the loosening is torture. After about fifteen minutes of that, the winter-logged player goes over on the bench and drops down exhausted. But does he stay there? Not if McGraw sees him, and he is one of the busiest watchers I have ever met.
“Here, Matty,” he will shout, “lead this squad three times around the park and be careful not to cut the corners.”
By the time that little formality is finished, a man’s tongue is hanging out and he goes to get a drink of water. The spring training is just one darned drink after another and still the player is always thirsty.
After three hours of practice, McGraw may say:
“All right, Matty. Go back to the hotel and get a bath and a rub and cut it out for to-day.”