Some pitchers talk to batters a great deal, hoping to get their minds off the game in this way, and thus be able to sneak strikes over. But I find that talking to a batter disconcerts me almost as much as it does him, and I seldom do it. Repartee is not my line anyway.
Bender talked to the Giant players all through that first game in the 1911 world’s series, the one in which he wore the smile, probably because he was a pitcher old in the game and several of the younger men on the New York team acted as if they were nervous. Snodgrass and the Indian kept up a running fire of small talk every time that the Giants’ centre-fielder came to the plate.
Snodgrass got hit by pitched balls twice, and this seemed to worry Bender. When the New York centre-fielder came to the bat in the eighth inning, the Indian showed his even teeth in the chronic grin and greeted Snodgrass in this way:
“Look out, Freddie, you don’t get hit this time.”
Then Bender wound up and with all his speed drove the ball straight at Snodgrass’s head, and Bender had more speed in that first game than I ever saw him use before. Snodgrass dodged, and the ball drove into Thomas’s glove. This pitching the first ball at the head of a batter is an old trick of pitchers when they think a player intends to get hit purposely or that he is crowding the plate.
“If you can’t push ’em over better than that,” retorted Snodgrass, “I won’t need to get hit. Let’s see your fast one now.”
“Try this one,” suggested Bender, as he pitched another fast one that cut the heart of the plate. Snodgrass swung and hit nothing but the air. The old atmosphere was very much mauled by bats in that game anyway.
“You missed that one a mile, Freddie,” chuckled the Indian, with his grin.
Snodgrass eventually struck out and then Bender broke into a laugh.
“You ain’t a batter, Freddie,” exclaimed the Indian, as he walked to the bench. “You’re a backstop. You can never get anywhere without being hit.”