The scribe again has a sad story to relate concerning the Sox, inasmuch as the White Hose have failed for the sixth straight time to win, and unfortunately it must be admitted that they in every way deserved what they got.
In fact, if Manager Callahan had taken their bats away from them after the first inning to-day and had buried them 20,000 leagues under the sea, securely padlocked in Davy Jones' locker, his men would have been compelled to accept a victory over Detroit instead of handing themselves a sixth straight defeat after one of the cheesiest exhibitions of the national pastime ever seen outside the walls of a state institute for the mentally feeble.
The score was 5 to 4, and all five of Detroit's runs were donated by the White Sox, a fact which seemed to rouse the subconscious generosity of the Tigers to such a pitch that in the ninth inning it was all the Callahan bunch could do to keep their opponents from forcing on them enough tallies to even matters up so that they could start over and let the best team win in extra innings.
That ninth round saw three Detroit pitchers, Dame Fortune, Herr Billiken, Mr. Providence and all the gods of Olympus conspiring to give the White Sox the game which had been thrown away, but the whole blamed bunch of good luck deities was foiled by a couple of White Sox youngsters simply because Callahan forgot to take their clubs away from them.
It would have been a joke that would have caused a laugh all through the corridors of time if the White Sox had achieved a triumph with only one base hit, but the fact remains it was their own fault they did not do so. Their only safe hit was made by Ray Demmitt, the Tiger discard, who has not yet worn a Sox uniform long enough to forget the first use for a baseball bat.
Demmitt retains the impression that bats were made to get on with, while the rest of Callahan's bunch use them solely to get out with, and that was the whole trouble in the last round. The Sox entered that spasm four runs behind, having converted Demmitt's lone hit in the first inning into the only genuine tally of the day.
Hall, who had enjoyed a breeze all the way at the expense of the Sox, suddenly was seized with a generous fit and started passing batsmen. After he had filled the bases with only one man out Manager Jennings yanked the philanthropic hurler and sent Dauss to the slab. Dauss was infected with the same Andrew Carnegie spirit and issued another pass, forcing the Sox to make a tally.
There was no pity in Jennings' breast, so he ordered Dauss to the booby hatch for a spanking and sent Coveleski to ladle out the pitch stuff. The young southpaw was equally generous in intent and would surely have forced in enough runs to give the Sox the game, but two of the visitors absolutely refused to accept that kind of a gift and got out. They were Tom Daly and Ray Schalk.
For a while it looked as if Buck Weaver would have to shoulder the blame for another defeat because he blew two runs over the pan by missing a cinch double play in the fourth inning. But Weaver had plenty of partners in crime before the thing was over. Harry Lord and Jack Fournier joined him by helping to contribute three runs to the Tiger total in the eighth.
Lord's miscue was a boot of a Cobb bounder in a tight place. Fournier's blunder did not appear in the error column. Jack simply sat down on the grass and watched a tall fly light near him in gleeful security. By keeping his feet Fournier should have caught said fly and saved the cost of Lord's error to boot.