Sweetness and Light in Baseball

The Old Conflict Between Mosaic Code and New Dispensation to Be Fought Out in the World's Series

HEYWOOD BROUN

BASEBALL offers annually the refutation of the proud boast that "Americans don't go off their nuts about things, like them damn frogs".

Every autumn the world's series comes and, with it, inhibitions begin to pop and straw hats sail through the air. During those tense days " 'at a boy" becomes the national slogan.

To be sure, we know now that in 1919 our cheers fell vainly upon the ears of athletes who were thinking only of "the wife and kiddies".

And yet enthusiasm will not be dimmed.

We hope that the series of 1921 will be honest, and even if it is not, only a few will be unfortunate enough to know beforehand which way it is going to come out. Probably no sporting event in the world, unless it is the Derby, commands such keen interest among so large a proportion of a population. Not more than forty thousand persons will actually see any one game, compared to the hundred thousand odd at Epsom Downs, but the contests will be staged in miniature with mannikins, or at least with the figures inning by inning, in every sizeable town throughout America. The excitement commanded by these mimic representations is almost as great as that aroused by the actual games themselves.

With nothing but chalk and blackboard to follow, the shifts come with a dramatic suddenness denied to those who see every move. Once at the Polo Grounds I saw two newsboys in the grandstand watch the Yankees take the lead from Cleveland by a sudden spurt in the eighth inning which netted them four runs, but at the end of the flurry one of them sighed and said, "Gee, what would you give to be in Times Square right now?" He missed the great roar which he knew would come when the four runs were suddenly marked all at once upon the bulletin board.

We are not an undemonstrative people, although we pretend we are, and neither are we so lacking in imagination as we would have the world believe. Standing before a mechanical scoreboard in the last world series, we were all but deafened by a large man who kept shouting, "Take 'im out", as the little blue discs representing Cleveland were moved about the diamond. Suddenly a large hand was thrust through the board and the block of wood which represented Sherrod Smith, the Brooklyn pitcher, was ignominiously removed. It seemed to the fat man as if Wilbert Robinson, eight hundred miles away, had heard his plea. At any rate, before a new numbered disc could be put in place, he cupped his hands and shouted, "Jeff Pfeffer, Jeff Pfeffer".

And Pfeffer it was.

Perhaps the appeal was aimed at a higher power than Robinson. It had all the fervency of a prayer and obviously there was enough faith behind it to move, if not a mountain, at least the fattest manager in baseball.

Ruth and Rapture

AMERICANS, then, are emotional enough to shout and stamp and throw their hats in the air about baseball. No other factor in our national life has ever produced the same vocal fervency in vast numbers of people. Bill Sunday sways his thousands, but his most lurid descriptions of hell-fire and his most persuasive portraits of heaven have never thrown a throng into such a frenzy of excitement as a home run by Babe Ruth. Salvation is for all time. A drive into the centre field bleachers at the Polo Grounds is the sort of thing which happens only once in a generation.

The difficulty presented to the baseball critic who would pick a winner weeks before the contest lies in the fact that the players themselves, callous professionals though they be, are at heart just as emotional as the rooters. Logically, there is no great trouble in deciding which team will win in each league and which should have the better of it in the series, but no one this side of the seats of the mighty can tell just how Frankie Frisch or Bob Meusel is going to feel on that particular day when he steps to the plate with three men on bases and two out. It comes hard to sound the note of service in an article dealing with baseball, but there is no getting away from the fact that the issue depends more than anything else on leadership. Once again we are to find out whether there is any truth in the old Babylonian proverb, "The voice with the smile wins".

In each league the fight has narrowed down to a contest between managers who believe in balm and those who hold to righteous anger. Two are cuffing their men along through the crucial days of the season and two are patting them on the back. The "mes enfants" school founded by Papa Joffre won over the blood and iron of Hindenburg in the war, but it remains to be seen whether George Gibson can cuddle Pittsburgh along faster than McGraw can curse the Giants; whether Tris Speaker's eloquent encouragement can do more than the nagging of Miller Huggins.

Baseball sets most the fashions in our national life and, if the Simon Legree system of management prevails, I fully expect to find all the editors trying it out next season and dropping the present policy of intimate luncheons. Accordingly, I cast one ballot for sweetness and light and pick Cleveland to win in the American League and Pittsburgh in the National. After that the choice becomes difficult since the two opposing managers will both be masters of persuasion. I choose Tris Speaker and the Cleveland Indians, because he is himself in the lineup, and is able to set an example by performance as well as precept.

It will be rather a pity if the New York American League team, the Yankees, fail to win because this is the most interesting team in either league. Babe Ruth is easily the greatest attraction in the game. He is a marvellous person to watch, not only because he hit fifty-four home runs last season and broke all existing records, but because he is a personality. For all those who pine and worry about waistlines there is solace in the performances of Ruth. He is a large fat man, and growing fatter, but in many respects he is the greatest baseball player of all time. Out of the career of Babe Ruth it is possible to draw another moral lesson and, having done no other good deed to-day, I shall proceed to outline it.

It is thrilling to watch Babe Ruth meet the ball squarely and knock it over the fence, but it is also vastly exciting to see him miss it by a foot and strike out. There is no compromise in his method. His intent is constantly All or Nothing. In order to knock the ball into the bleachers now and again he does not mind the ignominy of falling flat on his face when he misses. Among our novelists and playwrights and artists there ought to be more of this admirable Ruthian spirit. A hair-line divides the great and the ridiculous. Magnificence will never be achieved except by those who are willing to run the risk of spectacular failure. Ruth never tries to do anything less than knock the cover off the ball.

After that he diminishes somewhat as a figure for a moral. He is just a pretty good fielder and he runs the bases well if the qualification is added—for a fat man. In Heaven there will be baseball games on limitless Elysian fields with Ruth to hit long drives and Tris Speaker to chase them. If there were nc fences it would be hard to put a limit on the distance which Speaker could go to make a catch. His judgment of a fly ball is intuitive and immediate. He seems to be as adept as the most acute machines designed for the army in sound ranging. Again and again I have seen him turn at the instant , the ball met the bat and run for dear life to some rendezvous already established in his mind. Reaching the exactly proper spot, he will turn and put up his hands, and down will come the ball tc nestle in his glove. So perfect is the technique of Speaker that much of his art seems easy. Sarah Bernhardt, I understand, has suffered from the same handicap. Now and again, however, a ball is hit so far from the station of Speaker that, despite his early start, he cannot quite reach the rendezvous. On such rare occasions he slides the last ten or twenty yards upon his stomach or jumps five or six feet in the air and reaches a little. He makes the catch just the same. He is a more consistent hitter than Ruth, though not so long a one, and a fast man on the bases. Added to all this, he is a leader who never gives up and never allows his team to give up in spite of the circumstances of a game. It seems to me that he is by far the finest manager in professional baseball.

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Nevertheless, Cleveland may fail to win the American League nant and be shut out of the world's series. The material at the command of Speaker is distinctly inferior to that of several other clubs. His team is studded with players who are only second rate, but are playing like members of the first flight, simply because Speaker has told them that they are stars and they believe him. Such magic may rub off in times of stress. Doc Johnston, the first baseman, might suddenly have another birthday member that he really is growing old.

Speaker cannot turn the clock back for him. Nor can he add a few years of experience to young Sewell, the shortstop, whom he kidnapped from the University of Alabama when his parents left him unguarded for a moment.

The New York Yankees have just the proper proportion of youngsters and veterans to make a winning baseball club. Consider the infield, for instance, with Frank Baker and Roger Peckinpaugh, seasoned but not aged, on one side and the dashing stripling Erin Ward and the only slightly more mature Wallie Pipp on the other. The outfield has the amazing Ruth and another capable slugger, Bob Meusel, as well as a capital defensive player in Elmer Miller. The pitching staff has two stars in Mays and Shawkey, and Schang is a good although not a great catcher. The only trouble with the Yankees is that they do not know that they are a championship baseball team. Miller Huggins, the manager, has forgotten to mention it to them.