CHAPTER XIV

Waiting ’em out!—Frank Chance puts one over—Jamieson smacks the first one—Not always easy to wait—Trying to outguess the pitcher—The intentional pass—Putting on the hit and run play—Eddie Collins a master at it—Huggins expresses an opinion.

How often, when you go out to the ball game, you hear the voices of the coaches echoing above all the noise and cheering.

“Wait him out!” “Make him pitch! Make it be in there!”

Those are sort of stock phrases in baseball, phases that the coachers use constantly. And they contain pretty good advice, too.

♦ “phases” replaced with “phrases”

A waiting attack has been the downfall of many a pitcher—and it’s particularly effective against a pitcher who is inexperienced or one who is inclined to wildness. Of course you have to pick your spots. Playing a waiting game against a fellow like Alexander, for instance, is right in his groove. His control is so perfect that the minute a team starts to wait him out they’re putting themselves in a hole.

The waiting attack, of course, is very simple. It consists merely in not swinging until forced to. Batters, playing that sort of a game, will take two strikes without moving the bat from their shoulders. And its purpose is two-fold.

The first purpose is to make the pitcher work as hard as possible. Fellows who swing at the first ball are giving the pitcher all the best of it. In that sort of an attack a pitcher can get through an inning with pitching only three or four balls. Against a waiting attack he has to pitch at least nine even if every thing he pitches is a strike.

The second purpose of a waiting attack is to take advantage of a pitcher’s wildness. With a lot of pitchers, if the hitter has patience enough to wait and wait, he eventually will draw a base on balls—and a base on balls is just as good as a basehit both in getting men to first base and in advancing runners.

In this day of slugging the old waiting game isn’t played as much as it used to be. Bill Carrigan used to tell a story of Frank Chance when he was managing the famous old Cubs. Chance, Carrigan said, won a crucial game in a pennant series by waiting tactics. At the start of the game he instructed every man on his club to wait.

“Don’t swing at all,” Chance warned. “Just go up there and stand. If you’re called out on strikes it’s all right.”

And for six innings the Cubs did that very thing. For six innings the opposing pitcher, pitched hitless ball—for not a single Cub hitter took his bat from his shoulder. But in that time the pitcher averaged twelve to fifteen pitches an inning.

Finally in the seventh inning, Chance suddenly switched his tactics.

“Go up there and smack that first ball,” he instructed.

The Cubs did just that. A couple of base hits came in a row. The pitcher upset by the sudden switch, lost his stuff. He grew wild. And in one inning the Cubs put over four runs and won the ball game. That’s carrying the waiting attack to the last degree—and such methods aren’t favored much these days.

But the waiting game is still mighty important in baseball.

To some hitters, waiting comes natural. Others can’t seem to withstand the temptation to swing at that first one if it’s “in there.” Pitchers soon catalogue hitters and pitch accordingly. Mike Gazella and Pat Collins of the Yankees for instance, are waiters. I’ve seen both Pat and Mike take two strikes time after time without so much as offering to swing at the ball. Charley Jamieson of the Cleveland Indians, on the other hand is a first ball hitter. A pitcher can put that first one over with safety to either Pat or Mike, but putting the first one over to Jamieson is murder. He’ll sock it for a city block.

In modern baseball teams are apt to change their attack two or three times in a single game. Perhaps for an inning or two they will wait the pitcher out. Then they may suddenly shift to a first ball hitting attack. Midway of the game they may shift still another time. The idea is to keep the pitcher guessing.

After all baseball is a game of guessing and out-guessing. A lot of hitters carry the idea too far. They try to out-guess the pitcher on every pitch. Personally I’m opposed to guess hitting.

“How do you know when to expect a curve ball and when a fast one?” I guess I’m asked that question a hundred times a year. The answer is that I don’t. The minute a fellow starts in trying to guess the pitch he’s just wishing trouble on himself. For there’s nothing in this world more upsetting than being set for a fast ball and then have a curve come looping up. And there’s no better way in the world to get a trip to the hospital with a cracked head, than getting set for a curve and then have a fast one come swinging in at your chin.

After all there’s only one answer to be made to the young fellow who is asking constantly for advice as to how to hit.

The answer is: “Pick out a good one and sock it!”

I’ve talked to a lot of pretty good hitters in the past ten years and I’ve watched them work. Go over the list from top to bottom—Hornsby, Goslin, Heilmann, Gehrig, Traynor, Cobb, Judge, Bottomley, Roush—there’s not a “guess” hitter in the lot. They all tell you the same thing.

“I never think about whether it’s a curve or a fast one that’s coming. I simply get set—and if the ball looks good, I sock it.”

As a matter of fact half of the time when a fellow gets hold of one he doesn’t really know whether it was a curve or a fast one he hit. A slow ball, naturally, he can recognize—but the others he can’t. The crack of the bat just naturally drives all question of curve or fast one out of your mind. Many times I’ve cracked out a homer, and when I got back to the bench I’ve had some of the boys ask me what it was I hit. And I couldn’t tell them. All I knew was it was over—I liked it—and I swung just right.

That day in 1927 that I got my sixtieth home run off Tom Zachary, the left hander with the Washington Senators. Naturally there was a lot of interest in it, and the newspapers next day carried stories as to the sort of ball I hit. Some of the writers said it was a fast ball inside; some of them said it was a curve ball. Some of them thought it was high outside, and others thought it was low inside. A few said it was a fast ball right down the middle.

It wasn’t any of these. The ball I hit for my sixtieth homer was a screw ball—a slow ball that comes up with little or no rotation and broke in and down, being thrown by a left hander. As a matter of fact I didn’t know at the time whether the ball was inside or outside. In fact Manager Huggins and I agreed later that it was on the outside corner. Zachary, however, insists that the ball was slightly lower than waist high, and on the inside. Tom should know. All I can say for certain is that it was a screw ball, and that it looked good to hit!

I always get a great kick out of newspaper stories in which the boys try to tell the sort of pitch that batters hit for base hits. It can’t be done. From the press box or the stands it’s mighty hard to see a curve ball any time, even when the batter has his bat on his shoulder. Once he starts to swing and the bat comes between the observer’s eye and the ball, it’s twice as hard if not impossible. When you consider that a lot of curve balls are hit before they start to break, or at the very moment they start to break, you can appreciate just how hard it is for the man in the stands to tell what sort of ball is pitched.

The tip off on that, I think, is the fact that a certain National League manager, watching Pipgras pitch in the second game of the 1927 world series, commented at some length on Pipgras’ “excellent curve that had the Pirates guessing.” As a matter of fact George pitched fast balls almost exclusively that day. I don’t think he threw a dozen curves during the entire game. Now I ask, if a veteran manager, trained to watch, and sitting in the stands can’t be sure what is being pitched—what chance has a casual observer to call the turn. It simply can’t be done.

It’s like fans along the third base line trying to judge balls and strikes as they go zipping across the plate. And that’s next to impossible.

But I started out to talk about the waiting policy. As I said you find certain hitters who are natural born waiters. They’re fellows who have such keen eyes and judgment that they can judge a ball to the fraction of an inch. “Hard to fool” the pitchers say. Such players are mighty valuable fellows to have around. Very frequently, in baseball, a couple of bases on balls may be the entering wedge for a batting rally. In a game in which the pitcher has been breezing along, the boys on the bench are as pleased to see him give a base on balls as they are to see a base hit. For a base on balls frequently is the first tip-off that comes on a pitcher weakening.

Once a pitcher shows signs of weakening is the moment to bring the old waiting game into play. The Yankees last year beat Lefty Grove of the Athletics four straight games simply by waiting him out. Lefty is a great pitcher—but he’s inclined to wildness and after he’s sent that fast curve in there a few times without the hitters offering at it, he begins to get nervous. Or I should say did—for Lefty is older and more experienced now and the things that upset him when he broke in don’t bother him any more.

I guess there is nothing in baseball that has caused more discussion in recent years than the intentional pass. Fans have howled and wailed about it, and they’ve demanded some sort of penalty for an intentional pass—but nothing has been done. Probably nothing will be either, for the intentional pass has a place in baseball. I’ve been the victim of the intentional pass as much as anyone in either league I guess, and I’ve howled and complained with the rest of them. But all the same I can get the pitcher’s viewpoint, and it’s a good one. He isn’t out there to please the crowd. He’s out to win ball games—and if passing one hitter to get at another will win, why he’s within his rights in doing it.

You will notice that last season I wasn’t passed nearly as often as in the seasons before. The reason is, that with Gehrig coming up, it wasn’t good baseball to do it. Giving a man an intentional pass is just like handing the enemy a scoring chance—and that’s penalty enough for the pitcher.

Then too there are certain situations arise which make the intentional pass good baseball, regardless. Suppose there is a runner on second base, one out, and the score tied. A fairly good hitter is coming up, followed by another one equally good. In a spot like that an intentional pass might be a wise move. For by passing a man to first you “block the bases,” that is you make a force play possible at both second and third and pave the way for a double play which would retire the side without scoring. With a runner only on second a double play is virtually impossible.

The intentional pass is not particularly costly in a case like that. The man on second will score on a single anyhow, and the fellow who is passed to first can’t possibly go all the way round on a one-base hit. Intentionally passing a good hitter to get at a weak hitter also is good baseball, despite the wails of the fans who want to see base hits.

I’ve seen pitchers pitch to a hard hitting catcher and have him break up a ball game, instead of passing him to get at the weak hitting pitcher. And fans up in the stands are apt to say “Well he had nerve anyhow. He pitched. You’ve got to hand him that.”

Hand him nothing! All I hand him is that he was too stubborn to do the thing he should. He gets no credit in my book at all—and remember that I have suffered much from this intentional pass business. What I’m trying to point out is that baseball is a game of strategy, and a lot of things which may not please the folks in the stands are mighty good baseball just the same.

One of the greatest offensive plays in use today is the “Hit and run.” That’s just what the name implies. The runner starts with the pitch and the batter hits the ball, on the ground and behind the runner if possible.

Suppose there is a man on first base and nobody out. The hit and run signal is flashed. As the pitcher starts his motion the runner dashes toward second. The hitter swings, striving if possible to hit the ball between first and second base, back of the fleeting runner. The advantage of course is that by prearranged signal which tells the runner just what the hitter will do, the runner is enabled to get a long lead and can advance an extra base. Or, by having that long start, he avoids the possibility of a double play and reaches second base safely even though the runner may be thrown out.

The fact that a man is a good hitter doesn’t mean that he will be a good man on the “hit and run.” Here again hitting style enters into it. The choke hitter is always the best hit and run man—and the “swing hitter” very seldom is able to put on the play successfully. That’s because the choke hitter is better able to place the ball where he wants it. “Calling his shots” the boys say.

With the hit and run play on the man at the bat usually shortens his stride and eases up on his swing. That’s because he’s got to make sure of hitting the ball. Failure to hit the ball, on a hit and run play, means almost certain death to the runner—and hitting the ball, unless it happens to be a hard liner direct into an infielder’s hands, is practically a guarantee that the runner will reach his base safely.

Eddie Foster, the old Washington third baseman, was one of the best hit and run men I ever saw. Eddie could come as near laying that ball midway between second and first as any man in the business. The only chance of breaking up the hit and run play with Eddie up, was to “waste” one—and pitchers don’t do that unless they are pretty sure they have the other fellow’s sign.

A lot of men in the league now are good on the hit and run. Eddie Collins is a wonder at it. Ty Cobb was a great one. Sewell of the Cleveland Indians is a wizard on the play. Hitters who seldom strike out always make the best hit and run men—regardless of whether they hit the ball far or not. Joe Dugan is as good on the play as anyone we have on the Yankees. And Bob Meusel can put it on well, despite the fact that he is both a right hand hitter and a swing hitter.

The hit and run play usually demands that the hitter send the ball to right field. Fellows like Cobb and Collins frequently play it the other way. With a man in position for the hit and run they will feint a strike to see who covers second. Then if the shortstop makes the move to cover, they will hit through the shortstop position, sending the ball through the space he vacated to go over to the bag. That’s a good play for a fellow who can place hit. But it’s a bad gamble for the amateur. For if anything goes wrong, a double play is almost certain—and there’s nothing upsets a batting attack like a double play.

The success or failure of a hit and run depends a lot on the type of pitcher who is working too. Pitchers who pitch fast and high are the easiest victims of this attack. A pitcher of the Wilcy Moore type who pitches a low “sinker” is tough. Wilcy makes opposing pitchers hit into the ground, and hitting into the ground on a hit and run is very likely to give an infielder an easy chance for a double play.

Whether to use the hit and run, or the sacrifice to advance runners is a matter for the manager to decide. It all depends on the players. Some clubs are best at one play some are better at the other. Certain other clubs, speedy and fast and shifty, may discard both in favor of the steal.

Miller Huggins, smart manager that he is, covers the subject in this way:

“I’m not interested in baseball theories,” he says. “Baseball is one game that can’t be run by rule. The team that wins ball games is the team that makes the most of its own mechanical abilities and to thunder with the other team’s strategy. Some other manager does things differently perhaps—but he’s got a different ball club to do it with!”