CHAPTER XIX

How the average fan looks on professional baseball—It is a business but a short lived one—Why publicity hurts sometimes—Keeping a physical edge—The value of training—What it takes for success in baseball—A few rules for the young player.

The average fan, eating peanuts in the grandstand and cheering or jeering the players as the mood strikes him, looks upon professional baseball as a sort of daily circus for the men who play.

“Gee, what a soft job you fellows have” they say. “Getting paid for going out there and having fun every afternoon—and big money, too!”

I never hear a remark like that but I think of that day, back in 1914, when I signed my first contract and Brother Gilbert gave me his first words of fatherly advice:

“Playing baseball on the sand lots is one thing George” he said. “And playing professional baseball is something else. The sand lot game is just boyish fun. You can start and stop as you please. Professional baseball is a business. It’s a job for men.”

Never were truer words spoken than those.

Certainly we (I mean professional ball players) have fun at our job. No man can make a success as a ball player unless he enjoys his work. But it is work—just the same as banking or practicing law or medicine is work. And we enjoy it in the same way other men enjoy their professions.

And we do get paid, and good money.

But, and here’s the rub. Ours is a short lived business. At the age when most men are just reaching their prime we’re through and out. Grown old at thirty-five sounds strange to most men, but the statement is all too true to the ball player.

Men sometimes envy us for the publicity we get and the fame. It is pleasant to see one’s name played up in the papers day after day: there is a satisfaction in being recognized in the crowd and cheered perhaps. It’s human nature to enjoy a little boosting—and ball players are only human. But there’s another side to publicity too, a side which denies you all privacy, and makes your slightest mistake the subject for common gossip. General opinion is that ball players are rough necks, that they play the game fast and loose. That’s wrong. They’re not any better and certainly no worse than the average man in the street. But there’s this difference. Everything they do or say or think is held up to public view.

Believe me publicity is not always pleasing or desirable. I know. A few years ago I sat in a Boston Hotel and saw “Red” Grange, broken, and nervous. Deep lines were under his eyes, his fingers trembled and his nerves were on point of breaking. All because he was being hounded by men whose friendly publicity was actually wrecking him physically. Right off hand I can’t think of any two young men who have tougher jobs to fill than Colonel Charles Lindbergh and the Prince of Wales. Never a chance to be alone, never a chance to make a move that isn’t the subject of public discussion the moment it is made.

Don’t misunderstand me. We all like favorable publicity. And no matter how much we get, we still enjoy it. I’ve had a lot of it. Most of it good, some of it bad. And I confess that most of the bad was deserved.

I only bring up the point as answer to those men and women who, sitting comfortably in the grandstand and watching the ball game, envy us our jobs without realizing just what those jobs mean. Baseball has its unpleasant side along with the pleasant: it brings its worries along with the laughs: its troubles along with its joys.

You sit up North shivering in the snow and cold of February and March, and read perhaps of the warm Florida sunshine, the fine hotel meals and the men in training for baseball. And you envy them, which is natural.

But there’s another side to the picture—a side which isn’t so attractive. That’s the side of sore and aching muscles driven almost to the point of breaking; it’s the side of sore arms and legs and aching feet that plow and fight the Florida sand in an effort to gain condition. There’s the story of families left behind for six weeks or two months at a stretch, and then deserted again during the summer months when the professional ball player spends his days and his nights on the road.

The fan forgets these things for publicity has made the ball player something a little different from human. But the players themselves know, and I’ve heard them sit cussing the very fate that turned them into ball players and kept them living the life of roving gypsies for seven or eight months out of the year.

That is not yet a complete picture. For in the case of the young ball player there’s also the ghost of failure just around the corner. Men talk of this or that profession as being a tough one in which to make good. Baseball, or more particularly big league baseball, is the toughest in the land. Out of 400 rookie players who go South each spring with their hopes high, not more than 10 make the grade. The rest—well, they just disappear. Maybe they come back three or four years later, older and wiser. Perhaps they never come back at all. They’re just swallowed up into the unknown.

People sitting in the stands, think little of the unpleasant side of baseball as a profession; or if they think of it all dismiss it with a shrug of the shoulders and the statement: “Oh well, if he wasn’t a ball player he’d probably be digging ditches, or working on a farm.”

That attitude has always struck me as most unfair.

You know if Galli-Curci couldn’t sing she might be doing hard tasks in her native land; if Booth Tarkington couldn’t write books, he might be an Indiana farmer or if Arthur Brisbane couldn’t write editorials he might be a subway guard. Funny of course, but just as fair as the other.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not knocking my profession. I went into professional baseball because I loved it, and the game has been more than good to me. But I am trying to outline the unpleasant side along with the pleasant. Then if any of the chance readers of this story have desire to play the game professionally—they will know the bad side as well as the good. Sand lot baseball is a lot of fun—simply because it’s a game which you can take up or drop as you please. But professional baseball is a real job, the same as any other life work—a job that takes the best there is in you, and when you’re finished, leaves you to carry on as best you can.

Once a ball player has made the grade, once he has broken down the competition and made a place for himself, his future is pretty much in his own hands. Smart men like Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Max Carey, Zach Wheat and players of that type have continued their careers long past the average length. The average big league career is eight years. These men have gone on for 15 or 20 seasons still playing the game. The answer, of course, is physical condition.

Keeping the proper physical edge is one of the most important things in baseball. Very frequently ball players are broken down physically before they waken to that fact. That’s tragedy. I came near falling into that kind of tragedy myself. But I learned my lesson in the nick of time. In the past three years I have trained as conscientiously as a prize fighter. I have watched my diet carefully—and my weight. And I have played better baseball.

And it strikes me that the average man on the street, regardless of his profession, could take example from the laws of baseball training. Of course men can be divided into two general classes. On the one hand are the fellows of slight build—slim and wiry, who are always underweight rather than overweight. Into this class fall most of the men who last longest in the big leagues. Their physical problem is one of building up rather than taking off weight. Carey, Cobb, Collins—all are of that type. Joe Dugan, Bob Meusel, Earl Combs fall in the same class. The other type are the fellows who naturally run to surplus flesh. I’m one of that sort. Lou Gehrig will be as he grows older. Harry Heilmann, Bob Fothergill, Hack Wilson, and a dozen others in the big league have the same trouble.

And that’s the deadliest thing in baseball.

A man’s legs, you know, are the first thing to go in baseball. There’s an old saying that “a ball player is just as old as his legs.” Excess weight gives an added burden on the legs and wears them out just that much more quickly. Consequently the wise athlete watches that waist line—and so does the smart business man, if he is wise.

In avoiding excess weight the first thing to get right is the diet. The newspaper men kid a lot about fellows eating themselves out of the big leagues—but it’s no joking matter. Lots of young fellows do it. We used to have a pitcher with the Yankees, I won’t mention his name, who was one of the greatest eaters I ever saw. I’ve seen him eat three dollars’ worth of food for breakfast, as much more for lunch, finish off the day with a six dollar dinner—and then complain of being hungry and go out for sandwiches and coffee before going to bed. That same fellow used to kick about his tendency to put on weight too. He’s gone from us now—just a plain case of eating himself out of the league.

I used to have quite an appetite myself. I was cursed with an iron constitution. And I really mean cursed. For my constitution was so strong that I could commit those excesses of eating without apparent harm for several years. When I did begin to have trouble, I had it in bunches and job lots. I eat a little fruit juice and toast and coffee for breakfast. I seldom eat lunch at all, and when I do I have only a vegetable salad of some sort. I eat one good meal a day and that’s dinner. At that meal I have meat—but always with plenty of vegetables and green stuff. Two years ago if anyone would have told me that I could get along on so little food I would have said they were crazy. Now I do it day after day, and I not only feel well fed—but I’m stronger than ever. Which just goes to show that eating, beyond a certain point, is a matter of habit. It isn’t necessary, and it isn’t healthful.

Here’s another tip. Take exercise regularly, but not too violently. I used to loaf around all winter putting on weight. Then I’d try to take off in two weeks of strenuous training, all the pounds that it had taken me the winter to accumulate. The result came mighty near being fatal. The minute a man, not used to exercise, goes into the thing too strenuously, he is putting a strain on the heart that’s bound to make trouble. The heart weakens, that affects the digestion, the stomach goes bad and the first thing you know you’re a fit subject for the hospital.

Exercise regularly but use good sense. And remember always that it’s easy to keep in condition but it’s a tough job getting back physical fitness that has once gone. Right now, well past thirty years old and supposedly on the down grade of my baseball career, I’m in the best physical condition I ever knew. The reason is that the minute the season ends I start in on exercises that will keep my muscles hard and my weight down.

My winters used to be full of vaudeville tours, movies and that sort of thing. But not any more. Right after the 1927 world series was over Lou Gehrig and I went on a barnstorming tour. We traveled all the way to the Coast, playing ball every day. After I returned I started on hunting trips. There’s nothing like hunting to keep the legs in shape. The long hikes over the hills, the hours spent in the duck blinds, inhaling the bracing salt air—there’s nothing like them. I’ve always found golf a great conditioner. And in addition to that I spend a couple of hours twice a week in the gymnasium. I play a little hand ball, box a little perhaps, and take exercises aimed at that oversized stomach. Nothing very violent—but regular.

And the answer. Well, I was broken in health three years ago. I lay for weeks on a hospital bed and most of the critics predicted that I would never play baseball again. But I did. And today I’m in the best physical condition I’ve ever known, and playing the best ball. Perhaps there will be some satisfaction in that for some of the tired business men who at thirty-five find themselves slipping physically. Certainly if I can do it, so can anyone else.

To the young man interested in baseball as a career, perhaps I can outline a few rules that are helpful. Learning to play the game is of the least importance. That’s a natural thing. Either a man has ability as a ball player or he hasn’t, and I take it for granted that no young fellow will plan a baseball career unless he is assured of his mechanical abilities.

But these rules are good always.

Study the game. Remember that baseball is a profession as intricate in its own way as the law, or medicine.

Don’t be afraid to accept advice. Other men can always give you good pointers now and then no matter how much experience you’ve had. And there’s always something new to learn. No one man ever knows it all.

Keep physically fit always. It isn’t hard if you do it, but if you let yourself slip it’s doubly hard to come back.

Most important of all—and this goes not alone for baseball but for every other profession—save your money!

Perhaps you say I’m a queer one to preach that gospel. Personally I’m fitted, I believe, above most everyone else. For I’ve played both sides. For several years I spent my money as I earned it. I threw it to the four winds, without thought of any future day or any idea of saving.

If I had saved from the start of my career I might have had a million dollars today. But I didn’t. I’m not sorry for what has gone before. It probably was good experience for a young fellow who never had seen the world or known anything about the world’s people until he went into baseball.

But, boy, I’m glad I got wise to myself in time. From now on a part of my earnings each year go right down into the savings account. I don’t know how much longer I may be able to play baseball Perhaps for five or six years. Perhaps only two or three. You never can tell what another new season will bring.

Here’s one thing that’s certain.

I’ll play just as long as I can. It’s my profession, my life, and I love it.

And when I’m through I will be able to retire and live the way I want to live—knowing that I have plenty to support myself and family for the rest of my days.

And that’s my baseball story.

Hereafter in thinking of baseball and baseball players I ask you to remember only that it’s a great game, worthy of the best you can give it. And ball players, off the field, are much the same as you—just as human, just as friendly, just as much interested in their own lives, their own affairs and their own ambitions.

Some of us are a little rough, true enough, but then so are some of you. Some of us have lacked opportunities for education and training. So have some of you. But we’re all good citizens, all of average honesty and integrity; of average intelligence and average character.

We like the cheers when they come: we take the jeers as they echo. We try to give the best we can, and once we’re too old to carry on we all hope to step down gracefully to bow to the youngsters who succeed us. Youth, you know, is the life of baseball—and we can’t keep our youth forever.

And that, as the boys say, when they hit into a double play, is that!