The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-09
TO VISIT MONTGOMERY
CLARK GRIFFITH'S BASEBALL TEAM
 WILL PRACTICE HERE.
Local Fans VIII Have Opporfmnity of Seeing Stars of the Diamond-
 Chesbro Talks of the sss "spitbaIl."

d
 Montgomery lovers of basebail-and their name is legion-will. see some pretty swift baseball during the post season games in March and April. Clark Griffith and his New York lAmericans will do their spring training Tn Montgomery. It VIII De ,ne ] nns' tunity to see this stellar aggregation. Jack Chesbro, he who has made so many batters tear their hair in desper- ation over that famous-or infamous | spitbaIl, will of course be the center 1 of attraction. There are others, how ever In fact they are all heavy weights in the crowd who were nosed out of the American League pennant 1 by Jimmy Collins's Boston bunch. That crowd was in Montgomery last spring
 and the Pretzels played them the clos est games that they had on their Southern tour though Cy Young him self pitched the first half of one of the games for Montgomery.
 Willie Keeler. the slugging outfelder of Grifith's team. who was second in the batting averages of the American League with 1s5 hits in 143 games and an average of .343, will prove of as much interest as Chesbro to the deni- zens of Athletic Park. Then that great infield-Ganzel. Williams, Conroy and Elberheld-is said to be just as swift
 an article the one Boston has, which consists of LaChance, Ferriss, Collins, | ana U Nell
 His celebrated spitball was after all
 the cause of Chesbro and the Yankees
 undoing, and the following from an ex- change will be interesting to Montgom- cry y,n fans; s:u. ,n.o,ost,n and ,,.,r,o,,vo gossip concerning the spit ball' has been heard than that offered by Lou Criger, the star Boston backstop. who last season caught in ninety-seven games for the American League cham
 ca1n n lr ha -f
 Ind. is the sporting headquarters of the city. and it would be difficult to find
 time when the place is not filled with some of the cronies of the great teen years ago, when he shoveled sand for $1.25 day and got his elementary
 baseball training on the prairie land around Elkhart.
 The spit ball Is terror to the catchers" observed Criger the other day. looking up from newspaper that printed a picture of Chesbro. together with an article explaining the success of the New York pitcher with the now famous shoot My hands were in bad shape most of the time during the sea son, and I attribute it to the introduc- tion of the spit ball In the pitchers repertory. How Is it thrown? Well. that Is hard one to answer. I could show you better than 1 could explain 1t. The first two fingers are moistened. but I am not familiar enough with the science which the wise guys call the law of projectiles to tell why. When the ball is delivered 1t goes toward the batter like a slow straight ball until it gets where he imagines he can just shut his eyes and haste 1t to China. Then 1t takes crazy shoot downward and even the catcher has to look sharp or he will have a passed ball.
 "Chesbro got onto the spit ball last spring down South. He saw Elmer Stricklett of the Milwaukee Club, us- ing 1t. Stricklett discovered the trick of throwing the ball when a member of the Los Angeles Club of the Coast League. Chesbro was foxy and gave 1t out that 1t hurt his shoulder to throw the ball. He thought 1t was good enough for him. though, when he saw stricklett using it. and he prac- tfced it until he had it down pat.
 "The spit balT decided the Ameri- can League 1904 championship. In our close finish with New York 1t was to 0 against us until the eighth in- ming. In the eighth we tied the score l beat out an infleld hit in the ninth and went to second on sacrifice by Dineen. went to third when Elberfeld threw out Selbach. There were two men gone and 1t was our last hope. Then Ches- bro let go one of his spit balls It Is one of the disadvantages of this shoot that 1t is not under perfect control. and this time 1t went over the catcher's head. I think I jumped six feet in the air in going to the home plate. That wild pitch gave us the game and the championship.
 Tt is singular that this wetting of the finger should cause the ball to jump the way it does. It has already given the pitchers who use 1t a big advantage over the batsman and I look for some restriction to be placed on the use of 1t. I don't see how it can be banished altogether. The spit ball is only in it's infancy. Already McGin- nifty has been talking of using vaseIine instead of saliva. He expects to have a box of vaseline in his breast pocket don't believe any of the catchers would be sorry to see the new jerk leg islated against"