Imperial Valley press and the Imperial press., 1906-12-29
BALL FIELD STORIES
ODD INCIDENT THAT ONCE WON A
 GAME IN CHICAGO.

tDe west sue BIOulluS, III ChlCdBO5 III " game against New York. AnsOn's men were playing the Giants, and the vic tory hung in the balance until in the ninth inning, with the score even, Bill Lange faced Jouet Meekin and rampseG a certain double to center. There were two out, and the crowd rose with a yell of delight when Lange smote the ball, which rolled past Van Haltren.
 That ball rolled on and finally disap- peared. Van Haltren was on top of 1t, but instead of picking it up he sudden ly threw himself flat on the ground, rammed his right arm into the earth and commenced reaching. Lange meantime kept on. He turned second, raced on to third, gave a look outward and then sprinted for home, scoring the winning run.
 The ball had rolled into hole in the ground from which a post had been pulled that morning, and Van Haltren had been able only to reach it with the tips of his fingers. The next day the | hole was filled in.
 Upon what small things the results  when it is known that forty-five cent bucket of paint won the National l league pennant for Baltimore two years in succession. The men who composed the three times champion Orioles all admit the fact that the bucket of paint had more to do with their pennant win ming than anything else.
 l rT,I,o Orioles were not hitting. They could not find out why until one day Willie Keeler remarked that the ball when pitched from the pitchers box was the same color as the center field fence and that the ball was lost to them against the dark background. The players set themselves down to figure it out, and in the end they figured that the reason they were not hitting was because there was a lack of relief in the color scheme of the grounds. The bat boy was sent in a hurry for pot of white paint and patch of the fence in cen ter field exactly on a line with the pitchers box, and the plate was daub- ed white. The paint made difference of nearly forty points per man in their batting averages that season, and they won the pennant.
 After that the space in center on most of the big league ball grounds was kept clear or painted in some color that would assist the team in Its hitting.
 The color scheme in baseball is more 0hc nTXynf would suppose. For instance, the Polo grounds are one of the hardest grounds in the world for an outfelder Back o1 the grand stand rises huge bluff "Coogans bluff'' and the stand 1' built partly on the side of the hill Naturally the shadow of the stand anC the bluff lies heavy over the field as far out as second base in the late after noon, and the outfielders have grea difficulty in seeing the ball until it rises 7 out of the shadow and above the six! line. The players learn to judge balls by the way they sound against th' bat, but visiting players at the Pol' grounds have a hard time judging lin' drives.
 For years the New York players hav' had the advantage because of the colo scheme of their grounds. In cente field is a panel of color to relieve tn [ batter's eye and show the ball in re lief against it, while to mitigate tn effects of the shadow sections of tn front of the stand and even the bow ders on the hillside have been painted Those mechanical aids for batting ar
 great things. Almost every home tean
 has its grounds arranged for relief Il
 color, so that they can by looking at
 certain spot be certain to see the ba! It is not necessary for the ball to rlS l against the relief background, but it necessary for the players eye to D
 filed with the color so that when Il l looks at the ball it stands out in relic against the color which still is imprint
 ed on the retina of his eye.
 One of the best hitting pitchers tha I ever lived, Waiter Thornton, who wa
 driven out of baseball because Of tA personal dislike of an official of tn = National league to him, had schem l which worked well and which he claln V ed aided him in batting. He slmpl
 sat and held his fingers tight agailf his eyes for several minutes before g f ing to bat. Shutting out all light h
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