The evening times. [volume] (Grand Forks, N.D.) 1906-1914, 1906-09-25
Baseball
PLAY IN JAPAN.
Stanford University Players Planning
to Meet Waseda Team in
Toxin

\u.1iOAAANs AAAAS pooSAoAS Odpdu
next summer to play return series
of games with the representatives of
the Waseda university, and also to
engage in several hit and run con-
tests with the diamond artists of the
Imperial university of Toxic.
A firm dealing in athletic goods in
San Francisco has made the offer to
the collegians and guarantees to pay
the entire expenses of the round trip.
The baseball men are naturally very
enthusiastic over the idea, but it is
not known whether the faculty will
permit the Stanford team to go off on
a wholesale advertising tour of this
sort.
In the spring of 1905 the Waseda
team visited the coast and engaged in
several games with the California and
Stanford varsities. The trip of the
Waseda nine aroused great interest
in the American national pastime in
the land of the mikado, and tour of
Japan by Stanford varsity has been
greatly agitated by the Waseda en-
thusiasts.
1t has already been settled by
Graduate Manager Dudley D. Sales
that the Stanford varsity nine shall go
to Colorado during the Easter vaca-
ton next spring. The University of
Colorado and the Denver school of
mines will be tackled in ball games.
The Coloradans have been anxious
to have the Stanford team visit them
ever since the football team from the
university defeated the Colorado uni
varsity eleven on the gridiron in
1904 by score OF SO to o.
Tho mcmillan CHI h,.D
Christy Mathewson of the Giants this
year puzzles the fans. "Matty" says
that he has been peculiarly afflicted
this season, says a special from New
York. One day he can do as we'll as
ever he did in his life. The next, per-
haps, he can go about as far as five
or six innings and then that distress
ing sensation. which follows the use
of very strong medicines to cure a
very severe ailment, overcomes him
and his strength deserts him.
1t may be of some interest to medi-
cal science to learn just what anti
toXine seems to do to athletes. New
ton of the Highlanders was attacked
by diphtheria much as Mathewson
was. When Newton began to return
to something like his ordinary flow of
spirits he found that he could not
travel around the bases or gallop
around the field as he had been wont
to do.
His feet got heavy. He might 90
forth and pitch few innings of
game in an ordinary frame of mind
and the next that he knew, he couldn't
run four feet 10 pick up bunt to
save him from stiff doctors bill.
There were days when he began to
think that he had become an old man
some years before his time. Then he
thought he would go around and in
quire of the medical man what was
happening to him, in view of such
foolish pranks on the part of his pedal
extremities.
The physician told him that it was
the effect of the new tangled drug
which had been administered to him
to cure diphtheria. Antitoxine could
clear up the disturbance in his breath
ing funnel, and would also leave him
with two feet sadly handicapped by
something over which he had no con-
troll.
Same thing with Mathewson. The
antitOxine routed diphteria, but it left
the pitcher with a pair of feet and
lower legs which show stranger lido
syncrasies than those of any ball play
er on earth barring Dr. Newton.
If some bad manager of a baseball
nine were to hypnotic the members
OF rival team, which threatened to
win the championship, and inject an
titoxine into their aspirations to be-
come the possessors of champion
ship flag, he could possess himself of
a "cinch." Yet it would be mean
thing to do.
To what extent may pitcher carry
deliberateness in his tactics on the
slab before he subjects himself to just
criticism as being unnecessarily slow?
Doyle, the yOungster on the New York
Highlanders, is the latest mark for
the shafts of the hurry up reformers.
He is tersely summed up as 1.-The
worst ever" But of course that
doesn't go as far back as the days of
tackle and full back.
Cuppy. Cuppy of Cleveland, was the
''slowest ever" and then some Yet
Cuppy was good pitcher. There was
method in his intolerable lettering.
While the hungry spectators were
looking at their watches and swear
Ing. the impatient batter was sweat
ing from nervousness and that was
what Cuppy wanted. Considering the
importance of the task assigned to
him. 1t seems surprising there are not
more slow pitchers than there are
Yet with two deliberate twirlers at
work, the game would be drawn out
and lose much of their popularity, so
that it is fortunate pokey, work on the
slab is not regarded as essential to
effective pitching. AS matter of fact
most of the leading pitchers, while
ordinarily rapid actors, occasionally
slow down at some critical point in
a game, doing it for a purpose. A
striking instance of this was in the
New York-Chicago game following the
famous forfeit controversy at the Polo
grounds. Brown went in the last half
of the ninth inning with Chicago one
run ahead the bases full of New York
runners, and only one out. Brown
ordinarily is fast. moving pitcher,
but on this aprticular occasion he put
Cuppy's tactics in the shade. New
Workers who watched that finish will
tell you Brown took As minutes or
thereabouts in retiring those next two
batters. The great crowd was mad
with excitement, the cheering was
deafening and continuous, but the
man who ordinarily would have been
most affected, was, apparently, the
coolest individual on the grounds.
That was Brown. and anybody who
saw the game will be able to tell you
ten years from now how he slowly,
tantalizingly. struck out Gilbert, then
failed to fool Wiltse with three sue
cessive bad ones, after which he deli