Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-03-04
HOW BASE BALL
PLAYERS DON'T TRAIN

them were nodding with WEAKNESS and
longing for their little white hunks. they
had to hustle OUT TO the park and get
ready for the afternoon game. There
wasn't anything unusual about this of
course. and 1t Is only referred to to illus
trate what bail players are up against all
the time
If that experience alone wasn't eaicu-
lated to take the keen edge off bunch of
ordinary athletes, then nothing could re-
move their edge. But base ball players
are not ordinary athletes Their power OF
endurance seems to grow by the very hard
ships they are continually called upon to
endure. An outfit of track athletes. for ex-
ample. bound for another city for a COM
petition. would have had a swell chance to
attribute any possible defeats in their
events at the end of the Journey to the
extreme fatigue of the travel they had
been through. But ball players never put
up any such excuses, and their existence
during the season is one big travel.
Ball Players Don't Train.
And yet it is hard to figure out just
where and how and when these athletes
of the ball field do any training at all, ex-
cept in their games. during the playing
season. They certainly don't have any
sort of system of dietary training, except
as to occasional-yery oceaslonal-indi-
viduals A bunch of young fellows train
ing for football game or rowing match
for track events squat at regular
training table Tor their meals Tor weeks
before the competition, cut out their smok-
ing altogether, and live like anchorites.
have yet to meet up with the ball player
who failed to eat any old thing that he
he wanted to devour. Almost as uni
versa1 thing they're the heartiest bunch
of trenehermen Imaginable. There are a
few men in the game who are light eaters
by preference, simply because they don't
naturally care to eat a lot, and from no
motive of training advantage whatever.
Jake Stahl is one of these. Jake doesn
eat any more than seminary GIRL but
hasn't got one of those continuous per-
Torrance hankerings for fodder But the
great majority of the players are heavy
eaters. They're so strong for the eat
thing" in fact, that most of them find it
a real hardship to abstain from eating
too heartily at luncheon on the days when
they're due to play game of ball. They
have to skim the bill of fare pretty lightly
at luncheon, of course, but such is the
perversity of human nature. luncheon is
just the meal that splost ball players want
to pick up and run away with in the gor-
nandfzing line AT that. some of them eat
quite some food at luncheon, and yet Or
binary athletes, such as men about 10 en-
ter a rowing or track contest, never eat
they're due to go to the post for their
event Ball players sometimes eat lunch
con as late as . O'Clock and then get on
the lot and play ball at D.
Tom Hughes Experience
Tom Hughes fooled himself up delight
fully one day last season at Cleveland.
Owing to some sort of a misunderstanding,
Tom didn't know that he was slated TO go
in against the Iajoie outfit that day. lie
been out riding with Barney Oldieid in Old
fields racing devil wagon around the out
skirts of Cleveland all that forenoon, and
when he showed up at Hotel Euclid a bit
after 1 o'clock. what with the zephyrs he
had inhaled he was there with a conStruc-
ton hands appetite. The chicken potpie on
the luncheon menu made a hit with Tom.
He put away three heipings of it, and a
dreamy CLINT of satisfaction appeared In
his lamps when he noticed the words
CHERRY pie" at the bottom of the bill of
fare If there's any one thing in the world
that would make Tom Hughes walk nine
miles through snow knee-deep to get it's
cherry pie. Cherry pie is his mania and his
obsession.
''Oho, / guess 1 won't start something
now" said Tom to his table mate, George
Nill-and Mil didn't understand, either.
that Tom was to lob 'em over against the
Maps that day--and then Hughes beckoned
to the waiter. and said he:
Three slabs of that cherry pie, please,