Los Angeles herald., 1906-06-30
NATIONAL GAME
RIVALRY is TENSE
uNSPORTsMANLIKE sTRATEeIEs
REsoRTED TO
Players in Big Leagues Not Only Win
by Fair Means bat by Foul.
Some Of Their Tricks
Are Disclosed

Win, tie or wrangle is the motto of
professional baseball. There is no
charity and mighty Little real sports
manship in the game. Everything is
sacrificed to the desire nd the necessity
of winning ball games, said Hugh Full
lerton recently.
1t is the oldest business on earth. In
each league eight clubs are banded to-
gether, sharing profits and the inter-
ests of one are the interests of all, yet
each of the ei~ht stands ready to do al
most anything to beat the others out of
players, out Of games and out of pen
nants.
No quarter is given or asked. Any
trick, fair or unfair that wins a ball
game is applauded, regardless of the
quality of sportsmanship involved.
Winning is the only ain1-and appar-
emily it justifes every means.
Yet time and again it has been proved
beyond doubt that the American public
loves sportsmanship more than 1t does
victory. Every team that ever has won
by unsportsmanlike tactics has lost the
support of the crowd eventually Cleve-
land and Baltimore are the two most
notorious instances-and just now New
York is souring on it's national league
team because 1t won by unfair tactics.
The public will cheer rowdyism and
trickery for time but not for long.
The commercial spirit Of the game is
what causes most of this, but beyond
the desire of money is the wild desire to
win games for the mere sake of win
ming. There are two o.Jners who con-
slider victory ahead of gate receipts
Comiskey and Dreyfuss. The others
would hate to lose, but probably would
choose the coin.
The Quaker Expose
The most fragrant case of unsports-
manlike conduct ever exposed was
shown up on the Philadelphia National
league grounds a few years ago. Teams
that visited the Quaker City kicked and
kicked, pitchers especially claiming
that the Quakers had some system of
exposing their signals. Delehanty and
Lajoie, the premier clubbers of the
league, would stand there at the plate
and swat the ball against the fence, ap-
parently knowing what the pitcher was
pitching. Chicago started the expose.
Jimmy Callehan and Tim Donohue laid
plot to change signals every inning,
reversing them. That afternoon Gala
han hit about six men. He would sig
nal for an outcUrve and pitch an in.
and the batters would run across the
plate and be hit. Chicago was sore,
and passed the word on to Cincinnati.
The Reds watched. Especially they
watched Petite Childs, for they sds
pected he was doing the work Finally
Deckley and Steinfeldt with some
others made a rush for Chids, pushed
! him away from the third base coachers'
box and began digging in the ground.
They tore up a wooden box with wires
attached and began to pull up yards of
wire that led underground toward the
club house.
/ The scheme then became clear. Nor
gan Murphy and some others in the
club house hat with field glasses and
caught the signals of the catcher,
flashed them over the wire to Childs,
| who stood on the wooden box so he
could feel the buzzer. Childs signaled
the latter what curve was coming and
the batter hit Strange to say the ex
posure caused little comment.
Baltimore under Hanlon, had the
most unfair and unsportsmanlike
grounds ever conStructed-and the
grounds, made exactly to suit the fast
little team, did as much toward win
ming pennants as anything else.
First of all the diamond sloped so that
| second base was four feet lower than
the plate and first base two feet lower,
while third base was higheg. Runners
ran down hill all the way around eX
cept from second to third The grounds
WeIt kept dS lldld 40 a NidyNy NCilCiiht
Melted and then tamped down, could
make it. The pitchers box was ele-
waited like small mountain in the CEN
ter of the field
That diamond was made to order for
such men as Keller and McGraw. who
led off at bat, and perfect for bunting
They used to bunt down hill on that
hard ground at big. slow first basemen
like AnsoN and Bill Clark, and then
tear downhill like flashes, 1t -Yas hard
/ to beat that team on its own grounds
Besides that, the tactics Of the Ori-
oles were so unsporsmanlike that the
naturally partisan people of Baltimore
| turned on them eventually and base
ball dropped into disrepute.
Pittsburg turned a trick last year
| that was about as bad as anything ever
brought out, and ii is a certainty that
Dreyfuss knew nothing of 1t until 1t
was too late.
1t so happened that the Chicago and
! Pittsburg teams jumped from Pittsburg
| into Chicago for a Sunday game and
| then back to the Smoky City. En- route
! to Chicago they lost their bats. Chance
! furnished Clark and his men all the
war clubs they needed. letting them use
anything on the grounds even their
| private bats. The following day at
! Pittsburg Chicago's bats were gone.
| Clark saw chance. He refused to
| loan the visitors any bats except a few
crooked, splntered or worthless clubs.
The action Of the Pirates led to de-