The evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1907-1908, 1907-11-30
GUESSING CONTEST
Baseball Science New Based or
Same Principle as Years Ago.

Elmer Bates, the veteran baseball critic,
writes:
Every few days some adolescent critic
Of the national game hobs up serenely with
the assertion that baseball Is becoming so
scientific and mysterious that only those
in touch with the individual players and
those familiar with the intricate problems
that confront the rival captains in every
battle have any conception of what is
really going on In those busy brains down
on the diamond. 1t Is, in fact, becoming
quite the popular thing to refer to the
baseball of a few years ago as a sort OF
prainless sport In sharp contra-distinction
to the wonderfully artistic and mystifying
game that Is played today. All this Is, OF
course, the sheerest nonsense in all the
game knows full well. The science of
baseball is limited today, as it was limited
back in the eighties and the n~ineties, to
the ability OF one player to outguess an,
other player, and that, in brief, is all
there is to the whole proposition. It was
quite as necessary for a pitcher to know
what not to offer up to Brouthers and An
son and Browning as it is for the modern
pitcher to know what particular balls to
keep away from the Wagners and LaJoies
today. The guessing contests between the
~aserunne n the catchers were fully
as exciting in the days of Harry Stovey
and Charley Snyder as they are in the
days OF Ty Cobb and Billy Sullivan. Was
Old Hoss' Radbourne, when, single
handed, he won the flag for Providence,
less scientific in outguessing the great
oatters or those days than are the Browns
and Pfeisters and Donovans in outguesS-
ing the Cobbs and Crawfords and Flicks
of today?
Were Kelly and Bennett and Ewing,
when. in their day. they lnipped the slum-
bering base runners at second and third
by the dozens, less scientific than are
the Killings and Crigers and Clarkes, who
nowadays make such plays two or three
times a season? What Science Of the
game, indeed, does any outielder of 1907
possess that Jimmy Fogarty. Billy Lange,
Curt WEIGH and Jim McA1eer did not
have hfteen or twenty years ago? What
outhelder Of today in either league would
not willingly surrender all he now knows
or the game in exchange for that par
ticular science that enabled McAleer TO
know by the very key in which the crack
OF the lat was attuned exactly where to
go for the ball? Baseball is now, has been
for thirty years, and will be, let us hope,
for all time to come, the great and glorious
American game. So great and so glorious
a game is 1t that it needs no box office
boomers no press agents of the club own
ers to contribute to its prestige. Especial
ly should the men whose fortunes are
CHANGED on the game pray to be spared
from those critics in knickerbockers who
seek to illuminate the present by throw
ing a shadow over the past. Fortunate,
indeed. will baseball be II IL lives to see
the reincarnation on its diamond In brains
and In science of Charley Ferguson, the
peerless pitcher and all-around player; OF
George Wright, the greatest shortstop of
my age OF Buck Ewing, the master OF all
best; OF GARRISON and Whitney and Bufin-
ton, Of Morrill, and OF Comiskey. of Evans
and Mccarthy, Of Dunlap and Denny and
OF all the grand old heroes OF the game
who thought out and put IN action the
! plays that We applaud today.