Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-06

these club crabs. generally fellows who. it
Is perfectly obvious from their speech and
manner. could never by any chance have
ever had anything really first rate to eat
until they got into the ball-playiug busi-
ness, go right on with their agitatfng and
irritating knocks about the hotel food /
nave sat at tables with these club crabs
enjoying me food finely prepared and
nneiy served. in the best hotels in America
ana L have enjoyed that food I'D to the
limit, and / am free to say that | have
often felt like chucking a tureen or some
thing heavier at the head of ono oP tbaca
fool crabs when I've heard him omen mn
with his bushel Of knocks with regard 10
eatables that he would never have had a
cnance TO see in the whole progress of his
life had he not managed to butt into the
oail-playing business.
Team Work Criticised.
Then there are the club crabs who de-
Veiop some Kind OF crouch as to the
actual playing of the game. They know
about ten thousand times more about the
way the game of ball ought to be played
than the bench manager or the field can
tain. The bench manager or the field can
tain Is a four flush, a phonv a hoy,s a
mutt, who doesn't know any more about
base pail than he does about bean bag or
puss IN the corner. In the first place-to
listen to the club grouch-the team captain
has got the batting order all balIed nm
He ought to completely turn il around.
This fellow ought to lead off. that chap
ought to come up second and SO on. Once
club crab gets the crouch started about
the batting order he is capable of disor-
ganizing a whole club if he harps and
hammers on 1t long enough. The rest of
the outfit may not listen to him at first
but by dint of incessant din he begins to
nail them to his way of thinking, and it
isn't long before the man in charge-of the
playing of the team has all kinds of a
Robbery on his hands.
Or, to certain nlaVS ha 81
inevitably sees everything in an entirely
different light from the way il is viewed
by the man running things, and he's there
witha bunch of mumbles and mutters that
is bound to keep players bench in a
flutter of nervous excitement all the time
That fellow shouldn't have been told TO
bunt. He should have been instructed to
rap it out. for the reason that, etc, etc
The infeld was playing in too far that
time, sure thing. The first baseman
shouldn't be allowed to climb right on the
shlnS of the catcher that way. and If the
team skipper knew enough to pound sand
he wouldn't have stood for it. etc. That
dub of a right fielder didn't know any
more about the hitting habits of players
than he did about differential calculus, and
1t was the business of the team skipper
to tell him not to play out about a mile
and quarter for a lobster who always
swatS them onnery little Texas leaguers
right behind first base. Why didn't the
bench manager tell that puddin' of a center
fielder to trudge four or five feet back of
second base, any way, when that dub came
to the bat that always leans on EN- and
tries to stuff EN- over the center field fence,
hey?
Thus the club crab ways his clapper, in
terminably and never resting. At every
swing of the pendulum. on and off the field
he's got something to buck about. Moth
ing is done right. The club is going to the
bow-wows because it's by a lot of
sailors and shoemakers. It'll finish down
at the cellar position. where 1t belongs. No
use trying to play a good article of ball for
such cheap lot of skates
1t will not require a mind of any I'M
usual profundity to perceive how gNat the
effect of this constant knocking on the
part of the club crab is bound to be on the
other players in the course of a base ball
season. Ball club managers well know
the effect of 1t. And this Is the reason
that the managers are making those adroit
little side steps, right about this time, when
ever the names of well-known crabs are
suggested to them as possible future men,
bers of their STATS. Being obtuse persons,
the club crabs can't see it. rule, but
in the long run they damage nobody but
themselves. Nobody wants them, once they
thoroughly establish their regulations
incorrigible crabs, and their path to the
minors Is smooth and self-greased.