Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-01-06
S|DESTEPP|NG THE
CRAB BALL PLAYERS
Managers Do Not Want the
Men Who Have an Eternal
"Gr0uch."
Fault Finding With All Things
From an Upper Berth to the
Hotel Dinner.
By Clarence L. Cullen.

"Strong man-but crab" q
This is remark right commonly heard
dropping from the lips Of ball club man
ayers at this time of year, when dicker-
ing for players is at its height.
And they're taking plenty of pains these
same knowing managers that they don't
get any of the crabs tackled on to their
lineup.
A bali player who is a crab is worse than
a fifth wheel to a buggy. A buggy could
be made to navigate with five wheels, SUI
! perfluous as the fifth wheel would be- But
the crab ball player can, and sometimes
does, put the N. G. ki-bosh on a whole
team.
Ball club managers who don't sleep more
| than seventeen out of the twenty-four are
all acquainted with the chronic crabs of
the game, or, if they don't know them, they
know all about them. And managers know
how to spend a whole lot of time tagging
the crabs when the period for dickering
swings around.
The crabs drug the bail mar
ket. If it were possible for well-known
crab player to have a fielding record of
1000 and batting record of .999, going
back for five years. maybe there are few
! of the managers who would take a chance
him. But not otherwise.
For it really doesn't make much differ
born crab may be, he is so much worse
than absolutely useless to the team pay
ing his wages that only the managers who
carry their brains in their shoes are able
| to see the crabs with a Lick telescope these
days. 1t may be added, parentheticaNy,
i that not many ball club managers of this
epoch and era do carry their brains in their
shoes
Some ball players are born crabs and
others achieve crabbness. But none of
them has crabbiness thrust upon him. It's
any mans own fault-let alone ball play
erS-if he permits himself to become q
| crab. And man who, in the progress of
| his business. is necessarily bound to as
| sociate with from fifteen to twenty-five
other men every day of his life during
| playing season, has really less excuse than
a solitary recluse sort of a man for per-
hitting himself to become a crab For he
| is thus enabled to make such a vicious
nuisance of himself and he SO infallibly
| inoculates at least some of the others
| the undetermined ones-with his meanness
of disposition and his kicking propensity.
| Everybody in the ball business, and
good many folks not in the ball business
| know who the crab players are and, If they
| didn't this isn't the place for names to be
| published
Some of the crabs have reached such an
exalted plane of meanness and kickiness
and buckingness\ that they have received
and merit-the name of king crabs The
king crabs are the fellows who are known
all over the circuit for their chronic dis
like of themselves and everybody else.
They are the chaps who have got them
selves tabled in the dope by all hands. just
as suking horses are tabled. Nobody
wants to own or to play a horse that earns
the reputation of being a sulker, no matter
how rafting fast brute he may be-when
| he wants to be. You can never tell when
| the sulking horse is going to pin back his
ears and swish his tail and back up and
stamp your coin into the top-dressing of
the track Similarly there is never any
telling when the crab ball player is going
to start something that will cause his club
TO toss dozen games in a row.
The Moody Crabs
If the ball playing crabs would only
sulk and gloom off by themselves and let
the rest of the players alone it wouldn't be
so bad. A very few of them are harmless
crabs of this character-surly, sulky
morose chaps who sit off in hotel corners
all by themselves, pretending to trim their
nails. and who, a-rail, mooch into some
other car than that carrying their team
mates, and who NOPE and pout around like
big fool boys from the beginning to the end
of a playing season. These crabs who do
the solitary thing are fellows who for some
utterly inscrutable reason, imagine that the
| whole big world, but particularly the man.
agement of the club and their fellow play
erS, are ag' in them. They've got the bug
that they have been singled out to be
abused. They are getting the worst of it.
The manager doesn't like EN-. The field
captain hates EN- The stockholders of the
club despise en- The fans of the town
loathe and vituperate EN-. This is their
view of it. They are naturally morbid,
gloomy down-in- the-mouth chaps and
when once they get that bug that they've
been singled out to be picked on by all
hands there's no switching them. They'll
hang on to that notion like a fox terrier
pup to slipper. Nothing can convince
them that they are not deliberately being
given the worst of it.
But the one good thing about these moody
r. hS that thew merely lx off
ners and rarely say anything about it. Sulk-
ing is their luxury, and they enjoy 1t, and
they enjoy 1t all by themselves.
These the innocuous crabs. and, as
said, there are not many of this type.
The great majority of the crabs are loud
not to say vociferous. crabs who go in for
the agitation thing They've not only got
a crouch Of their own, but they want to
start everybody else off on crouch. It
10 part Of their deliberate game. az it is Of