The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-27
THE CHAMPION
 BASEBALL STORY Cowboy Players Have Game on
 Horseback II IS FULL OF THRILLERS Game Began at 10 in the Morning and Closed at 5:3o in the Even ing-Score Was Something
 Like 6s to 69.
IT IS FULL OF THRILLERS


 confined to the big towns maintaining league teams" tritely observed Colonel McGorrity, showing a bottle of Whahoo into his sample case and sitting down to wait till train time.
 "The microbe propagated by the great national game is a hardy bug. It gets good start in the system of every normal boy by the time he is able to distinguish the first three letters of the alphabet and once having gained a foothold 1t never entirely relinquishes 1t. A man may not have seen a game in years, much less played one. He may have been exiled in countries where the natives play only bridge or whirl bolos for pastime. But the first sight of a ball and bat puts all the old life right back in the baseball bacteria in his system.
 Years ago I once spent a summer with the cowboys on the plains. think 1t was in Montana. but it might have been Arizona Anyway the population was eligible enmasse for a job with a Wild West show. Their business was riding ponies, roping cattle and shooting In- dlans and bad men. For recreation they followed the same pursuits. Probably not one of them had been back home for 10 years and they didn't get the sporting extra
 
 nut one day the agent for a saddlery house blew into town. He was carrying some sporting goods by way of side line. After the boys had got through im- poverishing themselves for his fancy horsegoods he took out a baseball and bat and presented them to one of the ranchers as a compliment.
 That was Red Rose Pete. Pete tossed up the ball and made a pass at 1t while the rest of us watched. The ball dropped to the ground six times running. and Pete's temper scared when the other boys bega to get interested and demand a chance. By and by he spiked himself with his spurs and when he dug his face out of the dust he agreed to let the boys play for a while. From that day till the ball became a mass of tatters that the heaviest batter in the National league couldn't lift out of the diamond the camp was baseball mad. That happened be- fore the boys got back into their boy hood form. But they did improve. At first-but let me tell you about the open ing game between the Bark bunch and the boys from the Flying A.
 That was the first match game. After a little preliminary practice the players discovered that they couldn't move fast enough to put up any sort of game. Their underpinning was so warped by years spent in the saddle that 1t wasn't of much use in running bases. The first jump the runner would make his spurs would catch in his chaps and zingo!- down he came. Nobody could ever score. So they decided to play the first game in their natural element-on horseback.
 Never, if I live another s9 years, shall 1 ever see such a game.
 ''I reckon that train will be a long In a minute or two, so l won't try to give you a detailed account of hits and er- TOTS. That would take a good while, for the game lasted from 10 in the morning till 5:30 in the afternoon, and the score was something like 6S to 69. PIl Just tell you what happened in the last inning when the Flying As went to bat with the score two runs to the bad for them.
 "The Bar-X's pitchers pony was in bad form and bucked a good deal that inning, so the first batter got his base on balls. The next man up hit out a long one which the rightfielder threw his rope at, but missed. The man on first rode hard and got his score in-yes, he touched sec ond-and by the time ithe Flying As sec ond man was wrestling with his pony to keep him on third.
 "To say that the bleachers went mad would be putting the enthusiasm of the spectators at this point in the mildest possible terms. It was estimated after ward that when the first runner scored and the second reached third bag 800 rounds of good Indian killer ammunition went hurtling skyward
 Then things calmed down 8 8 bit and the next man went to bat The second time the ball went over the dinner pail that served for home plate he hit out a hot grounder. Shortstop jabbed his spurs into his pony and did a handker- chief dive, grabbing the ball and getting 1t home in time to stop the score. But the batter was calming his horse on sec nT1d na1yt ont hut Iaa catcher's horse shj d. and he fumbled. The man was saf1 at first. The bases were now full, with only one out and only one run needed to tie the score. It looked encouraging for the Flying As. Their bunch kept the air roaring till it sounded like a battle complicated with an explosion of dynamite.
 "But you never can tell, as the Giants said last season. The next batter drove hard liner right at pitcher. The lat ters horse was acting worse and worse and he had no chance. But the ball hit the broncho. The beast was wild. Be- fore the ball rolled from its tanks to the ground 1t lashed out with both hind feet. The next moment the ball was in the first basemans init and the um- pire was twirling his gun and declaring the runner out. You see the pony had assisted with its well-tmed kick.
 ncrS WdS n threat Ol d TOW ONoT Ine decision. but the umpire was the best gun play man on the frontier so it stood
 "The next batter went to the plate with his teeth set and the crowd yelling and shooting to encourage him. The first ball thrown he landed on hard enough to sink an oil well drill. The ball sailed out and up until I thought it had got past the attraction of gravtation and would never come down. All the men on bases made a run for home on the chance that looked like a cinch that the left fielder would miss it. The batter came in for home run and everybody turned to watch left field miss it and make their runs good. Now this fielder was on a pretty fast piece of horse flesh and with the umpire chasing him as hard as tho latter's horse could gallop 1t looked like a man hunt. But most everybody was straining to see the ball. In a moment it was apparent that left field, galloping for the open and looking up would never make it. The ball was almost directly over his head Its downward shoot would be so fast that the most rapid bangtail could never hope to beat it to its destination.