The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-11
Hardest Bal! Nap
 Lajoie Ever Hit
Cleveland Slugger Tells How He Nearly Won Game for Old Phil
 adelphia Club

| have, of course, made quite few long hits and hard hits in m,
 time," says Nap Lajoie. "Some O
 them went a good deal farther thai
 others and some of them wer,
 smashed with a good deal more vlgo,
 than the rest-an depending largely
 or course, upon the way the bat me the leather.
 T have a keen and painful recol- | lection, however, of what I think was | the hardest hit I ever made. The | recollection is specially keen and ex-
 tremely painful, because I wasted SC
 much energy on the blamed thing and because the best I got was the haw-haw.
 Tt was way back in the days when I was on the old Philadelphia team. which, as you will remember. was some aggregation of swatsmiths. AL though was rather new to the big league in those days I seemed to fit in with that bunch all right and was hitting along with the rest of the tribe.
 Tn those days the right field fence in Philadelphia was close, and the f1elders used to play to take them on the bound as they came back from the fence. In one game, if I remem- Der rightly, three men were thrown
 
 the safest kind of hits-but that is another story
 The afternoon I made my great hit was one of good husky batting Life was miserable for all the pitch CTS, and especially for our perform CTS. When the last half of the ninth arrived we were to the bad something like g to T. There was a hit, an out, a base on balls and a pop fly. I came up, with men on first and second, two gone, and the chance to tie or win be- fore me.
 The ball came over hissing hot. grazed it and that was all The next one must have been intended simply as a teaser, for it drifted over so slow and easy that a baby could have hit 1t with a wire. Methinks the hurler never meant to get it near the pan, but was playing wide to get a possible fall out of the runner, who was lead ing off second. Anyhow. it came over the size of a balloon. Oh, Joy.' said I, and I leaned the bat against that ball with all my weight and muscle.
 ITO the best of my recollections I never before or since hit ball SO hard as that one. I could feel the leather being driven into the core of | the yarn and rubber by the force of | that tremendous drive, and the sting | ran up the bat with such venom that | my hands and wrists blazed burning | hot. The ball went out, not whizzing. | not sailing, but faster, more terrifical- y speedy than anything I ever laid the wood against in all my life.
 There was a glad roar from the | and I went down to first, for a home run, while wo men flew for home. Round first
 went and steamed for the middle corner. Suddenly a man rose up in ny tracks and stuck the ball into my gm-it was the third out and he game was over.
 How~and whyfore? Only this: I lad hit the ball so fearfully hard that rebounded back from the right field wall like snapped piece of rubber and. It shot straight back all the vay to the dirmond and leaped right nto the secEnd base,lan's hands for
 sure tra3 and the last one of the fternoop. Aad that is the story of : he hardest ball I ever hit. Do you Tonder that the memory gives me ain? ?''