Las Vegas optic., 1913-10-10
TAKING NOTHING
FOR GRANTED
RIGHT
TEAMS AND PLAYERS WHO FOL
LOW THIS POLICY ARE MOST
SUCCESSFUL

Jnlng TOT granted III baSeDal IS Lu6
team which gets lot of the lucky
breaks Of the game, and there are few
sports in which the break OF the luck
is so important. Ordinarily when a
crowd sees g long fly hit to an out
fielder who does not have to move
out of his tracks 10 get it seven
eighths Of the bugs think its in the |
well' and one-eightn or them shout
audibly if it happens to be visitor
who hits the ball Nine hundred and !
ninety-nine times out Of thousand,
or thereabouts, such a fly does tall
''in the well' and the batsman is out,
but there is the tnousandth time IN
which the unexpected happens and
the easy fly is muffed.
1t happened in the Iasr game of the
worlds series of 1912 and lost the
series. It happens a lot of times in
a season when you think all the fly
balls that are batted in all the leagues.
Yet not many batsmen run out fly
ball with anything like the speed they
do clean hit to the outfield. They
know the chances the ball will be
muffed are so slight that they do not
think it pays to waste energy on so
long a shot; consequently when the
thousandth fly is muffed few players
are far enough along to take advant-
age Of it for an extra base.
When a batsman misses a third
strike which comes over the plate he
figures the chances that the catcher
will not hold it are so slight that he
seldom thinks of starting for first
base. Once in thousand times or
so, perhaps oftener in the case Of the
third strike than in that Of the fly
ball, the catcher does not hold the
ball, but it escapes from him so far
that he could not throw out his vic
tim at first base if the said victim
started as soon as he missed the ball.
Yet the worlds series game was lost
once because batsman played his
string out and ran to first on the
jump. That batsman was Del How
ard, and he saved a game for the
Cubs against Detroit in 1907 by be-
ing on his toes Ordinarily Schmidt
would have held that third strike, and
the first game of that series would
have been Detroit's if he had held it,
but Howard's failure to take it for
granted the ball would be caught
when he missed it enabled the Cubs
to tie the score and the game was
tied when darkness stopped it at the
end of IL innings.
Given two teams of equal mental
and physical equipment, and the play
ers who look for the unexpected to
happen in baseball all the time and
always are prepared for it will be
several games ahead of the team
which is taking things for granted all
the time.
A winning team invariably is called
lucky. It usually is lucky, but just
as often that team is making its own
luck to a certain extent by expecting
an opponent to make boot or a wild
throw Of muff on every chance he
has That was part Of the secret OF /
the success of Frank Chances old
Cub team Billy Murray, then mana
ger for the Phillies, said the Cubs
were not as hard team to beat if
your spikes didn't slip. Spikes do slip
occasionally in baseball, and the Cubs
always we're looking for just that;
consequently they were ready to take
the fullest advantage Of every slip.
Billy Sullivan Of the White sox sell
dom mapped on a possible play, but
he did it once-and that was the last
time. 1t was several seasons ago.
while Harry Howell was still among
those effective on the slab for the st.
Louis Browns. Howell was at bat
couple Of runners on bases, one of
them on first and one man out Two
strikes were called on Howell when
walsh let loose low spit ball. How
ell struck at it, missed It and the
bali hit his foot, rolling back to the
grandstand. Sullivan knew Howell
was out anyway, and that it was q
dead bah because it hit the batsman,