Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1913-10-14

did so well. If at their very best and
out in their full strength. the Nc
GRANTEES wouldn't figure to defeat
the Athletics, yet far from being in
tip-top form and suffering from nu-
rnerous injuries, the boys of New
York made the Mackmen play every
foot of the way and work every mo-
ment of the time to beat them. That
the Athletics won four of the five
games from the Giants doesn't tell
the complete story OF the great Sc
| ries. 1t is the way the games were
won that gives us a keener insight
| into the merits of the teams. AS the
contests were waged and as they re-
suited no one can say the champion
ship was anything like a walkover
for the Mackmen. Every game they
won was won only after the very best
they had in them. and a bad break
here for them and some good luck
there for the Giants, would have
changed the tide of battle and would
have put an entirely different aspect
on the occasion.
@
1t is no intention of mine to belittle
the Athletics victory in the least,
but I simply want to show that
baseball, the greatest of all games,
is sort of luck game and a funny
game at that OF all sports, the hard
est to judge, the most difficult to
fathom, is the great national game.
The best team In the world Is beaten
today by the despised bartender, and
so 1t goes throughout a season, one
team, far and away the best, losing
here and there, now and then, to an
aggregation OF inferior mortals. Thus
1t was in the worlds series that has
just come TO close.
o
The Athletics-man for man or
collectively, taking the infield as a
whole or in part, grouping the out
field or plucking one at random from
the garden, entering the catchers'
domain, and blindfolded like, touching
any one OF the backstops on the
shoulder, going out into the pitchers
box and cRrelessly grasping the hand
of any one OF those worthy men
anyway you might wish to compare
the teams-have It on the Giants 30
far that you could hardly see the dis
lance with the naked eye. Yet when
you get right down to brass tacks
and go over the games as they were
played, you can't pick out a single
spot where the Mackmen had a cinch
and you can't point out time when
the Quakers could have rested on
their oars and still have corralled the
victory. Not on your life. Every
moment of play, every angle Of play,
every knowledge of play, was worked
to the limit by the sturdy Athletics,
and still, while they won by four
games TO one, they only won the in
dividual games by the skin of their
teeth and the sweat of their brow.
o
But that is the way of baseball. and
that is Just what makes baseball the
wonderful game It is. You never can
tell how things are coming out. The
greatest team that ever was, on
paper, is as liable as anything to
finish hopelessly out OF the cham
pionship race. All the stars of the
diamond huddled together as one nine
might not be able to beat the st.
Louis Browns. for instance. How
ever, as far as the best team, as
team, is concerned, in such an event
you generally find the winner. AS
team the Athletics are the best in the
world. There isn't much doubt about
that, Not particularly that they won
the American League pennant and
that they won the worlds series on
top of it, but because as individual
players and as a collection of players
moulded into a team they excel any
thing in their line that has ever, per-
haps, been produced. You hear refer
some wonderful team Of the days
gone by of the great Jimmy Collins
and his Boston team, for instance,
and you are told f7w, by some en-
thusiastic old-timer, those boys would
wipe up the diamond with the pres
ent-day Athletics; but that doesn't
make 1t so. The Collins team-the
team that beat the Pittsburgh Ma
tionals for the worlds championship
was a grand organization, and all
that, but the Athletics of today are
as far ahead of them as the world
today is as far ahead OF the world of
that day. Men and things may stop
and go back, but the world goes on
forever.
O.
The American League champions of
today are the greatest aggregation
of baseball material ever corralled into
one crib. In the outfield there isn't
flaw, in the infield there isn't
mistake, and in the pitchers box they
are all wool and yard wide; behind
the bat there is the beautiful Schang
and the not so bad Lapp and Thorn
as. All over, anywhere, one can
snoop around and not run into a
dead one" In their day the old
Boston Americans were great. so was
that old Chicago Cub machine, but
today we have the Athletics, and in
them we have. no doubt, the greatest
team OF the age. 1t would be foolish
to say otherwise. to argue otherwise,
unless we are free to admit that the
a ..nor,. 111ar t.