El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1913-10-23
Mapping viii Never Win Flags
In Ball Games of Present Day
Running Out the Third Strike or Fly That Appears
to Be "In the Well' May Bring Championship to
Team Even the Best of Players May Boot,
Causing the Loss of a Close Game

CHICAGO. ILL.,, Oct. 23.-The team
which never takes anything for
granted in baseball is the team
which gets a 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 a long fly hit to an outfielder
who does not have to move out of his
tracks to get IL seven-elghts OF the
fans think its in the welI. ana one
eighth of them shout 1t audtbly If II
happens to be a visitor who hits the
ball. Nine hundred and ninety mine
times out of a thousand or whereabouts,
such a fly does fail in the WelP' and
the batsman is out, but there is the
thousandth time in which the unex-
pected happens and the easy fly is
muffed.
1t happened in the last game of the
worlds series of 1912 and lost the
series It happens lot of times in a
season when you think of all the 1ly
balls that are batted in all the leagues.
Yet not many batsmen run out a fly
ball with anything like the speed they
do a 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
tbousandth fly is muffed few players
are far enough along t, take advan-
tage Of ii for an extra base.
Drops Third Strike.
When a batsman misses a third
strike which comes over the plate he
figures the chances that the catcher
win not hold ii are so slight that he
seldom thinks Of starting for first
base. Once in a 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 victim
at first base if the sad victim started
as soon as he missed the ball.
Yet a worlds series game was lost
once because a 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 being on his
toes Ordinarily Schmidt would have
held that third strike, and the first
game Of that series would have been
Detroit's IL he had held it, but How
ards failure to take it for granted
the ball would be caught when he
score, and the game was tied when
darkness stopped it at the end of the
CAL winners Lucky.
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 viii be sew
eral 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 thRt- team is making its
own luck TO a certain extent by ex-
pecting an opponent 10 make a boot |
or a kid throw or a muff on every /
chance he has. That was part of the /
secret of the success Of Frank Chances |
old Cub team Billy Murray, then
of the Phillies, said the Cubs
were not a hard team to beat If your
spikes didn't slip. Spikes do slip, oc-
caslGnally IN baseball, and the Cubs
always were looking for Just that: con-
they were ready to take the !
fullest advantage of every slip.
Sullivan Mapped Once.
Billy Sullivan, of the White Sox,
seldom mapped on a possible play
but he did it Once-and that was /
the last time. It was several sea |
sons ago, while Harry Howell was i
still among those effective on the 1
slab for the St Louis Browns. Howell 1