Forest City press. (Forest City, Potter County, D.T. [S.D.]) 1883-19??, 1914-10-28
STALL|NCS' BLUFF
Won TEAM VICTORY
inspired His Men With Confid-
ence and Told Them They
Could Not Lose Series.
By cHRIsTv MArHEwsoN.

. FInI0 Y WA n e WSONs
Boston. Mass. Special: When Stall
papers had been showing his players
why they could not win by comparing
statistics. The results all favored the
Athletics. But George Stallings adopt
ed other tactics. He showed his play
ers why they should win, and he went
about 1T carefully, conditioning them
both mentally and physically for the
test. In the first place, he wanted to
get the team in a fighting frame Of
mind, and he figured the best way to
accomplish this was to get himself
sore at the Athletics about something.
SO when 'Connie' Mack refused to let
ms club practice at the Athletics
game. he worked himself into frenzy
over it. This also stirred up the play
erS and they went into the game to
fight the Athletics off their feet. Stall
1ngs regards q series of this sort in the
light of a battle and he would not let
one of his players exchange friendly re-
marks with the Athletics until the vic
tory was within reach yesterday.
In the course of this preparation
Stallings knew that he must inspire his
men with confidence so he came out
flatly and declared that his team would
take -four straight. He talked four
straight so much that he soon had his
lH~J - WIN iikSSu IlGLL Ic WtS sure VI
what he said. Then after they won the
first game, 1 believe he had the Attn
letics half convinced, too, from the
way they played.
Stallings is also very superstitlous,
or he pretends to be. and he encour-
ages this in his players. It is all a
part of the game of this miracle man
of baseball. He doesn't like SO bills,
won't take them if he can get two ones,
but as soon as he gets a two, he will
tear off the corners to kill the jinx. If
you should meet a 50 bill with it's
corners gone you will know it has been
through the hands of George Stallings.
That Thirteen Jinx.
Recently Stallings had an automobile
license FOR his car. and the number was
51,318. Sailing at once sent this back
inc insisted hat he be given one which
did not contain a IL or any combina-
ton of 13. He claimed that the first
one had two thirteens in it because the
five substracted from the 1S left 10.
All these little superstitions affect
the frame of mind of his players, as
Stallings wants them to. BY taking
care of these things he gets the players
to believing that luck will be with
them n it makes them play harder.
In other words 1T gives confidence.
Another superstition of his is that club
which wins the opening game Of the
oSoSOAA VIII NC uIlluChy ldleI, ana IL Is
the one contest on his schedule thai
he does not pull his head off to win.
l guess hat after today he will not
think h 18th of the month unlucky.
When the Braves went into this Sc
ries they went up against a club tina
the averages showed to be one of the
greatest ever put together. S~tallings
had to inspire confidence, and with
his superstitions, his challenge of Con-
ME Mack n his predictions that the
Braves would win four straight, he
made his club world heaters. It all
Just shows how much averages amount
to. I was asked several times before
the series what l thought of the Bos-
ton chances.
Well" my reply generally was, "the
Athletics have men who can hit
the ball harder than the men PLAYING
opposite them on the Boston team, but
Stallings has a lightning ball club"
AS events turned out. Gowdy, a man
who had hit only between .24O and .25O
total of more bases than all these
seven put together. Stallings has
proved himself to be n of the great
est managers of all time in baseball.
Broke Their Heart.
The fighting spirit Of the Braves was
uncanny. and they finally broke the
Athletics heart with It. Each time in
the series that the Philadelphia club
has forged to the front, the Boston
caught or forged ahead Of them in the
next inning. 1t certainly is heart pull
ing when a team keeps right after YOU
all h time. The scores of the four
games do not show how badly the Ath-
letics were beaten. They were OUT
classed and outgamed.
One remarkable thing of the series
HnAe lmnHHQQ0n mo 00 ~ not,,no l1,v
would. was the great pitching OF the
Boston starters.
To my mind 1t vas not so much that
b Athletics were in q batting slump
~ that they were properly pitched to.
M Stallings q gotten the dope on
them and gotten 1t right. I remarked
this to Ty Cobb, who was sitting next
to me in the stand.
'Sta!lings must certainly have made
Q study Of those batters," I said to
Cobb. 1.-THE Boston pitchers have Kept
the the be, e.il right on their Weaknesses all
.sI've always said 1t was a club that
could be beaten IL properly treated
from the pitching box, and IL the
coachers are not tipping OFF yoar
signs, but, gol dang 1t, we can't get a
lot q pitchers to work on them that
way"
The game yesterday was an anti
thriller Of the day before. It was like
going to q boxing show and having the
principal bout staged first, to be fol-
lowed by some mediocre ones. It was
evident from the way in which the
Boston team went about Its work that
the time that the Braves put the two
runs under Rudolph. he pitched q care
tree sort Of . game, not working az
carefully on each batter az he did In