The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-06-28
BOB VEACH, EX-C0AL MINER

Men from all stations of life make up the roll of big league players, but a majority come from mere whistllng stations. Just as an infant who wants to be president of the United States should take care to be born in log cabin, should a kid with baseball ambitions fix it that the ,stOrk should deliver him in a small town or rural hamlet. To pick a coal miner for papa isn't considered good judg- ment, rule, because a coal digger is engaged in an occupation use full and necessary and hazardous that everybody who wears a white collar looks down upon him. All the same, it would appear from statistics that a lad who has received his early educa- ton in damp, dangerous hole in the bowels of the earth has, for some cult and esoteric reason, an unusually good chance to don the spangles of the big leagues. For instance, there are those well known Giants, Larrup- ing Larry Doyle and Bashful Benny Kauff, both coal miners by trade. Hughie Jennings, Jake Daubert and several other stars of the diamond have, in their time, helped to add to the worlds fuel supply. Also there is Robert H. Veach, the s1ugging out field of the Tigers, who is one of the crack coal diggers of the big circuits. Bob will pass his twenty-eighth
 milestone on the morrow, since he was born on June 29, 1888, in Old Kain- tuck. The little village of St. Charles was his native bailiwick. When he was about thirteen the Veach family removed to a mining town in southern Illinois. Bob toiled in the coal mines with his father from the time he was in his early teens, and he followed that trade in the winter months long after he had become a professional baseball player. During his periods l1 1ra11 ever opportunity offered. In 1909 he played with a semi i-professiona1 club of his home town, Herrin, and the following year the Peoria club of the | Three-1 League gave him a chance to shine in league circles. The young coal miner didn't make good in Bob Ingersol1s city, and he was sent to Kankakee in the Illinois-M Missouri League. Bob had played third base at Peoria5 but at Kankakee he was given trial a, twirler, and won ten games to five lost.
 The Peroria management recalled
 Bob in 1911, and he again put aside
 his miners garb to won the spangles- He was given outfield job, as he
 had shown considerable class with the bat and was considered too valuable i in that respect to make it advisable
 to encourage his pitching ambition.
 In that year Veach came within three
 points of attaining the 300 mark, and
 he started the 1912 season batting well
 over that mark. In June he was
 brought by the Indianapol Hoosiers, which paid Peoria $1,5O0 for the young coal niner- It was a profitable deal for the Hoosiers, as within two months Veach was sold to the Tigers
 for $3, 3,5OO, showing a profit of $2,OO0
 on the transaction.
 Bob joined the Tigers in, August, l1912, and in the remainder of that
 season played in twenty-three games and set up a batting mark of .342. It
 was gait that he could not keep up,
 for in 1913 his average was .269 and in 1914 he batted .275. He again climbed over the 300 mark last year. finishing the season with an average
 of .313.
 Veach has been work a lot to the Tigers, for he filled a weak spot in the otherwise wonderful outfieId of the Jennings crew. The ex-coal miner is
 no Ty Cobb, but all the same Pilot
 Jennings was mighty lucky to get SC
 good a man, now that Crawford haa hit the tabOggan-