The Alaska citizen., 1916-05-08
SOUTH PAW BACkSTOPS
 ARE MIGHTY SCARCE.

left handed catcher
 If you have, and you are big league fan, you go back quite 4 spell, for it is more than ten yearS since player of the southpaw spe cies tried to perform behind the wind pad In fast company.
 Perhaps you never noticed that all catchers nowadays are right handed. and that fact might have gone right along escaping your at tention until you finally lamped a lefthander trying to backstop. Then you would realize you never saw one before In that respect catchers are like bathtubs You never think anything about them until you run up against a left-handed one.
 Just try to shave yourself some morning at a laying bowl that if left handed. and see if you do not amplify your vocabulary more than when playing golf Then you will realize, for the first time, perhaps, that the vast majority of lavatories and tubs are equipped with tn" cold water faucet on the righthant side. I know, of course. most lava tories have two faucets from which cold water runs most of the time, but that is not the fault of the plumber. and if you look closely enough you will discover the label Hot" on the handle that is handi- est 10 the hand that does not wield the razor.
 A left-handed bathtub almost caused a near tragedy once-nothing less than the punishment of a base ball team from a favorite hotel Ducky Holmes. once a White Sox outfielder. was the victim of the freak tub. I think. Anyway. Ducky has been credited with the leading role in the near tragedy. although that may be solely because Ducky WAS one of the leading crabs In the game years ago Hank ODay says that every time Johnny Evers goes to Atlantic City all the crabs in the ocean flock to the beach to listen to the voice of their master, but when Holmes used to be in the big leagues all the hotels at which his team stopped served crab flakes en casserole or au gratin three times a day for several days thereafter.
 Way back in 1904 when Comiskey put Marlin, Tex, on the map, the White Sox started for that camp on rattler that was scheduled to pick up Holmes somewhere out in Iowa some time during the night A rookie pitcher also was to be picked up the next forenoon al Kansas City. So Jimmy Callahan then serving his first sentence a. White Sox manager, had two spare berths, an upper and lower When Callahan turned in for the night he gave the checks for both the upper and lower to the Pullman conduct or, explaining that he would need them both when Holmes boarded the train, because Ducky would fuss about the one that was first offered him and demand one of the other kind.
 The conductor smiled incredulous- ly. so Callahan bet him a cigar that If he first assigned Holmes to a low CT berth the player would kick for an upper. Next morning after break fast al tho Harvey station the con ductor quietly slipped Callahan a cigar
 But about that southpaw bathtub Holmes was an early riser on the road so that he could have first choice of the towels and tooth brush es. One morning he was deprived of his tub because he could extract nothing but ice water, although he let the faucet run until 1t nearly
  splashed over. After morose breakfast he complained strenuous ly to the clerk at the desk about the absence of hot water in a hotel that pretended to be major league
 To appease Ducky, the clerk sent for the chief of the boiler room, who maintained doggedly that he had kept surplus of aqua calientes on tap all that morning Just as Holmes was finishing an impromptu biography of the engineers ances- obituary column Ducky's room mate. Doc White, stopped to turn in the obituary column Ducky's rom mate, Dos White stopped to turn in the room key and poured oil on the turmoil by announcing that he had just had oath in water so hot that 1t nearly parboiled him. Inves- tigation proved, as you have already guessed that this bathroom had been plumbed by southpaw doctor of pipes. And White, being left handed himself. had solved the dil- ference quite naturally.
 In the same way the scarcity of left-handed catchers is unnoted until you see one, and then he looks as awkward as an eel trying to shuck peas with his hind feet. Pos. sibly that is the reason why we do not have southpaw maskmen-be-