The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-01-16

They say that Cobb, Maisel, Carey and
 Milan are fast men, but you never saw
 any such phantom-lille thing evaporate
 as Fred Clarke did when he heard Te- beauS accusation.
 ANSON'S GIFT TO CLARKE Freak games were common and base
 ball ranged from the sublime to the
 ridiculous during my three years in Louisville There was that massacre between the Colonels and Anson's team i in Chicago, on June 29, 1897. On this
 day big crowd gathered to honor
 Fred Clarke with flowers and other presentations, as it was the eve of
 his marriage to a Chicago girl, a sis
 terin-law of Chick" Fraser. But An sons men rendered a reception of an entirely different color. For a wedding gift they handed the young Louisville , manager and prospective groom the worst defeat ever recorded in the an nals of major league ball.
 Chick Fraser, who was to be the best man at the wedding, was assigned to pitch. Talk about old dope about getting a diamond pin and striking out with the bases full! Fraser and fel- low named Jones took the worst beat ings ever given pitcher, and Clarke, surrounded by bower of flowers and wedding presents, saw his Colonels beaten 36 to I, the highest score ever piled up by a major league club. That Chicago cyclone was in my first big league year, and l had to wait until April 27, 1912, to see anything in the big league to campare with it. ! That was on Saturday at Forbes field when we hit Fromme, Horsey, and three other pitchers for 27 hits and ! 51 bases, and scored 23 runs.
 1 On the train going to Cincinnati that 1 night, Larry Mclean remarked: "The Pirates saved me lot of work
 today. I didn't have to catch a ball. ! The bats all stopped them.
 A RIDE IN A HEARSE 1 Clarke suffered many trying eXpe- 1 riences in his Louisville days, and I | credit him more with the gameness l he showed in that dark period than for 1 what he did later. Whenever we went 1 through Louisville during the past b | years, Clark would recall an incident l that showed his gameness in the face l of disgusted Louisville fans in 1898. l As we would pass Fourteenth street | station, he would grab me by the arm ] and exclaim:
 Look, Dutch, there's the station | where they met us with the hearse.' How well do I remember that morn
 ing. We were returning from trip, 1 after dropping 19 out of 21 games. The | hooting, laughing mob met us with l hearseS and a band playing mournful | dirges. The players were sore, but Clarke took in the situation at a 1 glance and told the players to jump i in the vehicles and go through with l the thing.
 The crowd was taken aback by the
 action of the players, and the affair, | instead of being devoted to humilia- | tion Of the club, was turned into a l happy jollification and welcome home. | In that year we landed Claude Ritchey ! by trade, and in the following year Tommy Leach came to the Louisville | club at a bargain for $500. Clarke had cost Pulliam and Dreyfuss just S100 five l years previously, and the investment 1 for me was the Marty O'Toole and Ed die Collins of those days.
 WAGNER GETS BACK HOME Around that period came the process of cementing what must be admitted | a great ball club. The Iuckiest thing | that ever happened was the destruc- 1 tion by fire of the old Louisville ball ! park in 1S99 though it was considered calamity at first But the opportu- nifty it afforded is matter of history. | During the winter there was a sweeping change in baseball that later | resulted in the formation of the Amer 1 ican league. Louisville, Baltimore, 1 Cleveland and Washington sold their 1 franchises and cut down to an eight | club circuit. The late Harry Pulliam and Barney Dreyfuss with some Pitts | burgers, then negotiated for the pur
 chase of the Pittsburg franchise from W. w. Kerr of Pittsburg, and Phil Au- | ten of Chicago and others.
 1 I was delighted, for it brought me closer to Carnegie and home. In the very next year, 1900. came the greatest transition of a ball club in history, | t,;J T a,., | to worlds champions is the nearest 1 parallel to what happened 6 years ago | in Pttsburg. In the Louisville caravan were Clarke. Leach. Ritchty, Philippe, McCreery, Zimmer, Lattimer, Rube | Waddell and myself. We had rocky 1 road of it winning over the fans in ' Freds first year. and one day when
 we all played particularly bad ball they 1 roasted Clarke furiously in left field.
 SLANG WORD GETS CROWD 1 For the first time in my nife that 1 day I heard the term "knocker" used,
 and Clarke used it. As he shouted the | word into the left field stands, there
 was a sudden hush and then the wild !, est kind of cheering. I never could | understand how the word ''knocker' | could have had such electrifying , effect in changing a crowds mood, but
 it was then a new thing and it's appro- | l turn the crowd the other way. "Ill make you take off your hats to
 me some day." boasted Fred.
 1 And how he made good that boast. l Tn that very troublesome year he came
 within a game or two of nosing out | Brooklyn for the pennant. It came to a
 point where we were within half l game of the lead through winning five l out of six from the Superbas. Then | didn't that same old Cincinnati bunch
 throw the fatal wrench into our ma
 chinery and put us out of it by taking | three out of four when we came back
 home?
 i It wasn't essentially the Louisville | remnants that made the Pirates great for the new century. But they rein , forced club that already had a star
 trio of pitchers in Leever, Tannehili
 and Chesbro. Clarence Beaumont I proved a brilliant outfield star for years and the upbuilding of the power l full three-year forces was quick ac- 1 complishment, though Chesbro and l Tannehill were lost to us in 1902 At | that, Clarke bagged three pennants
 following the slip in 1900.
 SNOW HELPED SPEED 1 "Schoolmaster Sam" Leever was a l great pitcher and about him are many good tales. One year he was some what off form and told President Drey- 1 fuss that he just could not do his best l in cold weather The season ended
 and the Pirate transformers had a very cold and blustery fall. One day 1 they were scheduled to play at Beaver l Falls.
 | Dreyfuss looked out of his office win
 dow and saw snowflakes. To his sec l retary he said:
 | "What's the next train for Beaver