The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-19


 Athletics.
 outfit, which practically stole their way into the pennant along the base lines. was a more powerful team than the one of 1922. simply have a great love for 1t largely because of its speed on the bases and also because l developed nearly every man on that team. They were what you might call hand raised Other clubs I have "built up by trades and shifts, by using what ability I may have at or ganizatien. Those 1911 boys. though, were my own.
 On that old championship team were Herzos, Fletcher, Doyle and Merkle in the infield; in the outfield were Murray, Devore and Snodgrass all speedsters. Now think of this: That gang stole 347 bases! And the batting average of the team was but .279. The 1911 club had team bat ting average of .29S, but stole only 137 bases.
 Over in the American league that same year (1911) the Washington team led in base running with total of III.
 Liked His Old Team
 IL AS IOb uilIItulls lutIGlOTCt to up- .derstand why I cherish that old club. All my baseball life have dotted on base running.
 Nobody regrets the decline in base running more than l do. But with the lively ball being hit all about the lot the necessity of taking chances on the bases has decreased. A manager would be foolish not to play the game s it is, meet the new situation with new tactics.
 One who jumps at conclusions would say right off the reel that a club averaging .29S ought to steal more bases than one batting .279 On the face of things that would be ob- NlouS because more men got on bases. But it is not true at all.
 The answer lies in the extraor- dinary number of long hits Obviously man cannot steal second when he hits two-base hit. Also he has less chances of stealing third when there are so many triples. Again, there is no use in sending men down on a long chance of stealing a bag when there is better chance of the batter hitting the ball for two bases, or maybe, out of the lot The lively ball is responsible for all that.
 The Lively Bail
 oo iOl ilhe lne llNelY DalI. l think the game far more interesting when the art of making scores lies in scientific work on the bases. More over, l ani inclined to believe that the public does not like. the lively ball all the time. l say this in full ';naN e of the attendance figures whi We steadily grown. l think they Id have grown anyway. It is ts hat the spectator likes to See aaae runs hit but there are Etnes en he gets weary of it.
 Ia game at Chicago we got hoia z lively ball last year (1922) and naae so many runs in one i'm niug at big percentage of the crowd alked out of the park
 An aal thing about this lively ball Is tha ID manager that I ever heard Of Ws yer consulted as to the ad- v.sahlf of using it. The mapufac- tprers iist that the balls are made 9ast tH same as before; that there e'as ta attention of making the ball liFeEe Nevertheless, it is livelier To mae certain all you have to do E Wa hard hit ball to the in field. ten the ball goes so fast as te ot past the infielder before he h chance. This idea of a lively la is not new Away back in tiie ear5 eighties the matter was dis SNsafa. hey even went so far as to have gone lively balls made and run iNsf the games. They were so lively 2 often the ball would hit The gre and bound high over the lntseiee head-sometimes as high ag fee The ball was so unsatis- tActefR nat the idea of a change M~4 dropped.
 In the brotherhood year the lively ball was tried again. l remember we got hold of one of them in an exhibition game in Knoxville, Tenn. The opposition ran the ball in on us, It so happened that they popped up few and we got a crack at it. We knocked it all over the lot.
 l think it would be a good plan to have standard ball and have it tested according to official weights