The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-10

keep in condition. When a man gets fat as result of dissipation he quickly loses his wind-does not like to stoon for ground balls.
 In one game that meant great deal to us; we found it utterly impos- sible to do anything against Ray monds pitching. Finally I spotted what I thought might be the weak spot to attack.
 Get up there" I said to the men on the bench, and give him a little bunting practice. Don't try to hit it out"
 The players liked the idea. Four or five batters in succession walked up and dumped the ball in front of the plate. Raymond almost fell on his face going for the first one. The next batter repeated. In a few min utes we had him puffing like a por- roise. We kept right on until We had the bases full and finally slapped Tn couple of runs.
 Upset Whole Team
 With Bugs all tired out and puff ing we then started hitting again. In another inning they had to take him out of the box. By centering this at- tack on the weakness of Raymond We succeeded in upsetting the whole team. l might say that other teams did the same thing to us after Ray mond became a member of the Giants. Being fcrewarned, however, we were able to yank him out in time. After that l spent most of nay time trying to keep him in condition, with what result I have told in previous chapter. We could keep him in some sort of shape for month or two. but to do this all season was impossible.
 In the 1905 season, by the way, we used base running play success fully that was aimed to double cross the other fellows who thought they had solved our system.
 refer to the delayed steal, which sammy Strang, especially, worked nearly every time he tried 1t. Of late that play has gone into disuse, but l believe it could be revived now if 1t were not for the lively ball. With this lively ball in play there is really little need to work out base running plays. There is as much chance of some one slamming the ball to the daisies as there is of getting away With risky base running play That is why base running seems to be fall ing into decay.
 sammy Pulled It
 The lirst time sammy tried 1t for us he was playing far off first base. It looked as if he would start for second any minute and the pitcher Kept shooting the bail over to first in an effort to catch him. Finally sammy took good long lead. Just as the pitcher stepped forward to throw to first Strang suddenly lurched the other way and ran to sec ond. As result the ball was thrown tc first. far behind him. Before it could be relayed to second he was sliding under the baseman and was safe by several feet. We used that play often. At first the newspaper men thought that the runner had been caught mapping. So did the fans They laughed heartily at a runner getting away with stolen base after having made bonehead play. It was no bone at all, but a very smart play.
 Then we doped out later a yarfa- tion of that play when there were runners on first and third. Instead of making the usual attempt at a double steal the runner would play far enough off first to be caught, He would then start for second. Nine times out of ten the confused first baseman, after taking the thiAw from tne pltcHer, would throw 10 second If he did so the runner from third, already starting for home. could not be caught. You see. he would have three throws to beat instead of two. The ball would go from the pitcher to first, then to second and to home. 1 am sorry that base running has fallen off as result of this lively ball. To. me that was always one of the most fascinating features of baseball The study of it really gave me my start in Baltimore. The per- lection of base running plays is what first made the Orioles famous. While that 1905 team was smart