The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-12


 To this day the fans of Pittsburg have keen animosity to the Giants. That, think, is a good thing for baseball. Sportsmanship and easy go- ing methods are all right, but it is the prospect of hot fight that brings out the crowds. Personally I never could see this idea of taking a defeat philosophically. l hate to lose and l never feel myself beaten until the last man Is out. l have tried to instill that same fighting spirit into all the teams l have man aged.
 Enemies on Diamond
 I can appreciate the fine work of opposing players, but, at the same time, I'm not much for that show of friendly feeling on the field. Off the field-yes. But once a team of mine is On the diamond. l want them to fight. Nambly- -pambly methods don't get much results.
 Nothing ever gave our players more delight than to get back at fans and players who had started to give them razz. l never tried to discourage them in this. either. A team that will fight back on an enemy diamond and before an enemy crowd is pretty we'll able % take care of itself. The play CTS gain confidence in themselves by maintaining this cocky spirit.
 Resent Fighting Back
 Fans always resent the fighting back of q visiting ball club, and that usually leads to trouble. l never could see, though, why ball player should be expected to take insults and razzing without retort just be- ha in Q ri Otl I,;. own. While on the road we had hot arguments of this kind daily. Often the fans got so enraged that they would follow our carriages and hurl epithets-and other things-at us. All of this tended to make us great drawing card on the road. Fans could rest assured that when the Giants arrived there would be action of some kind at the park.
 This also furnished the newspaper men with a lot of material for sensa- tional stories. That also helped. It's much better to be knocked and roast ed than to be unnoticed.
 Umps Wouldn't Decide
 To give you an idea how seriously some of these incidents. were taken, we had a game in Pittsburg one day that broke up in a forfeiture and an official protest. Ritchie, the Pirate second baseman. went into third on a play, and it looked as if he were easily out. Neither of the umpires would say one Nay or the other. I ran from one to the other trying to make him give a decision. The best l got was "Go and play ball."
 l protested that I couldn't go on until l knew whether the runner was out or safe. As a result, the game ended right there, with me giving notice of an official protest.
 MT. Brush was with the team at the time. While he pretended to de- plore scraps, he really revelled in them. He was determined to fight out the protest. We were going to Chicago that night, so he wired ahead and engaged notary public to take acknowledgements of affidavits guess We were the strongest affidavit aking club in the world. It seems to me that we used to go around swearing to official papers as a sort or routine. It was fun, too.
 Making Affidavits
 One of the party of New York newspaper men accompanying us had been a lawyer. He was promptly as signed to write out the atfidavits in regular legal form and then have the players, manager, owner and otHei new SPdper men swear to them, Of course, our evidence showed the umpires to be entirely wrong.
 Arriving at Chicago we got a spe- cial room and spent the whole morn ing rounding up our affidavits. The neWspaperman- lawyer would write the paper something like this:
 Being duly sworn, John Jones de- posed as follows, to-wit.
 T am resident of the city of New York and my occupation or profess sion is the playing of baseball for a team known as the New York Giants My special occupation in the pursuit of said profession is the playing of position known as second base and one requiring a certain amount of physical dexterity and mental acu- men.
 ''On the 7th day of July 1905, while engaged with the said Giants in a game of baseball with an opposing team, known as the Pittsburg Pi- rates. l was stationed at second base and was ill position to see clearly a