The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-16

jor leagues had proved goot thing for the game rather than { detriment. It enabled us to establish as a permanent classic, the annua worlds series.
 With this feeling came hard, con. structiye efforts to build up great teams. Each league was on its met tie. The public was being given the best that money and intelligence could provide. Appreciation of this was shown by an immediate growth in attendance all over the country In other words, baseball had entered a new era. Since that time 1t has never Jagged except, of course, dur ing the World war.
 An evidence of the importance oi this era was the development of al least three great ball clubs-the Atli- letics, the Giants and the Cubs.
 To this day those three teams are used as a basis for comparison 1T judging the strength of pennant win ners. There have been constant ar guments as to the respective merits of those three clubs.
 McGraw's Smartesf Club
 As | have said before, l think my 1905 team was the smartest of the
 
 it was not so fast, it was much smarter than our clubs of 1S11-12-13
 l have never regarded the Chicago club of 1906-7-S as the greatest oi ball clubs. It had determination and fighting spirit, and it had smartness but it did not have the natural strength of the Athletics of 1911 or of the 1905 New York team.
 Nobody appreciates the efforts o, the famous Cubs more than myself but in all frankness I must say thai Chances club was not so good as the Athletics of 1911-a team that lasted until Connie Mack finally broke 1t up deliberately.
 In that team Connie Mack hat practically everything that is needed for a great club. There were no weak spots that one could indicate with certainty.
 In the first place it had wonderful pitching. Very few ball clubs were ever equipped with such pitchers a. Bender, Plank and Coombs. All o1 these were thinking pitchers. In ad. dition they had the goods physically A club with trio of such pitchers would be pretty hard to beat in 2 season or in series any time.
 Wonderful Combination
 I don't remember ever having seer much better combination around second base than Eddie Collins ans Jack Barry. Then, at third, there was Frank Baker. Stuffy McInni. came along soon and there was an in. field pretty nearly perfect. All O these men could hit and all knew ths tricks of the game in the field.
 The Athletics had 8 punch at al times. Our pitchers realized that tt their sorrow the first time we rar against them. On the other hand oul batters knew what they were III against when they had to face sucl pitchers as Plank. Coombs and Ben der.
 I have no hesitation in expressint the opinion that the Athletics of tha period were one of the greatest bal clubs of all times.
 We had to face them for tn worlds championship in 1911.
 Going into that fight we had on, of the fastest clubs that New Yorl ever turned out, but it was not tn, smartest club by any means. w were just emerging from the periot of completely rebuilding a team witt younger blood.
 We had made many trades and hat dug up several youngsters since tn stormy days of 1907 and 1908. Fl nally I got together this outfit an, it won the pennant: Meyers. Merkle Doyle, Fletcher, Herzog, Schaefer Murray, Snodgrass, Devore, Mathew son, Marquard, Tesreau and Wiltse
 Stealing a Pennant
 Mighty few ball clubs ever put to gether were faster than that combi nation. That, think, was the great esf base running club I ever saw. W stole so many bases--led the leagu so far in that respect--that we wer jokingly referred to as having literal ly stolen the pennant.
 The players got the notion tha they could steal on anybody, and tha belief was so strong that they wen out and did 1t. On one trip west W arrived in Chicago with club Il rags and tatters-had to telegraph for new uniforms-nearly every ma, \ on the club had slid the seat out o hls uniform pants. We had patche and patched until the principal flea ture of our pants was safety pinl Josh Devore's clothes barely hung O. him and Doyle's and Merkle's, Mur rays and Herzog's were almost a bad. Hitting the dirt repeatedly da