The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1931-04-10
BY CHARLES f. PARKER

NEW YORK, April 1o.-Perhaps
IN this "gag-the-coach rule" is
not so bad for intercollegiate league
baseball as the unanimous protest
made against it by the undergrad
uate @eptaiTes Bsuls indicate.
-szdy CoasIey. whose Columbia
Athe lost the league opener to Yale
in eleven innings, has become,
overnight, a booster for the scheme.
He asserted no other college battle
ever supplied him with quite the
thrills that he extracted from the
Yale fray.
That statement would be significant Il
only for the reason II came from coach
whose captain, Ed Obey. had circulated
the petition demanding a resembling Of
the fact that the assertion came not
from the winning but from the losing
coach 1t takes on added Importance.
Coakley was not delighted. exactly.
With the result Of the contest. He frank,
y declared that the game surely. and
the result possibly. would have been
quite different had he been on the bench
with free tongue rather than far back
in the grandstand damning his own damns
or damning the league dam. as the case
may have been And any semi-expert and
lions in the game wherein a word or two
70 the unWtse would have done brisk
business.
rather striking example came in the
lrst halt OF the ninth inning, with Co
lumbia leading to 2. one Yale man out,
none on base and count Of three balls
Yas fsb f1 a3 o t a5f5 L aea the
The second Of the two strikes charged
against the Eli came on foul in which
we pail rolled a few yards from the
I plate, That particular ball had picked
US service II was not an easy object
LOT me oatsman 70 gauge as II came whiz-
i mr. at him from the pitchers box Under
pail for Columbia to keep in play, and
1du Coakley or any ShreWd coach been
have shrieked or beloved to the Column
D'a catcher, go get ttl'
But spring had come to Buck Sweet
man, the Columbia catcher. The birds
Tsre singing sweetly. The air was redo
for lazy enjoyment rather than for seem
tngly unnecessary labor. So why chase
few yards for a ball when the umpire,
right behind him, had his pockets loaded
The sphere that his jumps handed to
out of its tinsel-lined box, and when, in
the aforesaid Linehan its snow-white
roundness caused it to stand out like
huge huge a Pao9n And Lnehap reaching
crashed 1t smack in the middle for
home run to rob Columbia of a 3-to-2
victory and carry the game into extra
innings and Columbia defeat
That was one OF several things that
might not have transpired had not the
gag the coach rule" been in force A
bit of swinging here, a bit of waiting
there. would have brought hits or walks
to Columbia batsmen. Taking merely two
bases on a bona fide three--bagger, in an
bench coach would have ordered. yet it
happened in the tenth inning, with the
score knotted at four-all. And it is doubt
ful that ,Coakley inwardly approved of
the repeated growing of the ball which
enabled Yale to whack out two doubles
and single in the eleventh inning and
win the game, to 4.
But Andy Coakley liked tall but the
result. He spoke of the wel-hled stands
at Baker field and the fact that every one
present remained until the last out was
made. That. to Coakley, indicated that
the public Is especially interested in the
experiment and is ready to spend a sea
son watching its workings. On his own
account ts1 he enjoyed observing hoy well
fed f''' WA '''''
THIS attitude was distinctly OPP
4 posite that indicated by "Smo-
ky Joe" Wood, the Eli mentor. The
latter. possibly because his tongue
had been mulled all afternoon, would
not go into detail as to his objec-
tons, but in few crisp words he
made known his hope that the
league officials, at their meeting,
would rescind their action in an
swer to the plea of the student cap
tains