- Light Your Cigarette With Dynamite Bill, But Pitch ‘Em Crooked
- His Spitball Was Jumping Like a Texas Grasshopper
- Doak Should Have Won
Career Game 6
| Start Quality | Game Score | Team | Opponent | Result (Score) | Decision (Record) | IP | Hits | ER / (ERA) | BB | SO | HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2.5/5 |
49 | @St. Louis Cards | PHI | L (3-6) | L (0-3) | 7 | 7 | 4 /(2.79) | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Game Date: August 4, 1913 – Age 22
By Louis Lee Arms – The St Louis Star and Times
Willie Doak will learn as he lives. There are a number of harsh gents in the National League who will teach him as he goes along. Willie, you know, hasn’t been living in hotels with running ice water and adjustable thermometric radiators long enough to know that it is very poor form to put a straight ball through the center of the plate for nice, affable hitters of the Beals Becker and Freddie Luderus type.
This poorness of form becomes positively ineffable when the ball splits the plate with gentlemen on the hassocks.
Doak Should Have Won.
Doak had Philadelphia beaten Monday. His spitball, which was jumping like a Texas grasshopper, could be solved by nothing less than calculus and most of the Phil batters have forgotten long ago what league calculus played in.
The Phils do not like spitballs, that’s easy. Therefore Willie Doak will have a hard time presenting an efficacious rebuttal to the charge that he sent two perfectly- straight shoots over the pan to both Luderus and Becker at critical moments.
With one down in the seventh, Knabe scratched a single over Mike Mowrey. Lobert hit one on the handle which flirted with Whitted’s finger tips but dropped safe.
Then Doak completely forgot what he knew of pitching and cut the plate for Beals Becker. Ten seconds afterwards a spectator in the right field bleachers breathed “thank you” as he tucked a dollar and two bit ball in ‘ his pocket. Three runs was the result of this non-spitter. A few moments later Luderus was served some more dry cleaned laundry and another spectator put another ball in his pocket out in the right field bleachers which just about supplied everybody in the pavilion with a ball for the day.
Speaking of Our Pitching.
The Phils have made in the neighborhood of ten home runs off the Cards this season. This presents the strange anomaly of a pitching staff that can’t get it over the plate for most batters and can’t keepiIt from going over for the Phils.
Neither home run should have been made off Doak. It proves one of two things; Willie can’t shoot his spitter with men on the highways or else he has a lot to learn about the danger of pitching grooved balls in the National League, particularly to the Beckers, Luderuses, et al.
Life in 1918 – Train ad – St. Louis to Denver, 27 hours, Rock Island Line
