Bill Doak’s Great Triumph Touched by Sheer Pitching Genius

BILL DOAK paints a pitching masterpiece with a touch of true genius still. Save that rare spitball delivery unfamiliar to most of the younger generation of players, Doak has little physical talent left.  The scrawny veteran’s fast ball is no blazing streak of light and his curve doesn’t dazzle a batter’s eye.

No, Old Bill’s days as a star are about over. He hasn’t the stamina to go out and pitch consistentIy well once every three days or every four days. He was always frail and light, never endowed with extra stamina. And it is 15 years since Doak broke into the National League to carve the beginnings of a brilliant career.

You can’t rate Doak with Vance, Petty, McWeeny and Clark of the Brooklyn staff. The others are too young, too durable. They’ll pitch more often and win more ball games than William Leopold Doak. But will any of them this season turn in as fine a single performance as Bill Doak hung up against the Cincinnati Reds yesterday? That is not even Iikely.

They Spoke of Doak in the Past Tense.

TO CUT BACK to last season, which saw Doak’s return to baseball after two summers of peddling Florida sand. Bill was an aging veteran when he announced his retirement in the winter of 1924. He was two years and a half older when he started his comeback. When he reported at the training camp in the spring of 1927 the boys were nice to him as they’d be nice to any old-timer who found himself at the bottom of the hill.

They spoke of Bill Doak in the past tense. Bill Doak himself thought he had a chance to climb back uphill. Not for the world would anybody have breathed the opinion that Bill was all wrong. But that was the general and natural sentiment, nevertheless.

Bill showed little in the spring. He lay back, waiting patiently for farmer weather to loosen up his stiffened muscles. When Doak began to relieve other Brooklyn pitchers and show flashes of his old stuff, the boys began to sit up and take notice. Then he began to start a few of his own and to win some of them.

But you wouldn’t call Bill Doak the best Brooklyn pitcher of 1927. You couldn’t. You couldn’t rate him among the best ten in the league. Yet the best pitched game of the year was one of Bill Doak’s contributions.

How Doak Greeted the Pirates Last Fall.

IT WAS in late September in Pittsburgh. The Pirates needed only a few more games to clinch the flag. The Giants were crowding them and in town ready to begin a series as soon as the Robins got out. The presence of the Giants inspired the Robins to play their best ball against the leaders, through the queer psychological quirk, governing such cases and which every ball player will recognize.

Bill Doak got the assignment. The Pirates were crazy to win that one, for they knew that they’d face Dazzy Vance the next day. Imagine their embarrassment when Ancient William shut them out with two solitary hits. Hank DeBerry afterward said that he could not remember a ball Doak threw that was not perfectly pitched.

Somehow that game and yesterday’s performance in Flatbush are much alike. The Cincinnati Reds lead the league now just as the Pirates did last fall. There is a big kick in beating the pacemakers. Great added incentives yesterday were the really fine outlook of the Robins at present and Doak’s desire to prove himself worthy of starting assignments. Up until yesterday Bill had started only one game this season.

Matched Donohue Until the Break.

AND so Bill’s thoroughbred heart warmed to his work. Inning after inning he matched Pete Donohue’s airtight pitching with airtight pitching of his own. Only once did the Reds seriously threaten to score. That was in the ninth when Babe Herman’s error on a single and a sacrifice bunt put Bill Zitzmann on third with one out. Dave Bancroft, however, pulled Doak out of that one by throwing Zitzmann out at the plate on a close play.
At all other times the Reds were futile. Their ineffectiveness is shown by the fact that the Brooklyn outfielders made only four of the team’s 33 putouts and only one in the first eight innings. They were hitting Doak’s spitter down into the dirt. Bill and his infield had 20 assists between them.

Bressler Drives In Only Run.

FINALLY In the eleventh inning the break came. With one out, Harvey Hendrick was hit by a pitched ball. Herman stepped up and singled to right, driving Herman to third. Rube Bressler rammed a hard one at Charley Dressen whose throw to the plate just failed to nip the speeding Hendrick.

Something had to break along about that time, but, win or lose, Bill Doak had already proved himself. A great man is William Leopold. If we were a manager and had our heart set upon winning one particular game if weather was warm and fine and Doak thoroughly rested, we think we’d start Old Bill as soon as any other pitcher in the league.

The Reds today will probably tell you that Doak hadn’t a thing. But they’re wrong.  He has the spirit that wins the big ones. And that’s what makes him one of the greatest “one-game” pitchers in the land.

Hendrick’s Great Slide Did the Trick.

NEXT to Bill Doak, the hero of the afternoon was doubtless Mr. Hendrick, the courageous gentleman from Tennessee who is doing his darndest to play third base. How Hendrick carried the mail from first base to third on Herman’s single to right in the eleventh was nobody’s business. Curt Walker’s fine throw seemed to have him, but Hendrick’s reckless hook slide carried him into the bag under Dresden’s jabbing fist.

After the game Hendrick sat on Doc Hart’s rubbing table, examining his wounds.
“Isn’t this a beauty?” and he pointed to a “strawberry” on his left elbow two inches across. And this? indicating a raw, bleeding slideburn on his right knee as big as his fist. They were the souvenirs of that slide into third.

But though Hendrick’s muscles may have ached, his spirit is exalted. It was worth a dozen of those things to help Old Bill win that one,” he said.