- Doak: A First-Year Spitballer Of Rare Promise
- If Cardinals’ Manager Would Let Jack Miller Pat the Flingers on the Back, When They Aviate, Fans Figure the Team Would Get Along Better.
March 4, 1914 Age 23
By W. J. O’Connor. St Louis Post Dispatch
AFTER absorbing a homeopathic dose of optimism, with the box scores of two recent spring series games as a “chaser,” one is led to believe that the Cardinals this season have a brighter outlook than they did a year ago.
The trade, with Pittsburg should redound to the greater success of the local team, but Manager Huggins’ chance of climbing lies chiefly in his pitching staff. Today’s experiment with Rube Robinson will mean a lot. On what he already has shown, Polly Perritt looks all to the merry. Of course, Sallee still is the Rucker and Mathewson of the local staff. Steele, a desperate comeback. Doak, a first-year spitballer of rare promise, and Niehaus and Griner, Inexperienced but likely looking men, should round out a complement of acceptable hurlers for the Cardinal tactician.
It is not well to dilate just now on what the pitchers can or cannot do. One will know that better about July 4. But there is another important factor in the team’s future which can be dilated on with more certainty. This is Manager Huggins and the effect his conduct on the field has had and may have with the pitchers.
Huggins “Beefs” at Players.
In the heat of the battle Hug is what one might call a “crab.’ In baseball vernacular, Hug “rides” the pitchers probably a little too much. Ed Koney, who was fired for being a malcontent, cried loudly last season that Huggins had ruined the Cardinal pitchers – by tampering with them once the game began.
“Hug is pitching all the games for our club,” Koney often said. “He won’t let the pitchers use any judgment, and as a result they’re all sore.”
Hey! Take Him Off!
So why not let Miller console the Cardinal pitchers for a while? Huggins likes to win every game. When he loses he “crabs” like a good manager should, but too often last season he could be heard in the press box continually nagging the pitcher. Old Ironsides Sallee, usually as unperturbed as an iceberg, left the pitcher’s box in a huff one afternoon last year because Huggins was on his “hip.”
Losing pitchers like Geyer, Burk, Perritt and Harmon alibied their way through the season with the complaint that Huggins wouldn’t “let ’em alone.”
This season the Cards are peculiarly fortunate in having in Jack Miller, a man who is regarded as a great consoler of temperamental curvists. Why not give Jack a. chance to “work on” the Cardinals? How about it, Hug, old top?
Harvard ’13, Michigan ’10
As a disciplinarian and a stickler for strict interpretation of rules. Manager Branch Rickey of the Browns is the essence of exactness. ‘Tis written that a player must address the arbitrator as “Mr. Umpire,” but few players dignify the ump with the prefix “Mr.” Rickey is one who does.
In Thursday’s scrap, Rickey, Michigan ’10, ran out on the diamond to protect in loud and almost violent language against the method Casey Hageman pursued in wriggling his feet while pitching.
“Mr. Umpire, that’s wrong,” said Rickey.
Whereupon Cozy Dolan, Harvard ’13, yelled: “Get that guy off the field so we can play ball.”
A lot of polish has been rubbed off Cozy’s delicate manners since he passed through Harvard and entered baseball.