Salt Lake Tribune | 1912-12-08 | Page 42 | My Worst Blunder

. J Iamous Bone HeadPlays Iffu tMajop League Diamonds, Explained 11 f Anmf, RASfRAT I Dr AVPDS to Wr Y Htjh S.Fullerton. Bf) jtyfl BY MIKE DONL1N. 4 r Outfielder Pirates, Formerly of New XX V . York, Who Is One of the V . J , ' Greatest Players In the Gamo Today. A lot of fellows make their worst mistakes by not thinking at all, some make them through thinking too much, some by momentary lapses of. thinking. think-ing. I've made all those kinds, but the worst miBtako I ever made, that I can recall, was in underestimating the thinking of an opposing player. I figured fig-ured Just what I could do, and left him out of the calculations entirely, and got the worst showing up I ever had In my life. It just goes Xp prove that a follow mustn't get the idea Into his head that he is the only man on the ball field who is using his noodle. The play camo up In a game between be-tween Chicago and New York on the Polo grounds. The series was a hard ene but then all series between, those i teams are hard. It was the last game of a series and eEcb. team had won one. Chance had sent Pfister back, and I believe Wiltse was pitching for us. Thero waa a player on our team whom I won't namo, but who. was a corking ball player, a great base runner, run-ner, but he had one fault, and that was In playing everything too safe. Wo wouldn't force him to take chances, and my theory In baseball always has been to take any legitimate legiti-mate chance and to go as far as possible pos-sible on every hatted ball to force the other team's hand and make them throw. This player never made any bad breaks, but when I got onto the bases behind him I always drove him, that Is, tried to force him to take an extra base. He waB on first base that day, and wo needed a run. I welted the ball out, to left for a clean hit The ball was a little over toward the foul line and I knew Sheckard would have to work hard to keep it from get-ting get-ting past for a two-bagger, and I wanted the runner ahead of me to tako a chance and go to third, I decided de-cided to drive him shoo him on. I turned first as hard as I could. The runner ahead of me turned second and swung up toward third, hesitated, stopped and started back. I yelped for him to go on and ran down 30 or JO feet at top speed to try to scaro him Into going. Sheckard scooped the ball oyer near the foul line, straightened straight-ened up and made a wonderful throw, clear across the diamond, right to Chance on the first bound, and I was trapped off the bag and run down. Sheckard know the other base runner as well as I did. He bad watched me drive him around the bases, and he SfUF , idA Ju8t exacto at I did ' ,1 .that tte mail ead of me would stop and go back, so ho shol or me and got me. I was sore, but 6tJ!l J. saUsfactlon I could get waa to tell Shepkard I thought he made a wild throw, aimed at third and caugbl me off first.