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Show H JOE WOOD A BORN BASEBALL PLAYER H Joe Wood was born and raised In B Ness City, a little city nestling In the H bosom of the great short grass pralr- Bw ies of Kansas. Poets, artists, statcs- H men are born, not mado. So are ath- H lotes, and so was Joe Wood born a R ball player. From the time he was K able to hold a ball his graceful, easy H handling of the sphere was notlce- H able. Neighbors who Baw and admlr- 1 I ; ed him playing his fancy and spectac- B I -ular ball when but a lad predicted M that some day Joe would be a great B ball player. m Wood came from the stock that M makes gall players or great athletes. M His mother's people were quick, clear m eyed, vigorous, sturdy people. His M j mother's brother waB "Rattlesnake M Pete," who made the endurance horse- H i back ride from Omaha to Chicago dur- 1 j lug the world's fair in 1S93. Her HL brothers wore all cowboys during the HP early days .of this country and were H i considered among the best borsemon H on the range. H. j HIb father, John F. Wood, was a M J lawyer and newspaper man. He was flk lal, long armed, big boned and muscu- M lar. When the boom of the early 'SOs !M I flattened out he went to Chicago. When the gold rush to Klondike was on he, with a party of five others, went to Seattle, bought a boat and started H A for the far north. On the trip he fell H J out with his companions and they set H ; him ashore on a small Island of the H j Aleutian archipelago H j It was inhabited only by Indians and H one squaw man, and he was on the Isl- and several days before he was plck- T ed up by a tramp steamer bound H I north. His experience in the Klon- H I dike country- reads like a fairy tale, B ; except that he failed to find the pot H of gold, and, tired of the land of per- H petual snows and long winter nights. H ! he started back. He walked 500 miles H j with gunnysackB tied on his feet for B J shoes, to get to the head waters of Hf navigation. Finally after a long year V of starvation and privation he landed H I in Seattle. V When later the boomers were flood- B ing the country with wonderful stories m , I of riches in the Bull Frog district the senior. Wood again took up the hunt for tho quick-found fortunes of the hills, and like his experience In Alaska, Alas-ka, he was unable to find tho hidden mines concealed in tho elusive crevices crev-ices that lay In the land of Death valley. val-ley. Thus he has been tho hunter, tho pathfinder, and not so much from necessity ne-cessity as because his strong physique and vigorous mind called for the long hard pull over mountains and desert sands and the alluring prospect at tho end. Thus Joe Wood inherited from his father his endurance, his clear mind, his great strength, and from his mother moth-er his keen eye and his tiger-IIko quickness, all necessary attributes of a great ball player. Joe's start In professional baseball really dates from the time the Bloomer Girls, an Itinerant aggregation mado up mostly of women, visited Ness City. Joe pitched the game for Ness City and tho girls said: "How can we hit tho ball when wo can't see it?" The score was 19 to 4 in favor of Ness City and when tho Bloomer Girls played play-ed tho next town Joe was with them, a fine looking 17-year-old "girl," and remained with them during the season. sea-son. lie next pitched for the Hutchinson (Kan.) nlno, and from there he went to Kansas City. Ho astonished both tho professionals and fans, for he was still but a boy of 18 years. From there he went to the Boston Red Sox and this year he has been astonishing tho baseball world. The enthusiasm of Joe's boyhood friends at Ness City verges on the sentimental They aro all Red Sox fans. |