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Show BALLPLAYERS GREAT PRACTICAV JOKERS. Chicago, July S. The pranks that ball players pull off on each other during the tedious hours, when they are on the road and havo "nothing to do until tomorrow," after they havo finished their short afternoon's work on the diamond, wonld fill many books. Most of them are harmless and all are intended to be. The majority of them are amusing only to the participants, partici-pants, but occasionally the whole team Joins in to help deceive the victim. As aften as the spring comes around some recruit on every major league and many minor league teams is sure to find his suit roll or suitcase loaded with a pair of railroad coupling pins or links if it is possible for the players play-ers on his team to hunt up any of these discarded pieces of junk around a station On sprtlng trips, when jumping from one exhibition town to another, the players must carry their uniforms in rolls or extra suitcases, so as to have them in case the trunks miss connections, connec-tions, as they do In the south so aften. Ono of these perennial victims turned the tables on the jokers. That was Jess Baker, the loft-hander who came from Oregon to tho White Sox in the spring of 1910. Comiskey's men had to change cars at some way station to catch a through train, and their hand baggage pretty well filled the little station platform Present Some Scrap Iron. Whilo a squad engaged Baker in earnest conversation another bunch of players opened his suit roll and In-serted In-serted 20 or 25 pounds of scrap Iron which some of them had found. Then as their train pulled in, everybody watched Baker. Jess had spent the winter pulling stumps up in the Pu-got Pu-got sound region, buD in spite of that was no "Rube." lie picked up the suit roll, with only an instant's hesitation hesi-tation to get a fresh grip and carried (it swinging carelessly at his side Into the sleeper, depositing it in his section. sec-tion. When it came time to turn In the chief practical joker of the trip found the scrap iron between the sheets of his berth. |