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Show VH0 have been the best come-r come-r . dians basebaU has known in the last 40 or 50 years? This thought came bounding along after reading Al Schacht's merry and interesting in-teresting tome known as "G I Had Fun:" Al Schacht is certainly one of the members of the king pin row. One of the first nf fhpsf was Crazy Schmidt, an unconscious humorist, hu-morist, who pitched for Cincinnati several sev-eral decades back. Others include Ar-lie Ar-lie Latham, Rube Waddell, Tacks Par-rott, Par-rott, Ping Bodie, Germany Schaefer, Nick Altrock, Sher- Dizzy Dean the Cardinals and Dizzy Dean. There have been many others but these are the ones who still remain longer in memory. Crazy Schmidt went out to pitch with a glove, a baseball and a notebook note-book he carried in his hip pocket. The content.' of this book noted the weakness of every man he had pitched against a high one or a low one a curve or a fast one. As the batter came to the plate Schmidt would take out the notebook containing con-taining some 100 names to check on his weakness. "What have you got written against Hans Wagner's name?" one of his teammates once asked, "A base on balls," Schmidt said. Germany Schaefer was one of the stars in this field. He was then playing second base for Detroit. I recall a game years ago where Schaefer was playing in Cleveland. Around the third inning it began to rain.- During the fourth inning it poured. Tommy Connolly was umpiring um-piring and Germany kept squawking squawk-ing to have the game called. Connolly Con-nolly refused. When the fifth inning opened Connolly Con-nolly looked around and found Schaefer playing second base with high rubber boots, a raincoat,, a Gloucester fisherman's hat and holding hold-ing a big umbrella over his head. Connolly charged Schaefer with a roar and told him to remove his deep sea make-up. Schaefer refused. "I have a . very bad cold," he told Connolly, "which is now bordering bor-dering on pneumonia. If I get rid of my rubber boots, my raincoat and my umbrella I will be in the hospital in less than two hours and I will certainly sue you and the league." Connolly called the game. Schaefer had a keen, quick wit and could always draw a laugh. Waddell had the Athletics goofy by buying a mockingbird owned by the proprietor of a popcorn and peanut stand that had a whistle attached. All the mockingbird could do was wake up the entire floor shortly after daybreak by singing his only song the song of the peanut whistle, with an added screech. Ping Bodie and Dizzy Dean It was the immortal Ping Bodie with the Yankees who bought a parrot par-rot and spent weeks teaching said parrot to keep saying over and over "Ping made good" "Ping made good." But after all, Dizzy Dean in many different ways was the top of them outside of Schacht. Dizzy was loaded with pranks, as well as pretty homely wit There was the time in Florida when Dean had reported as a rookie from the Texas league. Jimmy Wilson, Wil-son, the veteran catcher, began missing his silk shirts. Finally Jimmy Jim-my caught Dean bedecked in one of these garments and the idea of a raw rookie wearing his silk shirts was too much to stand. He started in to bawl out Dizzy when the rookie stopped him cold with this comeback: "Now wait just a minute, Jimmy," Jim-my," Dizzy said, "you wouldn't want the greatest pitcher baseball has ever known to go around a month wearing a single shirt, would you?" Jimmy let him have the shirt. I was walking with Dizzy by a hotel in Bradenton one day when he said he had a phone call to make. He was gone some time. He finally came out wearing a wide grin. "Well," he said, "I just called up Sam Breadon in St. Louis. I told i him I had changed my mind about signing for any $20,000. We had a long hot argument. He threatened to have me thrown out of basebaU. We musta argued 20 minutes. Then I finally told Sam I had already signed and sent my contract in." "What was the idea in doing that?" I asked. Dizzy grinned, "I had the charges reversed and it cost Sam $43." There was also the time on a blistering day in 'St. Louis, temperature temper-ature 112, the crowd melting, when suddenly a wisp of smoke came up in front of the Cardinal bench. There sat Dizzy decked out in a heavy overcoat, warming his hands in front of a fire he had just built. And I still recall his classic remark re-mark after his arm was about gone when he was warming up for the Cubs to pitch a world series game against the Yankees. "How you feeling, Diz," 1 asked "Well." he said. "I ain't what 1 used to be. But who in hell is?" |