phia's sterling young infield seemed to stand up all right all
the year, but the outfield and the slab staff gave Connie Mack sleepless
nights. When Dan Murphy was injured in Chicago in June it was discovered
what he had meant to the team. Dan was what the final punch is to a
boxing star. His timely batting was missed in knocking out opponents,
and the injury kept him out all the rest of the season. The strain which
Jack Coombs gave his side in the world's series of 1911 proved more
serious and lasting than was expected, and if Eddie Plank had not come
back into grand form it would have been a tougher season than it was for
the Athletics.

The Mackmen made a bad beginning for champions, and on May 1 were in the
second division. During all of May and part of June they climbed into
the first division and fell out of it with great regularity. Not until
near the middle of June did the Athletics gain a strangle hold on the
upper half of the league standing, from that time on they kept above the
.500 mark, and toward the end of June they met the White Sox coming
back. There was a short scuffle during the early part of July among the
Athletics, Senators and White Sox for the possession of the position
next to Boston. Then Chicago was pushed back, leaving Philadelphia and
Washington to fight it out the rest of the way. Trimming the Phillies
four out of five games in their city series did not lessen the gloom of
the Athletics.

* * * * *

The White Sox by their meteoric career demonstrated the value of good
condition at the start. Although the Chicagoans experienced tough
weather in Texas last spring they fared better than any of the other
teams in their league, and that fact, combined with the readiness with
which youth gets into playing trim, enabled the White Sox to walk
through the early weeks of their schedule with an ease that astonished
everybody. Even prophets who were friendly to them had expected no such
showing. So fast did the Callahans travel that on May 3 they had lost
only four games, having won thirteen in that time. But Boston was
hanging on persistently. Chicago's margin over the Red Sox varied from
four to five and a half games; during May, on the fourteenth of that
month the White Sox had won twenty-one games and lost only five, giving
them the percentage of .808. During part of this time they were on their
first invasion of the east. May 18 saw the Chicago men five and a half