late at the ball. I concluded that fast ones
inside would do for Mr. Ellis, and the next time we met he got just those.
He has been getting them ever since and now, when he makes a hit off me,
he holds a celebration.

"Hans" Wagner, of Pittsburg, has always been a hard man for me, but in
that I have had nothing on a lot of other pitchers. He takes a long bat,
stands well back from the plate, and steps into the ball, poling it. He is
what is known in baseball as a free swinger, and there are not many free
swingers these days. This is what ailed the Giants' batting during the
world's series in 1911. They all attempted to become free swingers
overnight and were trying to knock the ball out of the lot, instead of
chopping it.

In the history of baseball there have not been more than fifteen or twenty
free swingers altogether, and they are the real natural hitters of the
game, the men with eyes nice enough and accurate enough to take a long
wallop at the ball. "Dan" Brouthers was one, and so was "Cap" Anson.
Sherwood Magee and "Hans" Wagner are contemporary free swingers. Men of
this type wield a heavy bat as if it were a toothpick and step back and
forth in the box, hitting the ball on any end of the plate. Sometimes it
is almost impossible to pass a man of this sort purposely, for a little
carelessness in getting the ball too close to the plate may result in his
stepping up and hitting it a mile. Pitchers have been searching for
Wagner's "groove" for years, and, if any one of them has located it, he
has his discovery copyrighted, for I never heard of it.

Only one pitcher, that I can recall, always had it on Wagner, and that man
was Arthur Raymond, sometimes called "Bugs." He seemed to upset the German
by his careless manner in the box and by his "kidding" tactics. I have
seen him make Wagner go after bad balls, a thing that "Hans" seldom can be
induced to do by other twirlers.

I remember well the first time I pitched against Wagner. Jack Warner was
catching, and I, young and new in the League, had spent a lot of time with
him, learning the weaknesses of the batters and being coached as to how to
treat them. Wagner loomed up at the bat in a pinch, and I could not
remember what Warner had said about his flaw. I walked out of the box to
confer with the catcher.

"What's his 'groove,' Jack?" I asked him.

"A base on balls," replied Warner, without cracking a smile.

That's always been Wagner's "groove."

There used