ues never tire of discussing the relative merits of these two
great players. Both are always willing to take a chance, and seem to do
their best work when pressed hardest."]
The Giants played a disastrous series with the Philadelphia club early in
July, 1911, and lost four games straight. All the pitchers were shot to
pieces, and the Quakers seemed to be unbeatable. McGraw was at a loss for
a man to use in the fifth game. The weather was steaming hot, and the
players were dragged out, while the pitching staff had lost all its
starch. As McGraw's eye scanned his bedraggled talent, Marquard, reading
his thoughts, walked up to him.
"Give me a chance," he asked.
"Go in," answered McGraw, again making up his mind on the spur of the
moment. Marquard went into the game and made the Philadelphia batters,
whose averages had been growing corpulent on the pitching of the rest of
the staff, look foolish. There on that sweltering July afternoon, when
everything steamed in the blistering heat, a pitcher was being born again.
Marquard had found himself, and, for the rest of the season, he was
strongest against the Philadelphia team, for it had been that club which
restored his confidence.
There is a sequel to that old Lobert incident, too. In one of the last
series in Philadelphia, toward the end of the season, Marquard and Lobert
faced each other again. Said Marquard:
"Remember the time, you bow-legged Dutchman, when you asked me whether I
was a busher? Here is where I pay you back. This is the place where you
get a bad showing up."
And he fanned Lobert--whiff! whiff! whiff!--like that. He became the
greatest lefthander in the country, and would have been sooner, except for
the enormous price paid for him and the widespread publicity he received,
which caused him to be over-anxious to make good. It's the psychology of
the game.
"You can't hit what you don't see," says "Joe" Tinker of Marquard's
pitching. "When he throws his fast one, the only way you know it's past
you is because you hear the ball hit the catcher's glove."
Fred Clarke, of the Pittsburg club, was up against the same proposition
when he purchased "Marty" O'Toole for $22,500 in 1911. The newspapers of
the country were filled with figures and pictures of the real estate and
automobiles that could be bought with the same amount of money, lined up
alongside of pictures of O'Toole, as when the comparative strengths of the
navies of the world are shown by
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