The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence S. Ritter

Author:Lawrence S. Ritter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Bill Klem: “…all you had to do was call him ‘Catfish’ and out of the game you’d go”

How we loved to play for him! We’d break our necks for that guy. If you made an error behind him, or anything of that sort, he’d never get mad or sulk. He’d come over and pat you on the back. He had the sweetest, most gentle nature. Gentle in every way. He was a great checker player, too. He’d play several men at once. Actually, that’s what made him a great pitcher. His wonderful retentive memory. Any time you hit a ball hard off of him, you never got another pitch in that spot again.

You know, those fellows back there, they thought, they used their head in baseball, a whole lot. They talked baseball morning, noon, and night. Baseball was their whole life. We had old pitchers, like Joe McGinnity, who’d go out and pitch two games in an afternoon. Pitch a doubeheader! He did that a number of times.

Nowadays, the pitcher wastes so much time out there it’s ridiculous—fixing his cap…pulling up his pants…rubbing his chin…wiping his brow…pulling his nose…scratching the ground with his feet. And after he does all that he looks all around at the outfield, and then he st-a-a-a-res in at the catcher giving the sign. Why, he’s afraid to throw the darned ball! And with this modern jackrabbit ball, I don’t know as I blame him.

They waste an hour or so every day that way. We always played a game in less than two hours. Never longer. Two hours used to be considered a long game, really a long game. We played a lot of games in an hour and a half. I played in one that took only 58 minutes. Nowadays, a three-hour game isn’t at all unusual.

At the Polo Grounds then, you know, the Giants didn’t even start home games until four o’clock in the afternoon. That was because of Wall Street. The stock market didn’t close until three o’clock, and then two or three thousand people who worked down at Wall Street would take the elevated train up to the Polo Grounds. They were all good fans, and that was the only way they could get in to see the game if it was on a weekday. Of course, we played only day games then. If we didn’t start until four o’clock, and we didn’t have any lights in those days, you know we just had to play a game in less time than they do today. In those days, the pitcher simply pitched, and that was that.

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