Giant Fielders Played Uphill Game

Ring Lardner

October 15, 1923/The Toronto Star

At the hour of going to press tonight Manager McGraw seems to have it all over Manager Huggins. The last named will half to stay awake wondering who to pitch tomorrow. 

For the benefit of those that ain’t never been to the Yankee Stadium, I will state that the ground just inside bleachers has a decided slope down towards the infield. Well, in the first four innings today the Giant outfielders certainly played an uphill game. They seem to be always dashing up to the bleacher rail to shake hands with friends.

Though the day was too sunny and bright to be just right for Joe Bush’s speed, he would of scored a clean shutout if he had been able to fool Emil Meusel. Emil cracked out a triple and two singles and scored the only National League run. His brother Bob was also slapping the pill on the nose, and though Joe Dugan helped himself to four hits, including a home run, why all and all it was a Meusely game to watch.

Anxious to Get Home

Judging from the performance of the Giant pitching staff to date, why if Nehf manages to win his game tomorrow, it won’t be proper to ask who is going to pitch Tuesday, but who ain’t? A large number of newspaper men who have nothing against Mr. Nehf personally is kind of pulling for him to have some Sam Jones luck tomorrow. We are anxious to get home and meet the wife and kiddies.

When it come time to play the Star Spangled Banner the bleachers was packed with the biggest crowd that ever stayed away from church to go to a ball game. Speaking about the Star Spangled Banner, I have noticed that every time the band gets through playing it practically everybody claps their hands. It begins to look like this song would be one of the outstanding hits of the season.

Two features of the crowd was very laughable. One was that the most of them brought their overcoats and the other was that probably 95 per cent of the people that came did not have to come. 

Before the game several players gathered around the handsome umpires and did a lot of talking. As they had not been no decision made it is hard to tell what the athletes were kicking about unless it was because they was such a lot of money in the house and they were not going to get none of it.

From Mr. Bentley’s showing they did not seem to be much reason for Mr. McGraw having started him except that everybody else had pitched the day before. Or maybe the little Napoleon wanted to show the fans that there’s something besides the world series that takes a long time to wind up

The reappearance of Jack Scott come as a big surprise. It was thought that he would of lose interest after Saturday and not come out to any more of the games. The tall Southerner furnished even more of a surprise in the third inning by keeping the Yanks from scoring. In the next inning Mack took him out to save him for the third game of the next season’s first series with Brooklyn.

Embarrassing Moments 

The present series is as full of embarrassments to the newspaper men as to the Giant pitchers. No bevy of admiring fans stormed the press coop to stare at me today, but something happened during Scott’s last ailment that was just as bad. It must be explained that my seat in Yankee park is right on the borderline between the newspaper section and the section reserved for Bronx people. One of the last named had asked 50 questions and I had answered them all, as I am very democratic. Well, along came the man who sells hot dogs, and he offered some to my Bronxean friend. He took two and he stretched out his hand toward me with one of them in it. Well, after all, a hot dog is something to eat, which don’t often happen to a newspaper man during a World Series, so I says, “Yest, thank you,” and took the hot dog and went to it. In a few minutes, above the roar of the crowd, I seems to hear somebody calling me. It turned out to be the hot dog salesman, and what he was saying was, “Ain’t you going to pay for your hot dogs?” Well, I hustled around and got 15 cents and pretended like I had been intent on my work and had forgotten to pay, but several people laughed out loud. It is these kinds of things that leave a sore. The incident depressed me so much that you will half to read other experts for full details of the game.