l-players from accidents, and accidents
have lost many a pennant. I have always held that it was a lack of the
proper coaching that sent "Cy" Seymour, formerly the Giant centre-fielder,
out of the Big Leagues and back to the minors. Both Murray and he
attempted to catch the same fly in the season of 1909 and came into
collision. Seymour went down on the field, but later got up and played
the game out. However, he hurt his leg so badly that it never regained its
strength.

Then there is that other style of defensive coaching which is the shouting
of misleading advice by the fielders to the base runners. Collins and
Barry, the second baseman and shortstop on the Athletics, worked a clever
trick in one of the games of the 1911 world's series which illustrates my
point. The play is as old as the one in which the second baseman hides the
ball under his shirt so as to catch a man asleep off first base, but often
the old ones are the more effective.

Doyle was on first base in one of the contests played in Philadelphia, and
the batter lifted a short foul fly to Baker, playing third base. The crowd
roared and the coacher's voice was drowned by the volume of sound. "Eddie"
Collins ran to cover second base, and Barry scrabbled his hand along the
dirt as if preparing to field a ground ball.

"Throw it here! Throw it here!" yelled Collins, and Doyle, thinking that
they were trying for a force play, increased his efforts to reach second.
Baker caught the fly, and Larry was doubled up at first base so far that
he looked foolish. Yet it really was not his fault. The safest thing for a
base runner to do under those circumstances is to get one glimpse of the
coacher's motions and then he can tell whether to go back or to go on.

"Johnnie" Kling, the old catcher of the Chicago Cubs, used to work a
clever piece of defensive coaching with John Evers, the second baseman.
This was tried on young players and usually was successful. The victim was
picked out before the game, and the play depended upon him arriving at
second base. Once there the schemers worked it as follows:

When the "busher" was found taking a large lead, Evers would dash to the
bag and Kling would make a bluff to throw the ball, but hold it. The
runner naturally scampered for the base. Then, seeing that Kling had not
thrown, he would start to walk away from it again.

"If the Jew had thrown that time, he would have had you," Evers would
carelessly hurl over his shoulde