."

Pfiester is a left-hand pitcher who watches the bases closely.

Merkle had reported at the clubhouse as usual and had put on his uniform.
He hung on the edge of the group as McGraw spoke, and then we all went to
the field. It was hard for us to play that game with the crowd which was
there, but harder for the Cubs. In one place, the fence was broken down,
and some employees were playing a stream of water from a fire hose on the
cavity to keep the crowd back. Many preferred a ducking to missing the
game and ran through the stream to the lines around the field. A string
of fans recklessly straddled the roof of the old grand-stand.

Every once in a while some group would break through the restraining ropes
and scurry across the diamond to what appeared to be a better point of
vantage. This would let a throng loose which hurried one way and another
and mixed in with the players. More police had to be summoned. As I
watched that half-wild multitude before the contest, I could think of
three or four things I would rather do than umpire the game.

I had rested my arm four days, not having pitched in the Boston series,
and I felt that it should be in pretty good condition. Before that
respite, I had been in nine out of fifteen games. But as I started to warm
up, the ball refused to break. I couldn't get anything on it.

"What's the matter, Rog?" I asked Bresnahan. "They won't break for me."

"It'll come as you start to work," he replied, although I could see that
he, too, was worried.

John M. Ward, the old ball-player and now one of the owners of the Boston
National League club, has told me since that, after working almost every
day as I had been doing, it does a pitcher's arm no good to lay off for
three or four days. Only a week or ten days will accomplish any results.
It would have been better for me to continue to work as often as I had
been doing, for the short rest only seemed to deaden my arm.

The crowd that day was inflammable. The players caught this incendiary
spirit. McGinnity, batting out to our infield in practice, insisted on
driving Chance away from the plate before the Cubs' leader thought his
team had had its full share of the batting rehearsal. "Joe" shoved him a
little, and in a minute fists were flying, although Chance and McGinnity
are very good friends off the field.

Fights immediately started all around in the stands. I remember seeing two
men roll from the top to the bottom of the right-fi