ason, and do you think I'm going to let
you go after the gameness you've shown through all this abuse? Why you're
the kind of a guy I've been lookin' for many years. I could use a carload
like you. Forget this season and come around next spring. The newspapers
will have forgotten it all then. Good-by, boys." And he slipped out of the
clubhouse.

"He's a regular guy," said Merkle.

Merkle has lived down that failure to touch second and proved himself to
be one of the gamest players that ever stood in a diamond. Many times
since has he vindicated himself. He is a great first baseman now, and
McGraw and he are close friends. That is the "inside" story of the most
important game ever played in baseball and Merkle's connection with it.

X

When the Teams Are in Spring Training

_The Hardships of the Preliminary Practice in Limbering up Muscles
and Reducing Weight for the Big Campaign--How a Ball Club is Whipped
into Playing Shape--Trips to the South Not the Picnics they Seem to
Be--The Battle of the Bushers to Stay in the Big Show--Making a
Pitcher--Some Fun on the Side, including the Adventure of the Turkish
Bath._

Spring training! The words probably remind the reader of the sunny South
and light exercise and good food and rubs and other luxuries, but the
reader perhaps has never been with a Big League ball club when it is
getting ready to go into a six months' campaign.

All I can ever remember after a training trip is taking off and putting on
a uniform, and running around the ball park under the inspiration of John
McGraw, and he is some inspirer.

The heavier a man gets through the winter, the harder the routine work is
for him, and a few years ago I almost broke down and cried out of sympathy
for Otis Crandall, who arrived in camp very corpulent.

"What have you been doing this winter, Otie?" McGraw asked him after
shaking hands in greeting, "appearing with a show as the stout lady?
You'll have to take a lot of that off."

"Taking it off" meant running several miles every day so bundled up that
the Indiana agriculturist looked like the pictures published of "Old Doc"
Cook which showed him discovering the north pole. Ever since, Crandall's
spring training, like charity, has begun at home, and he takes exercise
night and morning throughout the winter, so that when he comes into camp
his weight will be somewhere near normal. In 1911 he had the best year of
his career. He