s a chance to work about one inning. The batters are away off
form and are missing the old round-house curve by two feet that they would
hit out of the lot in mid-season. This makes you think for a few minutes
that you are a good pitcher. But there is even a drawback to this brief
bit of enjoyment, for the diamond at Marlin is skinned--that is, made of
dirt, although it is billed as a grass infield, and the ball gets "wingy."
Little pieces of the cover are torn loose by contact with the rough dirt,
and it is not at all like the hard, smooth, grass-stained ball that is
prevalent around the circuit in mid-season. Grass seed has been planted on
this infield, but so far, like a lot of bushers, it has failed to make
good its promises.

After that game comes the inevitable run around the park which has been a
headliner in spring training ever since the institution was discovered. A
story is told of "Cap" Anson and his famous old White Stockings.
According to the reports I have heard, training with the "Cap" when he was
right was no bed of roses. After hours of practice, he would lead the men
in long runs, and the better he felt, the longer the runs. One hot day, so
the story goes, Anson was toiling around the park, with his usual
determination, at the head of a string of steaming, sweating players, when
"Bill" Dahlen, a clever man at finding an opening, discovered a loose
board in the fence on the back stretch, pulled it off, and dived through
the hole. On the next lap two more tired athletes followed him, and at
last the whole squad was on the other side of the fence, watching their
leader run on tirelessly. But "Cap" must have missed the "plunk, plunk" of
the footsteps behind him, for he looked around and saw that his players
were gone. He kept grimly on, alone, until he had finished, and then he
pushed his red face through the hole in the fence and saw his men.

"Your turn now, boys," he said, and while he sat in the grand-stand as the
sole spectator, he made that crowd of unfortunate athletes run around the
track twice as many times as he himself had done.

"Guess I won't have to nail up that hole in the fence, boys," "Cap"
remarked when it was all over.

Speaking of the influence of catchers on pitchers during the training
trip, there is the well-known case of Wilbert Robinson, the old catcher,
and "Rube" Marquard, the great left-handed pitcher of the Giants. "Robbie"
devoted himself almost entirely in the spring of 19