e saw
a load of barrels the next day and started to bat. At last all the members
of the team had met the barrels, and men with averages of .119 were
threatening to chisel into the three-hundred set. With remarkable
regularity the players were meeting loads of empty barrels on their way to
the park, and, with remarkable regularity and a great deal of expedition,
the pitchers of opposing clubs were being driven to the shower bath.

"Say," asked "Billy" Gilbert, the old second baseman, of "Bill" Lauder,
formerly the protector of the third corner, one day, "is one of that team
of horses sorrel and the other white?"

"Sure," answered "Bill."

"Sure," echoed McGraw. "I hired that load of empty barrels by the week to
drive around and meet you fellows on the way to the park, and you don't
think I can afford to have them change horses every day, do you?"

Everybody had a good laugh and kept on swatting. McGraw asked for waivers
on the load of empty barrels soon afterwards, but his scheme had stopped a
batting slump and put the club's hitters on their feet again. He plays to
the little personal qualities and superstitions in the men to get the most
out of them. And just seeing those barrels gave them the idea that they
were bound to get the base hits, and they got them. Once more, the old
confidence, hitched up with ability.

What manager would have carried a Kansas farmer around the circuit with
him besides McGraw? I refer to Charles Victor Faust of Marion, Kansas, the
most famous jinx killer of them all. Faust first met the Giants in St.
Louis on the next to the last trip the club made West in the season of
1911, when he wandered into the Planter's Hotel one day, asked for McGraw
and announced that a fortune teller of Marion had informed him he would be
a great pitcher and that for $5 he could have a full reading. This
pitching announcement piqued Charles, and he reached down into his jeans,
dug out his last five, and passed it over. The fortune teller informed
Faust that all he had to do to get into the headlines of the newspapers
and to be a great pitcher was to join the New York Giants. He joined, and,
after he once joined, it would have taken the McNamaras in their best form
to separate him from the said Giants.

"Charley" came out to the ball park and amused himself warming up.
Incidentally, the Giants did not lose a game while he was in the
neighborhood. The night the club left for Chicago on that trip, he was
down