ng in pinches is not effective against all pitchers. A
manager must judge the temperament of his victim. But Griffith has never
stopped trying to rag me. In 1911, when the Giants were west on their
final trip, I was warming up in Cincinnati before a game, and he was
batting out flies near me. He would talk to me between each ball he hit
to the outfield.

"Got anything to-day, Matty?" he asked. "Guess there ain't many games left
in you. You're getting old."

When I broke into the National League, the Brooklyn club had as bad a
bunch of men to bother a pitcher as I ever faced. The team had won the
championship in 1900, and naturally they were all pretty chesty. When I
first began to play in 1901, this crowd--Kelly, Jennings, Keeler and
Hanlon--got after me pretty strong. But I seemed to get pitching
nourishment out of their line of conversation and won a lot of games. At
last, so I have been told, Hanlon, who was the manager, said to his
conversational ball players:

"Lay off that Mathewson kid. Leave him alone. He likes the chatter you
fellows spill out there."

They did not bother me after that, but this bunch spoiled many a promising
young pitcher.

Speaking of sizing up the temperament of batters and pitchers in a pinch,
few persons realize that it was a little bit of carelessly placed
conversation belonging to "Chief" Bender, the Indian pitcher on the
Athletics, that did as much as anything to give the Giants the first game
in the 1911 world's series.

"Josh" Devore, the left-fielder on the New York team, is an in-and-out
batter, but he is a bulldog in a pinch and is more apt to make a hit in a
tight place than when the bases are empty. And he is quite as likely to
strike out. He is the type of ball player who cannot be rattled. With
"Chief" Myers on second base, the score tied, and two out, Devore came to
the bat in the seventh inning of the first game.

"Look at little 'Josh,'" said Bender, who had been talking to batters all
through the game.

Devore promptly got himself into the hole with two strikes and two balls
on him, but a little drawback like that never worries "Josh."

"I'm going to pitch you a curved ball over the outside corner," shouted
Bender as he wound up.

"I know it, Chief," replied "Josh," and he set himself to receive just
that sort of delivery.

Up came the predicted curve over the outside corner. "Josh" hit it to left
field for two bases, and brought home the winning run. Bender e