Running the Team

T

How would your day's work look in a box score? Suppose to-night's paper published the number of chances you had, the number of hits, of put-outs, and of errors. And suppose, if you manage a company or department, that the record of each of your people was so published every day. That is what baseball managers are up against, and their methods vary from those of Robinson, who skillfully builds up run-down confidence, to those of McGraw, who "can slash with words a player who makes a mistake, but who never abuses a man whose error is not of the mind or spirit"

By Heywood Broun

HERE is something of almost inspirational wisdom in the fact that for years the coacher's cry to the batter has been: "You can do it." But if anybody called Wilbert Robinson, the Brooklyn manager, a psychologist he would probably deny the charge indignantly until he had time to think about the meaning of the word. Then he would agree genially and admit: "Oh, yes, I guess the old oil goes pretty good when you're managing a ball club." Robinson knows by experience and intuition a good many things which the most modern of psychiatrists have worked out by hypothesis. When a man comes to an up-to-date doctor complaining of stomachache, the physician is apt to find out what sort of fuel is going into his patient's mind before he bothers to inquire what is going into his stomach. And within the last ten years the medical profession has begun to swing around to the belief that man is ridden to at least a large percentage of his ailments not by germs but merely by the feeling that he is inferior and incompetent.

At the outset it is well to note the limitations which curtail the scope of even the most unbounded flow of confidence. I have in mind a certain brigadier general in the American Expeditionary Forces who summoned a bugler and suggested that he should learn to play "Over There." The soldier replied that it could not be done because the range of a bugle is too limited to permit a scale being played. "Never mind," replied the general genially, "keep on trying."

The exact truth, then, which Robinson knows is that the batter who thinks he can hit the ball has a much better chance than the one who is afraid he can't. Just what happens when a confident pitcher meets a confident batter I am not prepared to say.

Perhaps the result is

a long fly to the outfield. Of course, the theory only takes the manager a little way on his journey. It is easy enough to know that a ball club must have the will to win and the belief in its ability to do so, but it is another matter to establish these beliefs in the minds of the players. This is the point at which "the old oil" must be applied.

Methods are countless. Robinson himself does not hold to any one. He

studies his players and applies varying remedies to build up confidence which has run down. So remarkable has been his success that he won the pennant of the National League last year with a team almost every member of which had been cast adrift as incompetent or superannuated by some other manager. At first it was Konetchy, who served with many teams and was just about on his way to the minors when Robinson took him on. Kilduff at second had failed to keep his place with the Giants or the Cubs, and Olson at shortstop was for a time so erratic that even the home-town fans booed him at bat and shouted: "Take 'im out," whenever he fumbled a grounder. Robinson, on the contrary, kept him in and, more than that, assured him that he was going to stay. In this respect he profited, perhaps, by remember

McGraw's lieutenants come and go, but McGraw continues to direct every play. If there had been baseball in Corsica, Napoleon would have been much the same sort of manager

ing the behavior of John McGraw under somewhat similar circumstances. In the first game of a world series Fletcher made two costly errors which lost for New York, and the baseball writers united next day in their articles in advising and demanding that he be taken out. McGraw's reply was to give out a statement in which he said: "I want to announce right now that Arthur Fletcher will be at shortstop for the Giants in every game of the series." After that Fletcher made no more

errors.

In general, Robinson's method is to employ a genial and rather heavy form of banter. It is always good-natured, and Robinson is careful to avoid the sharp sarcasm which McGraw cannot resist at times and which was a regular commodity in the method of Billy Murray, once manager of the Phillies. Murray had a wit much too keen for his ball players, and they resented his jibes,

particularly since many of them became imbedded in the traditions of the game. Thus, on one occasion, when Coveleskie, the Giant Killer, was pitching he overlooked the fact that there was a runner on first base and took a long wind-up which permitted the man to trot down to second. Murray was incensed and stormed at the big Polish pitcher when he came to the bench.

"What did you do that for?" he said. "Honest, Mr. Murray," answered Coveleskie, "I didn't know there was a runner on first."

Murray quieted down immediately. "Oh, you didn't know," he cooed. "That's all right; it wasn't your fault. Wait till I speak to Eddie." He called Grant over and said with great solemnity, while all the players but the pitcher grinned: "The next time there's a man on first or second, Eddie, I want you to go over and tell Covey about it. I'm not going to have any secrets on my ball club."

The manager made his point, but Coveleskie never forgave him, and for the sake of a good line Murray had impaired the usefulness of a potentially great southpaw pitcher, a southpaw, by the way, who never came to such baseball prominence as his righthanded brother under the more genial leadership of Tris Speaker of the Cleveland Indians.

Robinson does not value a joke to that extent. His humor is more primitive and it seldom concerns itself with errors, but is used rather to give a fillip to words of praise. The Brooklyn leader believes implicitly in never neglecting the pat on the back. As a matter of fact, whenever you see the players of any ball club rush out of the dugout to congratulate their pitcher on getting out of a hole or to shake hands with a batter who has made a timely hit, you may be sure that the club is at the top of the heap or thereabouts.

No Time Wasted in Explanations

Tson is to get along without rules and without ex

HE other cardinal point in the scheme of Robin

planations. If a man has made a muff, that is all there is to it. He can see no object in asking him why or in impressing on the player that he was clumsy in handling the ball. The player knows all that already, according to the philosophy of Robinson. As for rules against staying out beyond a certain time at night, or gambling, or even drinking, Robinson hasn't got any, and to the best of my recollection he has never been under the necessity of fining or suspending a player. One of the players on (Continued on page 18) the Brooklyn team to-day

N

IX

ARA was sitting in the window of Mrs. Claveloux's bedroom reading in the late afternoon light which peeped upon her book from a crack between the drawn curtains. After a time, allowing the volume to fall into her lap, she watched a white thunder crest rising from the mass of black and coppery yellow clouds, bending over the tops of the buildings at the far side of the park.

Ten days had gone, and Emlen Claveloux had no knowledge of her presence in the house. His father, Nara reflected, had man

aged it with fine skill. Dr. Haith Claveloux had dismissed his wife's nurse and, though Nara wore no uniform, the servants were allowed to believe that she had taken the place of the other. Το them she was merely a Miss Somebody who was in charge of the invalid.

"To care for my wife there is no special skill required," Dr. Haith Claveloux had told her. "I shall almost always be on hand. I will do most of my work at home and will always be here at night. Emlen will always pass my study on his way upstairs, and when he does so I will send my office nurse up the back way to relieve

you. Your own room is above my study at the back of the house. It is down a short corridor, and your meals can be brought to you there."

WO days after Nara

Thad come the turn of

the tide in Mrs. Claveloux's case had been accompanied by evidence so marked that the husband and Nara both had contemplated the mystery with awe

. "These post-febrile exhaustions, when the nerve system refuses to respond to rest or stimulant, when heart and digestive organs show a tendency to cease functioning, when states of coma intervene, are sometimes fatally dangerous," he had said. "This one defied all of us. But now I know, by examination of pulse and blood pressure, the condition of anemia and by all the straws of diagnosis, more than you can ever know, of the wonder of her improvement! Miss Alexieff, I know nothing of the reason for your power; but from

By Richard Washburn Child

Illustrated by W. T. Benda

"It is an old faith of mine," said Nara Alexieff, "and perhaps a childish faith, that men and women are always so much better than they seem to be"

summon.

all the energy of soul, mind, and body she could She had told the husband that he must introduce her coming as Connor Lee had always introduced it, as an infallible source of comfort, peace, and regeneration. She had taken the manner of one who holds a quiet assumption of irresistible force. She had concealed whatever stress and strain of will or nerves or sinews accompanied her effort to transmit vitality to this lovely character whose body had threatened to give up its life.

She arose now, quietly crossed the half darkened

the bottom of an old man's heart I thank you!" She remembered that when these words had been spoken he had impulsively seized her hands. Before he had turned to her, he had bent his shoulders over the bed, clinging in pure impulsive joy for a moment to the body of his wife, whispering to that pale but smiling woman all the words of a young lover out of the vocabulary of the past. Then, climbing up from his knees, recovering his dignity and addressing Nara, he had repressed his emotion until his hands had been thrust out suddenly to clasp hers and express in contact that gratitude which speech could not convey.

The fact that Mrs. Claveloux had become so much better, that there was no immediate danger, had given the elder Claveloux an opportunity to urge his son to go to Baltimore for a series of medical conferences. The serious chance of a meeting between Emlen and Miss Alexieff had been removed, and Nara and Dr. Haith Claveloux, each for a different reason, were relieved of fear.

"I did not want to tell my son," he said. "Not yet! Not yet! And even when he is through with Baltimore he has a case out of town demanding his attention. I will not tell him. He would not understand." Nara had put into her labors with Mrs. Claveloux

you."

room, and stood at the foot of the carved Italian bed, looking down at the sleeping woman with an expression of deep affection.

Nara found reasons enough for warmth of feeling toward Mrs. Claveloux in the strange, pathetic, utter helplessness of Dr. Haith's love of his wife. His hardness of intellect, his granite quality, physical and mental, his years of distinction for cold scientific method, merely emphasized the frantic, desperate struggle of his own inner soul when the final realization came that he might lose her, that he must seize any means to save her, that

he must now cease to rely upon himself and reach for powers beyond himself. It was impossi

ble for Nara not to be infected by Dr. Haith Claveloux's emotion; she would have loved Mary Claveloux merely because he did.

OR another reason she

Fred her. It was be

cause the hours together-sometimes long, constant hours-had been shuttles of intimacy between the white-haired woman and the young girl more than years of social acquaintance could ever be. There had been woven a strong fabric of personal affection. Mary Claveloux-at the beginning when her subconscious mind had relaxed all hold upon the desire to live, and later, when she had come rushing back from lethargy and weakness toward the will to go on-had never failed in sweetness of spirit.

She had never complained. She had never When exacted service. her strength was at its lowest ebb she had never failed to move her hand far enough to put its cool, thin fingers upon her husband's as if to say that his happiness was her first concern.

Nara, however, standing now, at the bedside, looking upon the older woman, knew that another compelling factor had nourished the deep attachment she felt. Mrs. Claveloux was Emlen's mother. This fact alone gave rise to no sentimentality. It was not the motherhood which was significant; it was that strange power of heredity which made this whitehaired woman appear to be of the same essential material as that of Emlen Claveloux.

There, upon his mother's countenance, was his

133

high forehead, there his long, straight nose, there his eyebrows and firm mouth, speaking silently of great impulses held in check. There were the contours of living flesh so different, as between his powerful fingers and wrists and this woman's small and wasted hands, and yet in their suggestions so much the same. There were the subtle characteristics of movements so strongly similar that Nara sometimes felt a desire to exclaim aloud and call to him as if it were he and not his mother who lay before her.

The sleeper stirred and opened her eyes. "Awake?" asked the girl.

"Yes, dear one. I feel so much more like myself. Come here on the bed by me."

ARA, sitting down, took the other's hand, and for

NARA, dow, claveloux looked at the girl, at

her slender neck bent forward, at the poise of her head, at her figure, which could be at one time so feminine and yet so boyish, at her coppery, shimmering hair, at the subtle beauty which hovered like an aura about her.

"I want you to tell me all about yourself," she said.

"About myself!" exclaimed Nara. "I have told you already."

"About your life-yes," the other replied. "But something else about yourself as you are now." Nara looked toward her with a smile.

"Yes," said Mrs. Claveloux. "Whom do you love?" "I have a great fondness for you," Nara answered. "No, no, I meant-romantic love." "And why do you ask me?"

"Because all my life, my dear girl, I have been romantic. Haith would laugh at me. My own son would laugh at me. They are not romantic. But I am romantic. I have often thought if Emlen would only have a great love affair I would feel my cup of joy was full. And now I have your youth too to be interested in. And I want to wring from you a thrill of the moon, an adventure, a great love -something you have lived or felt."

"As you say, I am still young," said Nara evasively.

"But you are in love," Mrs. Claveloux insisted. "I am not such a stupid old woman, even if I am flat on my back and probably will never walk again. I know, my dear friend! In spite of the fact that

Nara, perched up on the foot of the bed, crosslegged and raised her forefinger warningly. "Once upon a time," she began. "Don't laugh," said Mary Claveloux. "There is no laughter in your eyes."

"Seen what?"

"I hardly know. It is like a thing in a dream

I can only say there is something in you which seems to be reaching forth."

Nara sighed, shook herself out of a reverie, and jumped up.

"Some time I will tell you," she said.

Going to the window, she opened the curtains because the storm had shaken its black mane across the sky and the light had failed. Puffs of cooler air came through the window as the advance wind of the tempest began to whirl the summer dust in the street below.

"I do not like these storms," said the invalid.
"I am here," Nara answered in a calm voice.
Mrs. Claveloux closed her eyes and smiled.
"You will tell me some time?" she inquired.

Nara turned for a moment to look out at the tumult of the sky, the bending trees in the park, the violence and restlessness of the elements. She felt suddenly her detachment from all persons. Even Connor Lee had gone out of her life. She was quite alone.

She walked quickly to Mrs. Claveloux's bedside. She said: "What a temptation it is to tell you everything! What a temptation to find that relief! But somehow this is weakness-somehow it seems to me to be like the fluttering of a moth. I will tell you, Mrs. Claveloux, because you want to hear and not because I want to find relief. I will tell you, not as I would tell you if I were pouring my story into a mother's lap, but just as I would read aloud to you from a little book which tries to entertain." "Tell me," the other said. "Tell me, dear child."

TARA blinked a little at this disclosure of the other woman's keenness of observation. She weighed the risks of telling Mrs. Claveloux her adventure even though she did not disclose any names or identifying events.

"I will tell you," she said seriously. "Once upon a time there was a girl who believed in herself." She went on to tell of her isolation as a refugee in New York, of her acquaintance with Adam Pine, whom she named only as The Sculptor, of his modeling her hands, of the impersonal relationship between them, of her meeting with the gorgeously plumaged society woman, of her disclosure to this woman of her nobility of birth, of her acceptance of the widow's hospitality, of her meeting with the young doctor and the swiftly broken intimacy which had come into being with so much understanding and disappeared with so much misunderstanding. "And why, my dear girl, didn't you tell him?" asked Mrs. Claveloux. "Why haven't you told him the truth. Is he here in New York?"

"Yes."

"Then we must mend this matter." The invalid spoke with a new light in her eyes and a faint touch of rising color in her cheeks.

"No," said Nara. "It is too late. He and I cannot think the same thoughts. We seek different ends. We are far, far apart. The bonds which I thought I saw between us were bonds of illusion. They were not real. He had no faith!"

She explained it passionately.

"And so now," she said, "I will be quite free. I can go ahead to make life. I suppose it would be very easy to be sorry for me, but there would be no reason. I have myself. I have youth, health, and there is a work for me somewhere. I will do that work-expressing myself (Continued on page 24)

FTER all its what you ride in that gets you any

A

where in this veil of tears. I can prove it by the hall boy who sits still like a graven Indian as I stagger in with things mother has sent me after, including eggs. But the Navy Commander who has taken eight rooms below and three baths needs but to rumble up in his equipage and the hall boy is all attention, though the Navy Commander has no load but the stripes on his sleeves. And the scorn which is my potion when walking is nothing to what I have to swallow when arriving in Will o' the Wisp.

Hildegarde's brother, having graduated from Amity last year, thought he was a man at last and so went out and bought himself a flivver. Not having come into a fortune or anything, he figured he'd better buy a second-hand one-and he did all right. The first time it got heated up the engine melted apart like butter, having been basely puttied to deceive the very elect.

Hildegarde's father is Minister from a well-known though neutral nation, at our nation's capital. And he said it shamed a whole country for the heir to the legation to be forever sitting in the midst of ruins on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was a bitter set-to, won by Hildegarde's father, at the end of which her brother banged the door and said that since no one cared for his happiness he too was going to turn the enemy of mankind, and so Hildegarde would have the flivver. We got together and named it Will o' the Wisp out of the dictionary, which says a Will o' the Wisp is any deluding thing or person. After that all Hildegarde had to do was to buy gasoline and fresh putty as needed, for which we all chipped in.

They didn't teach tea drinking

at Joan's school. But what they
taught made
you able to drink it
with both cream and lemon and
a polite smile, when cornered

By Berthe K. Mellett
Illustrated by Frederic Dorr Steele

Though slow and uncertain, Will o' the Wisp often carries us to the Country Club, run by Amity for outdoor life beyond the district limits. A box on the back seat makes a place for Shannigan, who is my Irish terrier, and claws you to pieces if he cant see out when riding."

Well, last Friday we started out after school to play tennis. We had Shan and our rackets and books. Hildegarde drove. But Horty and I like to improve the shining minutes, so took our tatting. It ended by Horty doing all the tatting that was done, however, as the door on my side of the car banged when not held, and I am not a one-hand tatter.

We surged carefully along by the car track going out of town, and were just passing The Misses Smuythes School for Young Ladies when the rain slapped down from behind. I held Horty's Huxley up where the window was gone, and held the door as well, so we were quite comfortable. But the rain

bothered in another way, as one and all we had just had our rackets restrung, which costs five dollars this year and is a big item.

Now we hate the Misses Smuythes, as many girls who were once dear to us have been sent there from time to time to polish off the simplicity gathered at Amity, and none can say whose turn will come next. Gloria's sister Olivia is now an inmate, which cools our vennem a little, since we cannot but remember how well she played on our basketball team in happy days gone by.

So as we passed the Misses Smuythes stoney front Horty looked at the wrist watch her brother lost when he returned from the front. "Its Friday," said she, "the day on which they receive visitors. Let's go in and cheer up Olivia and tat. We'll ruin our rackets if we try to play."

But no sooner had Hildegarde headed around to face that awesome front again than dire feelings were felt by all. Horty stuffed her tatting into her pocket, and scrunched mine down so it wouldn't show, though the pointed thing you make it with poked through the knitting of my sweater.

"She rattles," discovered Horty, referring to Will o' the Wisp.

"There should be a jigger to hold the door closed," said I. "The window doesn't matter, though some one behind may break their neck trying to read Huxley, who is bad enough when held steady on a desk."

A blush snapped together around the back of Hildegarde's neck, and grew deep red as a person who was raking the front drive of the Misses Smuythes straightened up and yelled. "Go ahead," said Horty. Hildegarde pulled a handle.

Will o' the Wisp

stopped, backed, and snorted. Then jumped ahead obedient to our slightest whim. At a window of the Misses Smuythes a slick-faced man smiled broadly. "Back door! Back door!" yelled the raker, who was catching up.

"Step on her," advised Horty. "Let's dont stop to see Olivia to-day. Take the gate out straight ahead. Give her some gas."

Heat

We

Hildegarde gave her all the gas there was. Something in the engine turned and shot at us. danced up from the hood in front, which trembled like a startled dear. The front wheels lifted from the ground and then the back, as Will o' the Wisp leaped to save us. I could not hold Huxley to the window in the struggle, and Shanny nosed his way there to bark out at the lurching landscape. passed the front steps of the Misses Smuythes, and the slick-faced person was joined by his mate. Behind us the raker still shouted. The door banged even if I did hold it. On the back porch of the Misses Smuythes quite a crowd of maids had gathered to see us pass. Our engine was hitting on all two, with four loud sharp shots and a little one, as we tore along. The tool case flew out, but hurt no one. The curving drive led past the back door on the way out of the grounds, and we could feel Will o' the Wisp gathering herself together under us to make a last mighty leap when

OOTH the tin shutter things at the front fell off!

BA lot of coiled piping fell out and lay smoking

where it fell. A spring sprang. Lubricating oil, melted putty, and water blended with the rain on the drive. We stopped so suddenly it was like going backward.

"Call this a nautomobile?" yelled the raker, who had been neck and neck with us at the finish. "No wonder the cake's late. For the love of Hector give it to the cook quick. Twict a'reddy she's sent me up the road to listen if you was in sight-"

"What's this about cake?" said I to Horty. Her face was so red it was purple.

"They think we are delivering cake," whispered she. "We must get away."

Which we would have done had not our open door just then been filled by a large black lady who was a cook. "Las' time," she scolded. "Las' time I puts my trus' in homemade wimmen, and you can bus' right along back now and tell you' ma so. Nex' time I o'das from a bakery. Tea at fou' and yea' you bus' along at haf pas'. Williams!"

The slick-looking man from the front window was on the back porch with the rest of the gallery, and she ordered him out.

"Williams!" repeated she. "Bus' along yea' and git this yea' box of cake." And she grabbed at Shanny's seat.

At that Horty took a handful of books and smote the other door of Will o' the Wisp, which never before had we been able to budge. It budged now, however, and Hildegarde hurdled the front seat and joined us on the ground.

We had but leaped from the frying pan into the

fiery furnace, for no sooner were we free of Will o' the Wisp than the rain fell on our new strung rackets. It took us but a moment to decide to save our rackets at all cost, and with a rush we were on the Misses Smuythes front porch and peeling the bell. The door flew wide. And there stood two butlers!

"Leave him alone," said I, intending to defend my faithful friend of man bravely. But in looking down I saw

that Hildegarde had snagged her stocking on her way out of the car, and courage died. "He may bite,". added I weakly.

"We wish to see Miss Olivia Barclay," came Horty's voice. She had been saying the thing over and over, waiting for a lull to let her message rise above the roar, having learned much from her father, who is a Democrat in the Senate with every man's hand against him.

The teacher gave the road a searching look once more. "If you have brought her washing," said she. "We wish to see Miss Olivia Barclay," said Horty, starting again. Just then Olivia swept down the steps.

"Hello!" came her glad shout, which should have

Stule 1721

cheered us up, but didn't. For Olivia, who had once been one of us, now burst upon the gaze in pink slippers and a marcel! I pulled up the front of my sweater so it wouldn't sag; but what help was there for sneakers and a hole in Hildegarde's stocking? Even Shan got an unmanicured look in my eyes, and I kicked out carefully, so none should see, to stop him chewing the string of my sneaker, which is his way of expressing love.

"Come along in!" said Olivia in a hearty way. "How's everything?"

DES

ESPAIR rocked the teacher to her foundations. For a moment more she searched the gate and road with her eye. "Olivia," gasped she, "the young ladies are not-well, not-I mean to say, I am anticipating a call-may mean a great deal to meand the young ladies are not-"

"Never mind," said Olivia, and as the rain was still bad for rackets we did as bidden and followed Olivia, though pursued by the teacher, who turned out to be Miss Wellington and watched our every move. Hildegarde got forward in an odd manner, having discovered the hole in her stocking which she tried to keep next to the wall, though going the other way.

"Put those things down," said Miss Wellington, referring to the books and rackets which we carried. "Whose horrible beast is that?" For Shanny, who is quick to seize an opening, had slipped through Williams's short trousers and caught up rapidly. For a second I turned like a worm defending its young. But Miss Wellington's icy glare sapped my strength. "I dont know," said I basely and fled after Olivia so as not to hear Shanny's despair when Williams swooped upon him.

"I'll watch for your street car," said Miss Wellington, who never said die, and hoped still to head us off at the last ditch before we entered the room beyond, which was flowing with tea and cinnamon toast. But sturdy Olivia waved us on.

"Sit here," begged Hildegarde because of the hole in her stocking, and slid onto a settee which required no walking to.

"Fine," were Olivia's remarks. "It dont make any difference."

"Doesn't," moaned Miss Wellington as she took a chair overlooking (Continued on page 19)