Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 190, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1910 — BYRNE SAYS BASEBALL IS A POOR PROFESSION FOR YOUTH TO CHOOSE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

BYRNE SAYS BASEBALL IS A POOR PROFESSION FOR YOUTH TO CHOOSE

By BOBBY BYRNE.

(Copyright, 1910, by Joseph B. Bowles.) •You ask me to tell how I happened to get into baseball as a profession in order to help young and aspiring players. If they asked me I would tell them everything I could to keep them from starting. Not that I knock the profession, but I think it is a poor one to choose, not because of the life itself, but because of its temptations and hardships, and, worse than that, the small chances of being really successful. If I had it to do over aagin I do not think I ever would become a professional ball player, in spite of the fact that I love the game and love to play it. I think a young fellow would do better to devote himself to some other line than to take the chances of success in the national game, for. even when he wins he loses. I wanted to be a ball player and was educated at the game in a good school, on the lots around St. Louis. I think that ball players develop faster when they are in the neighborhoou of some major league team. Otfe or two of the players on a “prairie” team are at every game the big leagues play. They see how the game is played, and being at that age as imitative as monkeys, they work the same things on their own teams and teach all the other boys. I have noticed that when any city has a pennant winning club the quality; of baseball played by the boys and the amateurs in that vicinity is much improved. The first regular team I made was the Arcades at Springfield, Mo., which was quite a team, merely because we had one fellow who knew- the game well and could teach us. It 1b easier to teach boys than to teach men, as they will obey without a question if they think the leader knows what he is doing. I picked up the game rapidly. The hardest thing I had to learn was when to throw. I think I must have thrown away half thd games we played before I learned not to throw when there was no chance to get the runner. I think that is one of the first things a young player should learn; to look before he throws and only throw when he has a chance to make a play. The' next thing, it seems to me, is to learn to handle one’s feet and to keep in the game all the time, and be in position to move when the halt is hit or before. . I played around in the Trolley league at St. Louis, and then took a chance and went to Shreveport, La., where f made good right off the reel. I started well, but got to thinking that the old heads down there were not as good as the “kids” in the Trolley league, until they began to show me things I never had heard about. Luckily I had

sense enough to see they were right and I followed them. The first thing I knew I was back in the big league at St. Louis. The biggest thing I had learned was that, no matter how far a fellow gets up in the business, therr still is a lot he does not know, and by dint of watching and learning I held on, and still am learning and willing to learn. When I know it all I’ll quit, or be released, \

Bobby Byrne.