Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 233, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1910 — PITCHER M. BROWN’S START [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PITCHER M. BROWN’S START

Premier Twfrler for Chicago Cuba .Tells How He Broke Into Fast Company—Was Miner.

By Mordecai Brown.

(Copyright, 1910, by Joseph B, Bowles.) When I was a boy I had a hard time. My people were poor, and I was lucky to have one shoe and one rubber boot. I started to work in the mines around Coxville, Ind., about the time other kids are starting to kindergarten. Just when I began playing ball I can’t remember. It must have been when I was a kid seven or eight years old and I always loved the game and played it every chance I got. Pretty soon, when I was about fourteen, I began to get real wages in the mine. I became checker, hired by the union to check the coal that came up and keep the accounts of the men. The only time I had for baseball was Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There were seven small towns nearby and we all had teams. I have walked time and again eight to ten miles and back to play games. 1 was a catcher and third baseman on the team and showed so much skill at the game that pretty soon the miners would hire a man in my place to check the coal in order to let me go away and ball to win for the team. I did not like the miner’s life. It did not seem to get a fellow any place and I saw men grow old and worn out and scarcely save enough to bury them. It looked to me as if I ought to cultivate my ability play ball and I set to work in eafliest. I read in a paper that pitchers were the best paid players and decided to pitch, although I never had tried it before. I pitched three games for” Coxville one fall, and the next spring I was boosted for a job with the Terre Haute club. I reported to the team, a great big kid. I never had made a cent out of baseball, in fact the only money I ever had made outside of mining was in acting as protector fop a fat boy. His mother paid me fifty cents a.week to keep the other kids from licking him

and I was so anxious to earn that fifty cents that if no kid made a move at him I licked a couple anyhow to earn my money. The spring I went to Terre Haute they had eleven pitchers for trial and I never had pitched but three games. I was determined to make good and the only way I knew how was to work my head off. I never worked harder in the mines than I did there. I pitched every minute and watched the older pitchers work, learning from them. Also I started to read and study and worked harder than ever. Finally Omaha got me and I began to be a real pitcher. I always wanted to make good for the sake of the boys in the mines who had stuck with me all the way and I almost broke records at Omaha for number of games pitched. I worked so hard I hurt my arm and when St. Louis got me I thought I was going back to the mines. I worked the arm around into shape and when I got to Chicago it was right. Everything I ever have accomplished has been due to hard work, and little else. I have a great love for baseball, and like to play the garce. I realize I owe a lot to it and I want to show it by working all I can. It has given me a chance to meet people, and to develop into something. I think the game is a good profession, an honorable one and one any boy can enter, providing be enters it with the determination to work and win his way. No loafer or “joy player” ever will succeed.

“Miner” Brown.