Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 243, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1910 — HIS CAREER WAS ACCIDENTAL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HIS CAREER WAS ACCIDENTAL

Harry Mclntire, One of the Winning Pitchers on the Chicago Team, Telia of Start .. . / BY HARRY McINTIRE. (Copyright, 1910, by Joseph B. Bowles.) My baseball career was rather an accident from the outset. I never had the slightest idea of earning my livelihood playing ball or of taking it up as a profession. The truth Is that I was Inclined to go into the priesthood when I was a small boy, and my other ambition was to be a locomotive engineer. From the time I first can remember I loved baseball and played It, always as a pitcher, If the other fellows would let me, and when they wouldn’t let me pitch I played somewhere else. * It was at the Brothers’ School at Dayton, 0., that I first belonged to an organized team. I was backstop for the catcher, and very proud to chase balls that went past him. I began to study pitching then, for we had a good pitcher ob the school team, and I watched to see what he did to puzzle batters. One of the priests had been a pitcher at school, and he taught me some more. I remember when he told me that keeping cool and never losing the temper was a better way of winning than pitching curves. Pretty soon our class team let me pitch, and after a time we tackled the school team and beat them so I was put on the school team. I began to think I knew it all, and it took several beatings to show me how little I knew. When I left school I was looking for a job and a friend of mine, who was playing on the Kankakee (Ill.) Y. M. C. A. club asked me to come over there and pitch for that team. I looked on It just as a summer vacation, but made good there and found myself getting along so well I commenced to study pitching seriously as my profession. It was hard work with many discouragements, but I stuck toi it. Every time a batter made a hit off me I studied to find why he had hit

it and what I ought to have done to keep him from hitting hard. The next season I arrived at Danville, 111., and played all summer. There was a wise old catcher there who taught me a lot, and from there I took a couple of big jumps into the big league and have stuck. I think the great reason why I have managed to stick Is that r never have stopped studying the game and its players. If a man gets to know it all he will be in the bush leagues soon.

Harry Mcintire.