Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1910 — McLEAN ALWAYS WAS PLAYER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

McLEAN ALWAYS WAS PLAYER

Cincinnati Catcher Would Rather Pa/ to Play Than Be Kept Out of Baseball Game.

BY "LARRY” McLEAN.

<Copyri*ht. by Joseph B. Bowles.) I always intended to become a professional ball player and finally became one in spite of the fact that they tripped me several times. The folks wanted me to work but I had an idea I was too Btrong to work, and spent most of my boyhood playing ball. The records of the school at Newtown, Mass., will show I won the championship of the truant league by the time I was fifteen. Some people thinJc a ball player plays for the money there is in it I never did. In fact I think I would have been a ball pldyer if they had made me pay to play the game. It was a pleasure for me as a kid to try to outguess batters. That I think is the secret of any catcher’s success. He must try to think what he would do if he were at the bat, and then make the pitcher do the opposite thing. My construction helped me a lot, for* I was a big, long armed boy and they made me catch. I didn’t want to catch at all, for there is little pleasure in being busted in the nose by foul tips or hit on the shins. I wanted to pitch, but there was a fellow named Burke who also wanted to pitch, and after he had licked me a few times I let him pitch and became a catcher, and have remained one ever since—no mater who says I am no catcher. After that I got on thd Newtown Athletic club as a catcher, and caught around Boston and Cambridge. I used to go to the Boston grounds, sit as close as possible and study the way the catchers and pitchers did things. Then I went up to St. Johns, N. S., where I happened to play with some wise old heads who kept showing me a lot about the game. 1 never had an idea I was good

enough for the big leagues. I knew I could hit and catch in the company I was playing with, but had no idea of getting up into the major leagues until a scout found me and dragged me into the American league. To my surprise I found it just as easy to catch for the big league clubs as for the amateurs, except that I had to learn the hatters all over again. I studied them hard, and watched them closely. Once a catcher ,|lnds out the weaknesses and strength of batters and gets familiar with his own men and their style of play it is easier to catch in the big league than in the bushes.

“Larry” McLean.