Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 January 1911 — JIM SCOTT’S START DUE TO BOYISH DARE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JIM SCOTT’S START DUE TO BOYISH DARE

If anyone had told me I would be a professional baseball player ten years ago I would have laughed. I wanted, to be a physician and had my college career all mapped out. My father had agreed to send me to college at Nebraska Wesleyan university and 1 went there to start my professional career. I had played a little baseball around my home at Lander, Wyo., as a boy, usually at third base, and,had not given the gams a serious thought. The way I happened to get into baseball was an accident. I was at home in Lander when some of the boys wanted me to come out and play third base against the team from a regiment stationed at the post. It happened that there were a lot of railroad men out to see the game, and among them was J. P. Cantillon, a brother of Mike and Joe Cantillon, the baseball men. I did not know this at the time. In the first inning the soldiers made two runs off our pitcher and knocked him out, so the- boys yelled for me to go in and pitch. I knew nothing about pitching except to fire the ball over and pitch a curve when I felt like it, but I went in. It was the first real game I ever had tried to pitch. We won out, 3 to 2, and I think the soldiers made one hit Off me. After the game Mr. Cantillon came to me and said if I wanted to pitch baseball he would give me a ticket to Des Moines, where the Cantlllens owned the team, for a try out. The fellows dared me to go, and just

as a piece of boy foolishness I packed up and left that night for Des Moines. There were eleven pitchers there being tried out. I hung around for a ' couple of weeks and pitched one inning, finishing up a game that was lost. They told me then they didn’t need me. I had no contract or agreement and did not receive a cent. I hated to go back home and have the boys think I had failed, and felt that they had not given me much of a chance. Besides I had been studying the experienced pitchers on the team and had begun to learn that there was more to pitching than throwing the ball. I got out of Des Moines and went to Oekaloosa, lowa, where I got a Job as pitcher and made good quickly. I gave a lot of thought and hard work to pitching and when Wichita picked me up I decided to stick to the profession and show them I could move up in it. I had begun to like it and the deeper I got into it the more satisfaction I took in my work. It had become my real profession. I worked hard at Wichita and that fall was sold to Chicago. I came there thinking I knew a lot, only to find out I was just starting, and by studying the great pitchers on Comiskey’s team I think I began to improve. It was harder work the higher up I got and I found that I had to keep studying and working just as hard to hold on as to get up. That is all there has been to it, just hard work and hard study. (Copyright. 1910, by Joseph B. Bowles.)

James Scott, White Sox Pitcher.