Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1912 — CLEVELAND’S FAMOUS SECOND BASEMAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CLEVELAND’S FAMOUS SECOND BASEMAN

By HOMER CROY.

Whatever Rhode Island is or hopes to be she owes to Senator Aldrich and Napoleon Lajoie. She wouldn’t be on the map today, but would he found with a star in a footnote at the bottom of the page If It were not for Napoleon Lajoie, assisted by Mr. Aldrich. If Napoleon Lajoie bad not hustled onto the scene in September, 1875, Nateon Ar WOl]fla"hWe Md TOT much on his hands and she would have slipped off into the Atlantic ocean of obscurity. With discriminating eye Napoleon selected Wponsocket, where his father had brought the name down from French Canada, for a birthplace. Lajoie is pronounced in more different ways than any other name in the majors. In tatting about the Clevelands the fhns usually start in with LaJ—-and then suddenly have their attention attmeted by a double and continue after it’s all over with “He and our Napoleon—.” In the west it is pronounced Laz —and finished by coughing and kicking a hole in the. ground, while in the spectacled east It Is put ovef with a concentric twist of the lips and with an underhand fadeaway of the tongue. According to Napoleon It can be done by running the scales a few times and with some finger practice by going at It thus —Lazh-u-way. In early life Napoleon’s dreams were of being a cabby and wearing a real top hat and brass buttons with scroll work on them; he cared not for the busy marts of men or for being the tiger tamer in the gilded cage, but onward, upward did he struggle and strive, climbing for the heights while his careless and uncaring companions slept, until one fair day his

dreams were realized, and his castles had in the steel structural work —and be was a sure enough cabby with the' scroll work and a top hat that the rain couldn’t —any more. Other boys who had grown up with him in Woonsocket could hardly believe that fame had snatched him from their midst and placed on his brow its jeweled diadem —the top hat Although-naw. Qf anflTl l ® 1 ’ world Napoleon condescended to come buck to their locals now and then for a game of ball, while Dobbin munched his oats undOT the grandstand, until the Fall River club of the New England league persuaded him to ride on its second sack. From there the Nifty Nap drove on to the Phillies, thence on to his present address. He spends his winters on his farm ten miles north of Cleveland where bis hobby is raising dogs. He has so many dogs that he cuts their meat by footpower, and when the moon is full farmers in the next county have to sleep with their windows .down. Napoleon is Urn most graceful man in any park in the United States. He has a mimeographed letter he sends back in answer to notes from sighing girls. Although tall and heavily boilt each motion is so polished that you can almost bear him sketching in charcoal and pronouncing vase—vaws. t Every time the Apollo of the parks raises his hand it’s a picture; every time be clouts, a single the soft purr of girls’ lead pencils can be heard all over the bleachers, and every time he stumbles and skids on his ear be , does it so gracefully that the ladies in the grandstands bruise their gloves. —- (Copyright. 1911. by W. G. Chapman.) *

Napoleon Lajoie as Pictured by Cesare.