Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 254, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1912 — CATCHES GAME FOR QUARTER [ARTICLE]

CATCHES GAME FOR QUARTER

Bradley Kocher of Detroit Tigers id Called From Grandetand to Earn “ - WfinWeent Sum. Had the manager of the Easton tonm of the now defunct Atlantic league refused to give Jack Kocher, now second catcher of the Detroit team, the 25 cents that he paid to witness a game at Easton in 1909 the Tigers would probably be without one of the best young backstops In the game. That was the only condition on which he would catch for Easton when he was picked ont of the stand after the only catcher that team had was crippled by a foul. It is the merest bit of luck that gave Kocher his start in baseballIt happened this way., Kocher lived at White Haven, near Philadelphia, and a short distance from Easton. A big, husky farmer’s boy drifted into Easton to visit his cousin, said boy being Kocher, on a day when the Easton team was playing a doubleheader against Sunbury, another Atlantic league team. The cousin suggested that they spend the afternoon at the ball game and Kocher, who was something of a catcher in White Haven, agreed to go along. In the seventh inning of the first game Catcher Barret was put out with a bunged finger and the game was about to be called off when the cousin tipped the manager off to the fact that Kocher could catch. Kocher didn’t want to catch a game that he had paid "to see, and so informed ~the manager, making the proposition that he would catch If he received his quarter back. An agreement reached, he put on Barret’s uniform and caught eleven innings of star baseball. The following day Lave Cross, the old Athletic and Washington third baseman, came to Easton with his Mount Carmel team. Kocher threw to all the bases with such speed and ease that Cross told Connie Mack and Kocher has had a job ever since.