Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 259, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1912 — BRAINS FIRST WITH M’GRAW [ARTICLE]

BRAINS FIRST WITH M’GRAW

Giants’ Leader Wants No Player Who Doesn’tThtnk Rapidry-HTue-trative Excerpt Recited. The Importance of brains in a baseball player is made much of by Manager John J. McGraw of the New York Giants, in the first of a series of stories he has written for the New Story Magazine. An illustrative excerpt follows: “The man who plays ball under me must have brains. I don’t mean to say that the green player, a diamond ik the rough, has no ohance with me. Few green players know the finer points of the 'game, ‘inside ball.’ If they have brains, though, they learn. If they have brains they are willing to unlearn a lot of stuff that went well in the company they just left, but couldn’t pass in big company. Brains stick ouj all over a player. I believe I can spot them quicker than the legs and ‘whip.’ One sure thing, I look harder for them. “I can’t describe what it is. You know that at the crack of the bat the infielder tosses up his hand. The ball sticks In it. Consciously he has not even seen the hall leave the bat, much less coming toward him. But the ball sticks in his glove. The base runner stealing second does not see the catcher whipping the ball down to second b&Be. He slides. He knows which way to slide so as to be farthest from the baseman as he stoops to tag him. Last year a baU player went from first to home on a short single that was handled perfectly. What is it? Instinct some call It, luck others. It’s brains. Some day that wonderful mental apparatus will be laid bare, exposed. Then we.can follow the train of thought that makes such things possible. Call it instinct, for want o t -a- better name, but never luck. I'll stick to my definition —brains. “Never yet have I called a man down because of a playing error. Never yet have I failed to call a man down for a thinking error. That same error, through a freak combination of circumstances, may win the game once. But let the player go unrebuked because of its winning the game and, repeated, It will lose nine out of ten other games. The percentage Isn’t there.”