Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 228, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 September 1913 — FORMER ATHLETIC STAR AS PEACEMAKER [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FORMER ATHLETIC STAR AS PEACEMAKER

It pays to have a successful peacemaker on a ball club. Many baseball followers throughout the country probably are wondering why the Athletics, with practically the same players of last year, are making a near runaway race in the American league this season. Of course, the Mackmen have won most of their games by good hard hitting but there is one great leader, who sits on the bench and helps Connie Mack direct his team. It is the appearance of this veteran that has brought peace to the family of a great ball club. Harry Davis, who failed to give Cleveland a winner last year, is back in Athletic harness, and the White Elephants again are showing the form they displayed in 1911. Numerous reports were eent out from the Quaker City last summer, while the Mack team was taking its daily lickings at the hands of the Boston Red Sox and other clubs in the American league, that the former

world’s champions were fairly well disorganized as far as friendship was concerned. The taste of defeat was a bitter medicine, and the players on Mack’s pay roll were peevish and not working together like the machine that rolled over the New York Giants in the fall of 1911. The reason for the poor showing of a team doped to run away with a third pennant, was that Harry Davis, peacemaker, was not there to settle the disputes of the players. This fellow Davis knows how to keep his team mates working together and his return to Philadelphia has had something to do with the great showing made by the conquerors of the Cubs and the Giants. Eddie Plank and the reliable Indian, Chief Bender, are the only winning heaverq on Mack’s staff this season. The young pitchers occasionally get in and win a game, but it has been the work of the veterans that has kept the Athletics out in front so far this year.

Harry Davis, Veteran Star First Baseman.