Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1918 — KEYSTONE POSITION ON GIANTS HOODOOED [ARTICLE]

KEYSTONE POSITION ON GIANTS HOODOOED

Tough Luck Has Stood in Path of Four Second Basemen. Herzog Couldn't Get Along With McGraw—Doyle Was Taken 111 Niehoff Breaks Leg—Joe Rodriguez Does Not Fit In. The second base job on the New York Giants must be hoodooed. Tough luck in one form or another has stood in the path of four players who have held down the keystone position for McGraw during the past two years. If the job isn’t hoodooed, what is it? Buck Herzog has tried holding down the position for McGraw several times. And Buck and that said job did not get along. Early last season, after he had been brought back to the Giants for the third time, Buck slipped on the floor of the Pennsylvania station while en route to Philadelphia with the team and received severe injuries. His condition has never been the same since that accident, and yet. It wasn’t that alone which caused McGraw to dispose of him, for, in addition, he failed to get along with the Giant leader. Next In line came Larry Doyle, brought back to the New York club via Chicago and Boston. Larry went great guns for several weeks after the season opened. He led the league In batting and he was going like a machine ip the field. Suddenly he was taken ill and had to undergo an operation. With Doyle out of it, McGraw purchased Bert Niehoff from the St. Louis Cardinals, and just as the Team was getting ready to leave Philadelphia to return to the Polo grounds after a long and disheartening trip In the western half of the circuit Niehoff broke his leg. Joe, Rodriguez, the Cuban infielder, has played the keystone sack on and off'for the Giants all season, but Joe doesn’t have the best of luck in the job, for though he works harder to make good than any other man who ever held the sack down he can’t make himself fit into the combination. The members of the Giants themselves, are beginning to think that the second basing jobjs jinxed to a fare-you-well and no one can blame them.