Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 220, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1918 — HURLER CY SEYMOUR WORKS IN SHIPYARD [ARTICLE]

HURLER CY SEYMOUR WORKS IN SHIPYARD

Former Star of National League Tells of His Experience. "'■ ■ * Willing Hereafter to Consider Playing Baseball as Summer VacationPulled 11,234/452 Nut* Tight In One Pay. Since all our baseball players between the ages of twenty-one and thir-ty-one are to go to work, We take delight in presenting the experience of Cy Seymour, former Giant, former star of the big league and former leading hitter of baseball, writes Hugh S. Fullerton in an exchange. Cy has been working in a shipyard. Some-of the players Imagine that working in a shipyard is a bed of roses scented with qtyrrh. Listen to Cy: “Say, I never worked, a day in my life. They told me it was soft. Soft? Say, I’ve lived through a hundred spring training trips. I have been sore and worked it out. But not like this. The first three days I felt more hump-backed than any mascot we ever had. I ached like a bone bruise from head to foot. “Can you imagine a ball player getting up at 5:30, riding a dozen miles and then being handed a monkey wrench? They put me to work tightening up nuts that no one else was strong enough to tighten. I pulled 11,234,452 nuts tight in one day. That night I looked like one of Mordecai Brown’s curves, bent right in the middle. “I never had worked a day in my life. I was strong enough and willing enough, but I went through nine spring training seasons in one week. I’m no quitter, I’ll stick to it; but a fellow isn’t much good when he is bent double. But condition; man, I used to think I was in condition when I could run the bases without getting winded. Now I can run half a day at top speed and never feel it. I lost more weight in the first 24 hours in the shipyards than I did in a dozen years playing baseball. Hereafter I'll consider playing baseball a summer vacation. Maybe it is just 4 as hard for a shipbuilder to play baseball as it is for a baseball player to build ships, but I doubt it. Anyhow, every nut in baseball ought to pull one on a ship, which would help considerably. “If these fellows think they are dodging something by coming into the shipyards I’m due for a big laugh.”