Clipping:Harry Wright and Charles Mason on cranks
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| Date | Wednesday, April 23, 1884 |
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| Text | “Cranks on base-ball?” ejaculated the veteran player and manager, Harry Wright, yesterday, in answer to the reporter’s query. “Well, I should say there are cranks in base-ball, and hundreds of them. They are becoming worse each year, and increasing in numbers. It is really remarkable howmen lose their heads over the game. And many of them are really dangerous we had an example of this down in Providence last year, when a crank snapped a revolver in Carroll’s face. For a couple of months that man bothered us. He hung around the ground and had but one desire to be gratified, and that was to be permitted to pitch for us. He thought he could knock out any batsman ever seen. The fellow waited upon every visiting club and beseeched the manager to give him a chance. The boys tolerated him, and had a great deal of sport at his expense. One day they got him to pitching, and then turned the hose on him. The crank did not like this, but said nothign. That afternoon we lost our game, and this so enraged the man, along with what was done in themorning, that he waited at the gate with a big pistol. When Carroll came out he stepped up to him and pulled the trigger, but fortunately the weapon was not discharged. The boys broke and ran, and Mr. Crank opened fire on them. Mulvey thought he was hit, and he was scared badly. The fellow was arrested and sent to prison. There was another man down there, whom we christened Base-Ball Tommy. We had an old uniform that we dressed him up in, and then we would set him on the fence to watch the small boys. That man would do anything that was wanted about the grounds. He was dead gone on the subject of base-ball. “The most remarkable thing in connection with these cranks is the idea which each of them has that he is the coming pitcher, the great phenomenal What Is It. That position is the most difficult in the field, yet the queer fellows all select it, and a person would think from reading the letters I receive that the bad players have all been engaged, and only the good ones have been left out. “One man wrote me from Cincinnati. He desired an engagement. The fellow claimed to be the leading amateur player of the West. He spoke of the prominent pitcher he had faced, and said: ‘I knocked the far square out of every one of them.’ He offered testimonials of his powers as a slugger, and said that in the thirty-seven games he had played he had attained an average of .871 for fielding, and .422 for batting. I thought I’d better not try him. His playing was too good entirely. “But the greatest player I ever heard of was a fellow who wrote me from Boston. He said he was the swiftest thrower in the world, and that Sweeney and others whom he mentioned were no comparison to him. The man said that he could throw so hard that no one on the nine could catch the ball. He wrote: ‘The batsmen cannot hit the ball, so it will not be necessary, if you engage me, to have any men in the field. You can put the other eight men back of the bat, as it will take them all to stop the ball.’ Well, as we were not hiring cannons we concluded to permit this opportunity to slip. We dropped a man from our rolls last week who we thought was a great player until he was tried. The people who recommended him claimed that he had been practicing all winter with a six ounce iron ball, and had been suing as a back stop a pile of railroad ties. The enthusiastic person wrote: ‘This man has a puzzling crop curve and can pitch with equal facility with either the right or left hand.’ Well, after that we thought that the coming pitcher had been discovered at last. He played in two games, and was then quietly laid on the shelf. The boys always give the cranks a show, and make it warm for them. They toss the ball easy at first, and after the unsuspecting individual gets warmed up and thinks he is doing great work some one sends the ball to him as if it came out of a gun. Two or three hot ones soon settle the ambitious fellows. Very few indeed of the cranks want to be catchers. They are afraid to face the music, and the few who attempt it generally come out of the battle rather the worse for their rashness.” “Sometimes the managers get taken in,” said Charles Mason of the Athletics. “Last season Atkinson went down to Indianapolis and asked Daniel O’Leary to give him a trial as pitcher. The manager laughed at him; but finally said, ‘All right: I’ll make a fool of you.’ So he arranged a picked nine and put the Indianapolis team against them. Atkinson pitched for the picked team, and the regular nine could not hit him. The game ended with a victory for Atkinson’s side. Then O’Leary wanted to engage him, but he refused to sign with him at any price. So it did not pay to be too funny. Last season we needed a catcher, and heard of one in Massachusetts. He came here and obtained $200 advance money. We thought we had a stone wall, sure. He caught for two innings, and we were glad to get rid of him. That same evening the fellow started back home, and we never heard of him again. We keep the cranks off our grounds when the men are practicing. They are regarded as dangerous in the extreme, and a man never knows when his life is safe. Base-ball being the sensation of the day, all the queer fellows have turned their attention to it. But the crops of cranks is a big one this year.” St., quoting the Philadelphia Record |
| Source | St. Louis Post-Dispatch |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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