How to bat

Front matter

Vol. XIX. No. 223

Price 10 cents

ALDING5

Introduction

To teach base ball players how best to bat effectively is the object of this book.

It is aimed especially at those boys and youths from among whom the great players of the future are to be selected.

Among you there are those who will become as great as is Lajoie, as famous as was Delehanty and a hundred others who have earned money enough to live in elegance from one end of the year to the other.

This does not mean that the book ^s only for those who intend to become professional base ball players. It is for every boy and youth and man who plays the great national game.

Men who have been familiar with the sport for years, youths who are just mastering it and boys who are but beginning on the prairie diamonds are sure to find in it information which they can ill afford to miss.

The most important part of ball playing nowadays, outside of pitching, is batting. The team that can bat and has some good pitchers can win base ball games.

THE TEAM THAT CANNOT BAT CANNOT WIN.

Therefore every boy and young man who has, of course, already learned to catch a ball should turn his attention to this department of the game. If you can field fairly well and are a sure batter you can find a position on almost any team. On the other hand, if you are a star fielder and are unable to hit when your side needs runs the ledge which you occupy in the base ball world, whether it be on the prairie or the professional diamond, will fall out from under you some day. If you cannot hit you are not wanted.

It is likely that every reader of this book has played the game of base ball in one way or another. He has helped his team put the other men out and then he has "gone in" to take his place at the plate. He knows how much he wanted to make a

HANS WAGNER, Pittsburg's great shortstop vies with Lajoie in being considered the best of batters. Wagner does not make any fuss at the plate, but hits the ball very hard and straight from the shoulder.

hit, he knows how full of exuberance he feU if he did make a hit and HE KNOWS HOW MISERABLE HE FELT IF HE STRUCK OUT.

Such an important asset is the good hitter to the base ball team that he retains his position invariably even if he is unable to field so well as another man trying for the same place. In fact, he does not have to be able to field nearly so well.

THEREFORE LEARN, IF YOU CAN, HOW TO BAT EFFECTIVELY.

You have been told, perhaps, that nobody can teach you how to bat. That is not so. You can be taught. You can teach yourself. All you need is a clear eye, plenty of determination, and a body full of grit. Great muscular power is not necessary, for many good hitters have been men who were not giants. But a good eye is necessary. If you are nearsighted, if your vision is blurred, if you are incapable of following the swift course of a ball from the moment it leaves the pitcher's hand until it whizzes past you, you will never make a good batter. Practice may improve you, but you are not likely to become a star.

Many individuals have set up the cry that a batter must accept his natural position at the plate and must not attempt to copy after great batters. In answer to this it must be said that there is a right and a wrong way to bat, and the right way may be made natural just as well as the wrong way.

For this reason boys who have the opportunity should make it a point to see some of the great batters of the day, Lajoie, Wagner, Collins, Freeman, Stahl, Chance, Fielder Jones or many others. They should go to a base ball game where these men, or equally good ones, are playing; they should watch the position which they take at the plate, watch the manner in which they hold their clubs, watch what they do with their feet and how they place them, watch how they eye the pitcher while waiting for the ball, and watch how they swing, and then, if they hit the ball, how they start for first base.

A great many things are to be learned in this way. If a ball player is a great hitter study his methods, and if you have the

NAPOLEON LAJOIE.

Greatest all around batter of this generation. He is very unassuming whsn at the plate and the above photograph depicts plainly how he holds his bat.

Spaldi7ig' s Athletic Library. ii

same clear eye, the same grit and the same kind of determination, there is no reason why you cannot be a great batter, too, if you will do as he does. His method must be successful or else he would not be the batter that he is.

However, this must not be taken to mean that there is only one way to stand at the plate, only one way to catch hold of the club, only one way to swing and the rest. A study of the great batters of the country will teach you differently, but the same principle is followed in each case — the determination of never being driven from the plate by a pitcher and the necessity of having the feet planted squarely and in such a position that the greatest power can be obtained from them to aid you when you swing.

Batting is very much like shooting. As you well know there are men who would never become crack shots if they were to practice from now until they are too feeble with age to hold a gun. The very same thing applies to batting. If you haven't grit and never will have grit, if you haven't determination and never will have determination, if you persist in being afraid of the pitcher, you might just as well stop practicing, for until you get rid of these things you will be of little value to your team as a hitter.

But, like the young and inexperienced hunter, you may be able to overcome all drawbacks by practice. You and you only know whether you can or not. It is most natural for any young ball player to feel nervous when he advances toward the plate for the first time. It is a bit natural, too, when he sees a swift shoot coming close to him to be driven back. It is natural for him to think: "That ball is going to be mighty hard to hit," but these are not dangerous symptoms unless they stick to you even after you have played in many games and have batted a number of times.

But in the broad and general sense constant practice at batting will make you a good batter, if you follow the right methods, just as constant practice at shooting a rifle would make you in time a good rifle shot.

FRANK CHANCE Captain of the Chicago National League club, illustrating the position he takes at the plate. He is one of the foremost batters of the National League.

But right here another parallel may be drawn between a good rifle shot and a good batter. It is the very thing which tests the ''class" of either the hunter or the batter.

Let us suppose that a man practices with a rifle until at 30 or 50 yards he can hit a tiny bull's eye every time. That is the only mark at which he has ever shot. Thinking that he is an expert shot he marches into the woods feeling that nothing can escape him. Suddenly right before him there looms up a fine buck. He is only thirty yards away and it is looking right at him. One of the buck's eyes is bigger than the bull's eye at home. The entire front presented to the hunter is many hundred times larger.

He raises his rifle and fires. A strange, shaking sensation has taken possession of him. The fine buck tears off through the forest uninjured. The poor hunter sits down shaking and quaking in every limb. He has the "buck fever." Many men there are who never quite get over this, and the number of bucks they bag is few.

Now let us see how this applies to the ball player. In little practice games he has become a good hitter. Among his fellow players he is known as the fellow who can "line 'em out" every time. Finally a game is played with another club which is of great importance. Upon its result hinges a championship.

His team is behind. The score is 4 to 3 in the ninth inning, two men are on the bases, two are out and a hit is needed. The sure hitter comes to the plate. There is a cheer for him, for the game looks to be as good as won. But over him there creeps a feeling that he has never known before. He cannot see the ball so well. His knees shake, the hands which hold the club tremble and he strikes out.

Try not to be that kind of a batter. Try to get away from the "buck fever" in base ball. You can do it if you keep your wits about you all of the time, never get excited, always go to the plate filled with nerve and with a determination to hit the ball, and when you have begun to hit well DO NOT GET AN EXALTED OPINION OF YOURSELF.

KLING,

Chicago Nationals, going after his favorite ball — one on

about a line with his shoulders.

Spalding' s Athletic Library.

CHAPTER

Batting in the Broad Term — What a Good Batter Means.

A ball players prowess as a batsman depends much upon his own individual efforts, the intensity of his desires and the determination he possesses. The hard-hitting ball player is developed only after desperate practice. He must keep at it day in an'd day out, he must practice swinging his club, and he must face swift pitchers that know all of the art of curving and changing pace before he can become accomplished in the ability to hit.

Good Batters Absolutely Essential.

Good batters are absolutely essential to a winning base ball team. Without them the club is powerless, no matter how well it fields. If the team against it can hit the ball and get it away from the fielders they can score the runs that will win. Let us go to extremes and match two teams for a game, one of which can field as well as the best club in one of the big leagues, but is utterly unable to hit. Let us suppose that the other team can do no better work in the field than one of the little prairie nines which can be seen almost any day in a vacant lot or a pasture, but can hit the ball almost whenever it pleases, and can place hits just where it wishes. Which club do you think would win?

Remember that you were told at the beginning that this was going to extremes, and you will probably never see two teams such as have been described playing against each other. But it serves as a good illustration, and shows what hitting really means to a team.

Hitting Drives the Team Along.

Hitting is the steam which drives the club along, it is the power which makes it capable of downing its antagonist, it is the only

JOE TINKER, Chicago Nationals, about to meet a coming ball. It will be seen that he is just turning to force his weight into the short swing of the club.

food which can make any chib thrive, it is the all important thing in base ball. Every fall the managers of the big league base ball clubs begin a hunt for young material, as they call it, for the next season. They go to the minor leagues from which all such material is recruited and look over all of the most likely men, the ones who have made reputations in the smaller cities.

These men are heroes where they are. In the eyes of their admirers there are no greater ball players on the face of the earth. If possible the managers watch a likely young man play in a game or two, or they send representatives to do this. Then the report on the youngster is made. There can be nothing said against his fielding. He is able to pick up the swiftest grounder or grass cutter and throw it to first so fast that the ball can hardly be seen as it skims across the diamond. No liner can be hit so hard that this youngster cannot get it ; no ball can go high enough into the air. In short, he is the "phenomenon" which the manager has sought for a long time.

BUT CAN HE BAT?

He batted pretty well in the minor league or he batted very well in the minor league, or he was the finest batter in the entire league makes little difference to the manager. He wants to know whether he can bat with his team. So he hires this youngster and tells him to report for practice.

When the spring time comes the youngster joins the big club, and as he looks at the men he has been reading about ever since he was old enough to sit on his father's knee without some one to hold his back, he feels quite small, indeed, even though he had been an uncrowned king where he used to play.

But he learns to know them all after a while and then he begins to ask for a little advice. He finds that they have different ideas about batting and fielding than he has. The manager sits down among them and begins telling them some of the ''fine points" or the "insides" of the game. He hears of little tricks which he never heard of before, he hears of more ways to hit, to place the ball, to bunt, to do a dozen things which he realizes he never knew how to do properly before.

PATRICK DOUGHERTY, Left fielder for the New York Americans, and one of the best batters on the team. The photograph shows what a long reach he is possessed of.

He practices all of them. In the early games with the smaller teams he does fairly well with the bat. The manager begins to look upon him kindly and thinks that after all the boy may be a "find." He fields as cleanly as the fastest fielder in either of the big leagues ; he hits the pitchers that are sent against him ; he is overcoming his nervousness.

Do Not Become Conceited.

Right here let a little sound advice be given to the boy who may have a career exactly like this. Just at this stage you are in a pretty dangerous position. You are likely to be "stuck on yourself," as the saying goes in the street, or have a "swelled head." If so, try to find it out and cure yourself of that disease before you go any further. It will be an impediment which will handicap you throughout all of your days as a ball player, make you unpopular with the manager and the umpire, and probably send you back into the minor league before the opening of the championship season in the big league.

But to return to the youngster who is just starting out. The time comes for the first game and the manager tells him that he will be given a trial at third base, one of the hardest positions to play on any club. He takes his place feeling nervous and yet determined, and in the first inning makes a play which is applauded vigorously. Throughout the game he plays like a veteran and feels pretty well satisfied with himself.

But hold on. What's the matter with the manager? There is not the smile of gratification on his face that the youngster expected to find. Instead he frowns and taps the bench with his finger tips. What can be the matter? The game is won. What more does he wish?

He approaches the youngster. "Pretty work you did in the field to-day, but you were weak with the stick."

The youngster just realizes that he fanned twice and sent two easy little grounders to the pitcher. The crowd forgave him because he was a youngster and because he did such good work in the field. The next day he did the same thing again and the crowd

NAPOLEON LAJOIE.

Another view of Larry, with his eye on the ball.

was not willing to forgive. With the bases full and two out he fanned when a little hit might have won the game.

The manager tries him for a week and in that time he makes just one hit, although his fielding is well nigh perfect. The manager begins to lecture him, begins to tell him where he is weak, begins to tell him that he must bat or get off the club forever, begins to plead with him to spend his mornings in batting practice.

At this stage, if the youngster takes the advice and gets one of the pitchers to go each morning to the ball park with him and pitch while he bats, he may recover before it is too late. But the average run of the youngsters will not do this.

He keeps up his fine fielding and his poor batting, until one day the manager tells him to remain on the bench while another man is given a trial at third. He sits and watches and grinds his teeth. The other fellow makes a couple of errors, but he also makes two slashing drives during the game. Then along comes a minor league manager who wants to secure a good ball player.

The youngster is sold. Then he goes back to a little town once more feeling that he has not been given a fair show, and that he was a better ball player than the fellow who took his place. But the manager who let him go will not be convinced of this. Such is the experience of hundreds of young men who are given a trial each year.

Lack of Correct Batting Practice the Cause.

What is the cause of it?

Probably the lack of early training with the bat. If such a young man had gone about batting when he began with a thorough knowledge of how to do it he would have been prepared for the more strenuous work of the big leagues, he would have known how to adapt himself to the changed conditions ; he would have had a fuller confidence in himself and a deeper feeling of determination.

Consequently the young man should remember this: Practice batting as much as you practice fielding, or more if the oppor-

WILLIE KEELER, Characteristic attitude of New York Americans' right fielder By many he IS considered to be the best outfielder playing base ball and m this photograph an excellent representation is given of the manner in which he steps into the ball when he bats tunity is given you, and before you begin the practice make yourself understand how you should do it and adhere rigidly to the determination that you will be a good batter above all other things.

These things apply not only to the professional player, but to the boy on the grammar school or the high school team, the player on a college or mercantile nine and the thousands of men and boys who belong to base ball clubs in every city.

WILLIE KEELER.

Another view of this popular little batter showing him about to

bunt.

Chapter II

How to Become a Good Batter — Method to Pursue — Select the Right Kind of a Bat.

The first thing that a ball player should do is to select the kind of bat which suits him best. The big, powerful man who makes his bread and butter with the stick usually selects a heavy bat. These men use such a heavy bat that the young boy could hardly swing it, and so it is out of the question for a youth who is not in possession of his full strength to try to bat with such an instrument.

However, it is best to use a heavy bat — as heavy as you can swing easily. Select one which you can use without spending too much of an effort. You can be the best judge of the weight of the bat, and then leave the rest to the representative of a reliable house and he will give you a bat of the right quality of wood, one which is strong and firm and which, if you hold it firmly, will send the ball far out if you hit it squarely.

Determine to Hit the Ball.

When you advance to the plate ready to bat, let this be uppermost in your mind :

'T will hit the very first ball that is pitched over the plate. I am not afraid of any pitcher."

Cling to this throughout your career and later you will learn the modifications which will come to the man who has been in the game for several seasons. For instance, if the game is close and the opposing pitcher is wild and you are quite sure of your ability to hit the ball at a single attempt, it is better to wait as long as possible before trying to hit. If he shoots the first one over the plate it may be better to let it go. If you hit the ball it is likely to be a fly or a grounder to some of the infielders, and you will be an easy out.

SAM MERTES.

A player with such tremendous shoulder development that he holds many ground records for long distance batting. He meets the ball squarely and throws all the force of his arms into the hit

If Pitcher is Wild Then Wait.

If you show consummate coolness and make the pitcher understand that you expect to get your base on balls he is all the more likely to become wilder, especially if he has shown an inclination to be wild before. Under such conditions it is even better to wait even if he throws the second ball squarely over the plate. The next one is almost sure to be a ball. If it is not and you see that it is coming over the plate swing at it. The good batter with a sure eye does not swing often in vain. You can do just as well with that ball if you hit it at all as you could have done with either of the other two.

Do Not Get Excited.

Do not under any circumstances become excited. That is just what the pitcher is looking for, and he will certainly, if he be a tactician, send one high and close in, thinking you will "bite" at it. Have your wits about you or collect them at once if you feel that you have lost them and refuse to "bite." If you are not led into striking at a poor ball the pitcher will make a mental note that he has a cool one to deal with, and that very fact is likely to unsteady him to a certain degree.

Never Disagree With the Umpire.

While you are at the plate do not disagree with the umpire. That is another weakness of which the pitcher is always ready to take advantage. If the umpire calls a strike when you think it ought to have been called a ball, do not turn upon him with threatening attitude and tell him that he knows nothing about the game. There are no umpires who will reverse their decisions when once they are given, and so your protestations are useless and tend to make you all the more excited, while they give the pitcher an insight to your weakness at the same time.

There are times, of course, when the best umpires make mistakes, but even then they cannot change their decisions or else they would no longer be good umpires. It must be remembered.

FRANK ISBELL, Chicago Americans, showing position of a left-handed batter at

plate.

Spaldifig' s Athletic Library. 29

of course, that occasionally an umpire calls "two strikes" when there has been but one. At such a time it is perfectly right for you to correct him, and it is necessary for him to make it right.

But remember that when the umpire is guilty of a misjudgement in calling a ball a strike he knows it just as well as you, and if you leave him alone or give him a silent meaning glance he is sure to correct it.

How to Stand at the Plate.

One of the most important things a batter must learn is a correct position at the plate.

There may be a slight difference in the way in which the great batters face the pitcher, but all of them pursue the same method — that of getting the greatest force into the swing without spoiling its aim. The best way is to get as near the plate as the rules will allow. The man who stands far back from the plate brands himself as one who is afraid of being hit with a pitched ball. Then, too, if you stand far away from the plate you will not be able to hit a wide one, should you be fooled into swinging at it.

If you are close you are likely to hit it on the end of your club, and if it is not a foul it is sure to be a nice short drive over first base if you are a right handed batter, or a hit over third base if you are a left-handed batter. These are among the most effective hits that a batter can make, for whether they go to left or to right field they are pretty sure to be far enough away from the fielders to allow you to reach second base. The highest class batters have learned under certain conditions to place their hits in these spots, and more will be said later on in regard to this.

Just now, however, you are engaged in the rudiments of batting.

Now you know that you are to take a position that will give you the greatest effectiveness. How are you to do this?

I know of no better way than for you to watch one of the great batters of the present day— Wagner, Lajoie, Collins, Freeman, Chance or half a hundred others.

CHiCK Si AHL, Boston champions' great outfielder, who has a very easy position at the plate and is one of the hardest hitters in the American League.

Plant Yourself Firmly at the Plate.

First, however, plant yourself firmly. If you bat right-handed your right foot should be in the rear of your left foot and most of your weight should rest on that foot. Get a firm grip on the earth with your spikes. In the meantime your left foot is out in front resting lightly on the ground and you are ready with it to move either way. The right foot acts as the pivot and you are thus ready to step either way in order to get out of the way of a ball that may be thrown too close.

If you bat left-handed (more will be said later regarding the relative'merits of right and left-handed batters) the conditions are reversed and instead of having your right foot to the rear of the left foot your left foot acts as the pivot and your weight is upon it.

At any rate this is the position which will allow you to get the greatest effectiveness into the swing.

How the Bat Should be Held.

This is a most important part of batting. Just as some of the big batters of other days have stood far away from the plate and yet have become renowned for their hitting, so do some of the heavy hitters of to-day hold their clubs near the knob on the end. But it is generally conceded that this is not the proper way to hold the bat.

A firm grip should be taken about six or eight inches from the knob with the right hand uppermost if you bat right-handed and the left hand uppermost if you are a left-handed batter. The short grip is better than the long grip because you can be more unerring in your hitting.

Do not think when you are thus fixed that you are to "kill it," as you hear so often on the prairie diamonds. Don't try to do anything of the sort. You will do enough if you make a hit just now, and after a while you may become a home-run maker of renown. Just as sure as you swing with all of your might at the ball you will miss it. Of course, even the greenest batter might be able to shut his eyes and swing with all of his strength and hit the ball, but if you swing hard and hit at th- beginning you are lucky.

Watch the Ball Most Carefully and Hold the Bat Tightly.

Hold as tightly to the bat as you know how. Then watch for the ball. Here it comes. Don't forget yourself and swing hard. Watch the ball carefully. Watch every turn It takes and look out for the break. It comes as straight as an arrow. Maybe it is a straight ball and will not turn in its course. Maybe it is a curve. You don't know. Watch it. Watch it. That is the only way to determine where it will pass you.