TWO PITCHERS MAULED.
Lundgren and Reulbach Suffer and Hofman Blunders Badly; Team Starts East.
P. Donovan and his Gowanus bay darlings administered the third dose of overconfidence cure to C. Webb Murphy’s Spuds yesterday and sent them on their way with three defeats at the hands of the despised aggregation of castoffs, has beens, and never wasers rankling in their skins.
It hurt to lose the weaklings, but the manner of the losing of the third game made it worse, for Brooklyn simply showed up the Spuds in every department of the game, made them look like novices, and gave them an awful trouncing. The score was a bank score—10 to 3.
This time it was the Chicago castoffs—Eason, Maloney, Casey, and McCarthy—who did the work, but as a matter of fact it was not so much what Brooklyn did as what the Spuds did not do that gave away the game. Eason pitched fair ball, and held Chicago tolerably safe all the time, while Lundgren was wild and was hit hard in the first three rounds, and Reulbach, who succeeded him, was even worse, giving three bases, hitting two men, and being walloped all over the lot.
Crowd Is Surprised.
There was a big getaway day crowd, drawn by the surprising actions of P. Donovan’s all aged aggregation of athletes in defeating the alleged coming champions twice. It expected Chance’s crew would annihilate the upstarts for their presumptuous actions. Some hoped Brooklyn would give the Spuds a close argument, but few expected anything like what happened. In the second inning, when Jordan rolled the ball against the clubhouse and jarred a brick loose, making an easy home run, the populace remarked that the Spuds were just giving the weaklings their proper handicap. They were worried a bit, though, for Eason once pitched a no hit game against Chicago, and the crowd wondered, when the first six spuds were peeled easily, whether he could repeat. The worry grew in volume in the third, when Circus Solly Hofman, subbing at short for Tinker, upset the entire plan of campaign and handed the visitors three runs after they should have been retired. Indeed, Solly had a bad day of it at short, where everything broke wrong, and, had he held the visitors in the third and retired them runless the chances are Ludngren would have got away with his game.
Hofman’s First Blunder.
The trouble in the third started after two were out, when Casey rapped a hit to left and tried to stretch it into a double. Sheckard’s perfect throw headed him off by five feet, but in his haste to touch the runner Circus Solly dropped the ball. Lundgren let both Lumley and Jordan walk, perhaps fearing another home run, and then Hummel cracked a hit past short and the return throw got away from Kling at the plate, two scoring. McCarthy rapped a hit down over third which Steinfeldt blocked but could not field, and the third run scored. Kling stopped the slaughter with a quick throw that cut down McCarthy stealing before Hummel was twenty feet on his way home.
Reulbach Goes In.
The handicap looked big, but still the crowd hoped. Ludngren made a hit off Eason in the third with two out, breaking the ice, and Slagle walked, but Sheckard failed. In the fourth, after Lewis singled and Eason walked, Chance jerked Lundgren out and sent Reulbach in. After Reulbach stopped the impertinent tailenders Chicago scored, Chance getting around the circuit on a gift, Steinfeldt’s hit, and an out.
The umpire and luck gave that run back to Brooklyn in the fifth. Jordan walked and as he was stealing Reulbach put a strike straight through the heart of the plate and Kling had Jordan caught a block stealing when Klem yelled “four balls.” McCarthy followed with the oddest hit of the year. The ball, hit on the end of the bat, twisted in a half circle around Reulbach, and, with heavy right English, twisted straight to second base. Hummel seemed forced out, but the ball twisted itself out of Hofman’s hand and the bases were filled. Lewis hit to Hofman, who fumbled long enough to let Jordan score, but threw Lewis out and then gathered in Ritter’s nasty bounder.
Eighth Is Awful.
Although the score was 5 to 1 against the Spuds, the crowd kept yelling for a rally, and after two promising situations in the fifth and the sixth, which resulted in nothing, they scored in the seventh, Kling making the round trip on Hummel’s fumble, Reulbach’s hit, and an out. The crowd then was rooting for a wild finish, hoping the Spuds would pull the game out of the fire, but in the eighth the locals collapsed and the inning furnished one of the most miserable exhibitions ever seen upon any ball field. McCarthy started it with a drooping hit to left. Lewis sacrificed, and McCarthy was caught at third on Ritter’s bounder to Reulbach. Eason followed with a double to right, Maloney singled, Casey singled, and Lumley beat out a slow bounder to Evers. With the bases full, Reulbach hit Jordan, forcing in a run and then Slagle dropped Hummel’s easy fly, eltting two more runs home. Had not Jordan blundered over third and been caught, the Brooklynites might have been scoring up to train time.
Crowning Play of Game.
The crowd jeered, but turned to applause when Chance singled, Steinfeldt was saved by Casey’s error and Hofman rapped a single to right and raced down to second on the throw. With one run in and Steinfeldt at third, Hofman pulled off a play worthy of Pietro Gladiator Browning. He stole third with the base occupied.
That was the crowning feat of the day—and the crowd, forgetting the bad taste in its mouth, roared.
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Notes of the Game.
The Spuds will be back Aug. 15, to meet Brooklyn again.
Tinker was feeling indisposed yesterday and laid off. His illness was costly.
Sheckard quit the game after the eighth inning, Slagle going into left and Gessler to center.
They say they play better away from home than at home. It would be hard for them to be worse than they were yesterday.
Ritter made a beautiful catch of Slagle’s foul fly against the stand in the ninth inning. When he saw he couldn’t reach the ball with both hands he shoved out his mitt and balanced the ball on it.
There was an agreement to stop play at 5 o’clock, so the teams hurried through the ninth inning rapidly, and, a few minutes before 5, the Spuds, feeling better after three doses of the overconfidence cure, moved eastward.
The ball which bounded over Tinker’s head and cost Chicago Monday’s game did not, according to Groundkeeper Charlie Kuhn, hit a pebble, but struck a dime, which Kuhn found later. Some cruel fan insinuated that the west siders might have been looking for the money and let the game go.
