Editors’ Table: Clean Living and Quick Thinking

: —

Editors' Table

'Clean Living and Quick Thinking"

Connie Mack is a specialist in discovering young men for his

baseball team, the great Athletics of Philadelphia. McClure's for

May has an article by Henry Beach Needham, giving an inter-

view with the great baseball leader. In thirteen seasons the Ath-

letics have won the world's championship three times, and won

five American league pennants, and their success is laid at the

door of Connie Mack, their coach, who is declared "the greatest

baseball trainer in the world," and to have "more influence with

the youth of America than any other man" in that line. Mr.

Needham quotes an editor as having said "All over the country

:

mothers are telling their boys that if they want to stand high in

sport, if they aspire to be champions, they must not drink —

they

must lead clean lives. The victory of Mack and his team is a

i;

triumph for clean ving. In fact, Mack himself has declared that

if you wish to kn^ v in one sentence the secret of the success of

the Athletics, it can je put down to "clean living and quick think-

ing." He says that without the one, you cannot have the other.

Temperance insures both and applies as well to eating as to drink-

ing, and he refers to Benjamin Franklin's saying that "Men have

dug their graves with their teeth." He then says of drink:

"Who puts the ball-player out of the game? You would naturally

say 'the umpire,' wouldn't you? Well, all the umpires together haven't

put as many ball-players out of the game as has Old Man Booze!"

Again Connie Mack shook his head and uttered a warning:

"Now, don't get off on the wrong foot. Boozing is not common

among the high-grade ball-players. It was common twenty years ago;

—

but today it is rare in the majors boozing. Keep in mind, though,

—

that steady 'moderate' —drinking gets a ball-player in the end, just

as sure as boozing. Alcohol slows a man down inevitably, and slow-

ing down is the reason for the shelving of by far the majority of play-

ers. If you estimate a clever player's ye^rs in baseball at fifteen, why,

—

'moderate' drinking will cut off from three to five years a third of his

life on the diamond."

As to his method in selecting boys for his team he has this to

say of an experience with a young man whom he met one spring

going South

I took quite a fancy to a youngster who was to be tried out. I

—

liked his looks, and I liked his line of talk above all, I liked his high

spirits. Seemed to me that he would be there fighting all the time

never down in the mouth and ready to quit. So, having taken such a

fancy to him, I began to pry into his private life a little, but in such a