In 1884 Hugh “Little Nic” Nicol was one of the most popular members of the St. Louis Browns—so popular, a local boy’s team named themselves after the right fielder, and the Nicol was invited to address the team.
Hugh Nicol
A reporter for The St. Louis Critic was on hand when Nicol imparted his baseball wisdom to the kids:
“I’m no speech maker, but if you like I’ll give you a pointer or two, and you can take ‘em or leave ‘em, just as you like. First, when you go to the bat don’t sneak up there, but pick up your club determined like, and look at the pitcher as you’d look at a mosquito which you had the dead wood on. Then when he curls the ball away, up around your left year duck your head, look mad and whisper, ‘Oh, you sucker you know better than to give me a good ball.’ That’s what you call workin’ the pitcher—makin’ him mad as a bull—so mad that he’ll put the ball just where you say he can’t put it, but where you know he’s going to put it, and when he puts it there smash her right in the eye.
“Then when you’ve smashed her, don’t stop and admire the smash, but make for first as though the devil was trying catch hold of your coat tails. When you reach first don’t stop unless you hear the captain yell: ‘Hole yer first; hole it!’ If he yells ‘hole it,’ obey orders. Don’t think you know more than him, because if you get to thinkin’ that way your head will begin to swell, and all the ice in St. Louis won’t take down the swellin’ If you only reach first, place your arms akimbo and look at the pitcher as though you had got there by a fluke and was going to hold to her if it was the last act. If you are a runner, and not one of those tired cusses that crawl when they think they’re flyin’.
“Make for second the moment he pitches the ball; and when you get near the bag, grab hold of it and come up smilin’ at the umpire , as though you meant to say “Oh, I beat the ball about a foot, and he never touched me anyhow.’ If you work it right the umpire will sing out, ‘Hole yer second!’
“But, fellers if you can’t run when you reach first stay there and thank God you got that far. Don’t try to make second for if you do the catcher will make a bloomin’ gillie out of you. But make out that you are a dandy on the run, and bob up and down like a bear dancing on a red hot stove. That kind of business works up the pitcher and he’ll try to catch you nappin’, but instead he’ll fire the ball away over the first baseman’s head. Then if you can run a little bit you can get all the way ‘round. But take care that he don’t catch you nappin’. If he does that the captain will call you a bum base runner and you’ll feel like clubbin’ the life out of yourself.”
Thirty-five years later, Nicol attended an old-timers banquet at the Great Northern Hotel in Chicago and spoke with Al Spink, then occasionally writing for The Chicago Evening Post. Spink called Nicol “the smallest and most wonderful right fielder in America.”
Nicol, like most of his 19th Century brethren, thought his old teammates were better than current players:
“I can’t see where the game has improved a bit since we played it…and I can’t see where the players of today are any better than our old gang…I don’t see any players cavorting around on the diamond today that are any better than the Browns’ old infield when it was composed of (Charles) Comiskey, (William “Yank”) Robinson, (Arlie) Latham and (Bill) Gleason…Where are there any better players than our old Chicago infield—(Cap) Anson, (Fred) Pfeffer, (Ned) Williamson and (Tom)Burns?”
1885 St. Louis Browns–Nicol is on the far right of the bottom row.
Nicol also objected to the way the game was played:
“(W)here is there the enthusiasm and the effort to win that was in evidence in the days when we played?
“Nowadays a player often goes to the bat acting like a man who has lost an immediate member of his family.
“We used to go up smiling and acting as though we were certain of clouting out a homer, although we often fell down on the proposition.
“And then, too, many of your players of today make little attempt to advance themselves in the various departments of play.
“They do not half try to learn all the fine points of the game as we did in the days of old, but simply try to get by. They are content if they get a couple of hits every afternoon and play an errorless game. The first thing they do each morning is to get the newspaper and look at the hit and error columns. If they don’t see themselves credited with a hit perhaps they did make, some sports writer gets a terrible panning.”
Nicol managed in the Three-I League and later coached baseball and served as athletic director at Purdue University from 1906 until 1914—he resigned both positions in November of 1914 after a dispute with his football coach Andy Smith and Smith’s assistant Pete Vaughn (who was also Purdue’s basketball coach).
Nicol 1904
Nicol was often credited by contemporary sports writers with inventing the head-first slide.
He died in Lafayette, Indiana in 1921.
Baseball History Daily 
3 Responses to “Hugh Nicol”