Hal Chase resigned as manager of the New York Highlanders after the 1911 season but remained with the club. Before the 1912 season, he was the subject of the profile written by Homer Croy for the International Press Bureau. Croy would later become a well-known novelist and screenwriter, best known for writing “They had to See Paris,” Will Rogers’ first sound film.
The feature also included a sketch of Chase by Oscar Cesare of The New York Evening Post.
Croy wrote:
“Hal Chase, the great billiard player, is also captain of the Yankees. He would rather play billiards, after being out on a month’s camping trip with nothing to stay the inner man except canned calf’s tongue, pemmican and an uninterrupted view of the landscape, than have a plush-button, golden-backed chair in the dining room of the Waldorf with three waiters and a water boy to heed his beck.
“A three-cushion carom is as easy for him as a pick-up…He has such good shoulders and leaps so gracefully that he has to have a penknife operated by foot power to open his mashing notes.”
Of Chase’s brief stay at Santa Clara College, Croy said:
“He went one year to college, making a major of second base, a minor of handball and a bluff at calculus. The faculty couldn’t see him with a microscope and full lights on, sighing with relief when he climbed in the chair car homeward bound.”
Croy said besides billiards, hunting and horseback riding were Chase’s favorite activities, “When he gets out of his baseball togs his favorite outdoor diversion is keeping his heels in, his elbows stiff and his thumbs pointing up. He can give a riding master the lag.”
By the end of the decade, Chase’s name would be synonymous with gambling and game-fixing, but in the spring of 1912, to Croy, he was:
“The greatest first baseman between the Canadian Pacific and the Gulf Stream.”
Baseball History Daily 
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