Jack O’Connor needed to vent. The St. Louis Browns manager had just led his club to one of the worst seasons in major league history—a 47-107 record.
1910 Coca-Cola ad featuring O’Connor
Having just piloted a team that batted .218—the leading hitter was 36-year-old Bobby Wallace, who hit .258, and whose best pitcher, Joe Lake, posted an 11-17 record, O’Connor had reached a few conclusions about the game. He told a reporter for The St. Louis Republic:
“The only thing every free-born American, with a constitution and public schools, thinks he can do is to play ball and manage a ball club. Yet playing ball and managing ball clubs are two of the most highly specialized professions in the world.”
O’Connor said of the second-guessers:
“Of some 10,000 boys and men who are playing ball one way or another not 50 can play one position well enough to be called first-class ballplayers.
“One million young Americans see (Ty) Cobb play ball every year; yet not one of them can even imitate him.
“All that Walter Johnson, the greatest of pitchers, has is speed. Now any strong-armed young man has speed. Yet in 10,000,000 strong-armed young men not one has speed like Johnson has.
“How do you figure it?
“I guess that 10,000,000 young men and at least 100,000 professional ballplayers have seen Wallace perform in the 17 years he has been playing. Yet, not one of them can play ball like Wallace. Not one can even throw like him.”
And, no doubt, with the Browns’ .218 team batting average on his mind, O’Connor said:
“Batting is simple. How many boys and men have seen Lajoie in the past 15 years—yet why can’t some one of them bat like Larry?
Bobby Wallace
And with a 47-win season on his mind, O’Connor concluded:
“I have always held that ballplayers are born, not made…so many smart fellows who have good heads and the ball instinct think that they can take good-looking athletes with legs and arms and eyes and make ballplayers of them. The smart fellows make the mistake of imaging that the object of their solicitude has the head and instinct that they—the instructors—have…Many boys have everything but instinct. That is the quality that is hardest to find.”
Despite the Browns’ horrible record, it was O’Connor’s role in trying to assist Lajoie, his former teammate, to win the batting title over Cobb on the final day of the season—ordering third baseman Red Corriden to play so far back that Lajoie bunted in five straight at-bats—that led to his firing.
Baseball History Daily 
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