The Best Off-Hand Cusser
Louis Santop was one of the favorite players of Rollo Wilson, the long-time baseball writer for The Pittsburgh Courier.
Wilson put many nicknames on the Texas-born Santop over the years, including “My boyfriend from Rio Pecos,” “the swaggering Longhorn,” “The big Bertha of the Bats” and the “Disappearing Gun.” He also once described Santop—known for his colorful language–as “the best off-hand cusser who ever piloted a Missouri mule through a Texas mudhole.”
Santop
Wilson wrote Santop’s baseball eulogy after the catcher played his final game for Hilldale—or Clan Darbie as Wilson referred to the club which originated in Darby, Pennsylvania– in 1926:
“That countless army of athletes who have earned their final plaudits of the fickle fans has been augmented by the once incomparable catcher of Clan Darbie—Louis Napoleon Santop. News of his unconditional release was sent out last week and this time methinks the firing will stick. For years ‘Top’ was one of the most colorful players in the game and his deadly bat was known and feared far and wide. As a drawing card with certain groups he ranked second to none. It was the usual thing for neighborhood fans to cry, ‘Put Santop in,” whenever someone else donned the catcher’s regalia for Hilldale. But that time has gone, and his day is done and now he lives in the world of ‘used to be.’ The Lone Star Ranger has ridden herd on his last ball game. The clarion ring of that famous bat when the lusty swing and mighty pitch met fair and true is stilled forever. (Of course, he may fill in temporarily now and then, but regular ball diet is no longer the food on which the Caesar will feed.)
“When someone—for instance, Rube Foster—with an intimate knowledge of Negro baseball and its players writes a history of the game his All-Time team will have as its first-string catcher our boyfriend of the Rio Pecos, Santop.”
Shortly after Santop’s exit, Foster was committed to the asylum in Kankakee, Illinois and never had a chance to write “a history of the game.”
Hoblitzel’s ‘X-Ray eye’
Dick Hoblitzel told The Cincinnati Times-Star in the spring of 1911 he was “training his batting eye,” and:
Hoblitzell
“(B)elieves he will soon be able to count the stitches on a ball before it leaves the pitcher’s hand. ‘It’s the X-ray eye that does this,’ he avers, and he has made a bet of a suit of clothes that he will finish in the .275 class or better.”
Hoblitzel, perhaps as a result of his “X-ray eye,” improved his average 11 points to .289 in 1911.
Seventh Inning Stretch
In the July 1912 edition of “The American Magazine,” Hugh Fullerton set out to understand “the custom” of the seventh inning stretch.
“(It) has become almost universal and almost as much a part of the ceremony as is the tea interval at cricket. There are variations. In some cities the fans stand and yawn widely, ‘stretching’ before resuming their seats. In others everyone takes out a handkerchief and brushes hat and clothes until the flapping of handkerchiefs makes an astonishing amount of commotion. The custom is based on the superstition that seven is lucky.”
Fullerton
Fullerton claimed:
“The fact is a larger percentage of baseball games are won and lost in the seventh than in any other inning. I examined 860 scores last winter to study this phenomenon, and discovered that 184—over a fifth, were decided in the seventh inning; an abnormal number. But a further study of the figures convinced me that the superstition is responsible for the ‘luck’ rather than the other way around. For the home team won in 151 out of the 184 games, proving, to my satisfaction at least, that the rooting of the crowd does affect visiting players. It is evident that the custom of rooting wildly for the break to come in the seventh inning has the effect of shaking the nerve and the confidence of the opposing teams and from a study of those 184 scores it looked as if the effect was principally upon the pitcher.”
Baseball History Daily 