Poker and Baseball
Tigers coach Jimmy Burke told The Detroit News in 1915:
“The good poker players on a ball club are generally the brainiest and best ball players.”
Burke
Burke said he was opposed to gambling but nevertheless:
“The snap judgment, the taking of quick advantage of openings, and the continual head work required in the great indoor sport is the same type that makes a good ball player great on the diamond. There are a lot of good ball payers who do not play much poker, but the good poker players on a team usually are the smartest and most brilliant players.”
The News assured readers that poker games among the Detroit players all ended “at 11 PM and never exceed a five or 10 cent limit.”
Cobb on Dean
In 1937, Ty Cobb told Grantland Rice of The New York Herald Tribune that he was an “admirer” of Dizzy Dean:
Dean
“I saw him work in an exhibition last fall. Dizzy was using a change of pace and a side-arm delivery. I asked him to show me a few overhands. The next inning, he used nothing but an overhand delivery, and he had plenty on it. He proved to me that he had about everything a good pitcher needs—including smartness and control.”
Cobb had one criticism of Dean:
“I still think Dizzy would be better off if he worked more in the general interest of the team, and his manager, Frank Frisch. You might call this color and like it—but baseball is supposed to be a team game, and the manager is supposed to be the boss. I know. I felt that way about Hughie Jennings when he ran the Tigers.”
Rickey’s Priorities
Nine games into the University of Michigan’s 1913 season, George Sisler was hitting .528 in 36 at bats and was the team’s top pitcher—in a late April game against Kentucky State University Sisler worked five innings, and according to The Associated Press (AP), “He struck out 14 batters, and caught a pop fly sent up by the fifteenth man.”
Sisler
On the same trip through the South, the wire service said Sisler was called in to pitch the final inning of a game when the club needed to catch a train and needed a quick finish:
“This he did by pitching nine balls, striking out the last three batters, who only heard the ball whizz past.”
Despite his success, The AP said that his coach Branch Rickey, “is worried about Sisler,” because his star player had other priorities.
“Rickey claims he has to all but kidnap Sisler to get him away from his books to practice…Sisler’s ambition is to shine in his class work and Rickey is afraid his studious disposition will ruin his ‘batting eye.’”
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