Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

which pitchers cards get the >single on their cards? some r quite obvious but others r headscatchers.

the Great Mystery......

...only the crickets know...

Lajoie was one of the pioneers of spike sharpening among other dirty tricks. tried to bribe a scorer to change an error to a hit so he could win the batting title from Cobb. the last game of the season. Cobb was already done for the year and off on a barn storming tour, now get this, with players from the teams of the yet to be played World Series! Lajoie colluded with the opposing manager to steal the batting title. on the last day of the season he played a double header and the manager decided to be the catcher. he moved a rookie third baseman back into left field and Lajoie bunted successfully for 6 or 7 consecutive hits. he finally bunted too hard to the SS who muffed the grounder. everyone tried to blame the infield and everything else to get the scorer to change it to a hit, even approached him with "enticements" for 2 days after the game! Batting Title was the biggest award in baseball by far. that year there was even a brand new Cadillac riding on it. Scorer held his ground. Cobb won the title. even though Lajoie was a very dirty player, he had the writers in his hand so the rarely wrote about his on the field escapades. Lajoie was also part of the first electronic sign stealing cheating scandal involving the 1899 Phillies. check the Phillies individual batting averages from 1899 to 1900. quite a drop but they rebounded in 1901

I don't think Lajoie was more of a dirty player than most playing back then -- or now. They're all human beings looking to get an edge. But to your point, interesting article on how elaborate sign stealing efforts have gone on forever -- https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/phill ... 00124.html

Hack Wilson

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Joined: Thu Aug 23, 2012 5:16 pm
Re: anyone know how strat determines
Unread postMon Jun 08, 2020 5:17 pm

I don't think Lajoie was more of a dirty player than most playing back then -- or now. They're all human beings looking to get an edge. But to your point, interesting article on how elaborate sign stealing efforts have gone on forever -- https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/phill ... 00124.ht

ml

That's a great article. Thanks for posting it. I'd never heard of that peculiar episode of sign stealing. I suppose at that time people were finding all sorts of uses for this new thing called electricity!