"Steve Evans", who now plays right field on the St. Louis club, was South with the Giants one season and worked hard to stick. But McGraw had a lot of young out-fielders, and some minor league magnate from Montreal came into camp one day who liked "Steve's" action. McGraw started for the outfield where Evans was chasing flies and tried to get to "Steve," but every time the manager approached him with the minor league man, Evans would rush for a ball on another corner of the field, and he became suddenly hard of hearing. Finally McGraw abandoned the chase and let another out-fielder go to Montreal, retaining Evans. "Say, 'Steve,'" said "Mac," that night, "why didn't you come, when I called you out on the field there this afternoon?" "Because I could hear the rattle of the tin can you wanted to tie to me, all over the lot," replied Evans. And eventually, by that subtle dodging, he landed in the Big League under Bresnahan and has made good out there. I believe that a pitcher by profession has the hardest time of any of the specialists who go into a spring camp. His work is of a more routine nature than that which attaches to any of the other branches of the baseball art. It is nothing but a steady grind. The pitcher goes out each morning and gets a catcher with a big mitt and a loud voice and, with a couple of his fellow artists, starts to warm up with this slave-driver. The right sort of a catcher for spring rehearsing is never satisfied with anything you do. I never try to throw a curve for ten days at least after I get South, for a misplaced curve early in the season may give a man a sore arm for the greater part of the summer, and Big League clubs are not paying pitchers for wearing crippled whips. After warming up for an hour or so, three or four pitchers throw slow ones to a batter and try to get the ball on the half bounce and compete as to the number of fumbles. This is great for limbering up. Then comes the only real enjoyment of the day. It is quick in passing, like a piece of great scenery viewed out of the window of a railroad coach going sixty miles an hour. Each afternoon the regulars play the Yannigans (the spring name of the second team) a game of six innings, and each pitcher has a chance to work about one inning. The batters are away off form and are missing the old round-house curve by two feet that they would hit out of the lot in mid-season. This makes you think for a few minutes that you are a good pitcher. But there is even a drawback to this brief bit of enjoyment, for the diamond at Marlin is skinned--that is, made of dirt, although it is billed as a grass infield, and the ball gets "wingy." Little pieces of the cover are torn loose by contact with the rough dirt, and it is not at all like the hard, smooth, grass-stained ball that is prevalent around the circuit in mid-season. Grass seed has been planted on this infield, but so far, like a lot of bushers, it has failed to make good its promises.