John McGraw's Giants

ST. LOUIS, May 10 — The Giants blow into Sportsman’s Park today for a four-game stay, and if the Cardinals were hoping for a soft hand after Brooklyn cuffed them around all week, they picked the wrong club to greet at the gate.

John McGraw’s New Yorkers are not flattening clubs with brute force this spring. They are doing it the old hard way — base hits stacked proper, innings controlled tight, pitchers refusing to hand out charity, and veteran baseball played without much wobble.

Right now, that is exactly the sort of outfit the Cardinals do not want to see.

St. Louis enters the series at 10 wins and 15 losses and sliding hard since the bright 5-and-1 opening that fooled the town into thinking the club had found its stride early. Since then the Cardinals have gone 5 and 14, and most of the damage has not come from one fatal weakness but from a pile of smaller ones gathering into a heap.

Loose infield play.

Missed chances with men aboard.

Crooked innings allowed at the wrong time.

And an offense that too often coughs once and goes quiet.

The Giants arrive with a batting order built for exactly that kind of wounded club.

Frankie Frisch comes in hitting .313 and still handling the top of the order like a foreman with a clipboard, moving the line steady and keeping pressure on the infield from the first pitch forward. Behind him, Freddie Lindstrom sits at .298, Ross Youngs at .304, George Kelly at .294, and Irish Meusel at .287.

That is not thunder-ball hitting.

That is chain-gang hitting.

The danger in this Giant club is not one man waiting to crack a ball into the river. The danger is six straight hitters forcing a pitcher and infield to keep making plays without a breath to settle.

And right now the Cardinals have not shown they can do that.

The hottest Giant bat entering the series belongs to Travis Jackson, carrying a loud .342 average into St. Louis and giving McGraw another steady stick near the bottom half of the order. Jackson has been punishing mistakes all spring and arrives swinging hotter than any regular in the Giant lineup.

The catching, at least, has been weak. Frank Snyder is hitting .219, Paul Florence .228, and the Giants are not getting much sting from the backstop position.

Everywhere else they are dangerous enough.

McGraw is expected to open with Freddie Fitzsimmons, and the sidearming right-hander has been poison early this season — 3 wins, 1 loss, and a 1.98 earned-run mark entering the series. Fitzsimmons does not overpower clubs. He saws at them. Changes pace, changes angle, keeps the ball moving, and lets hitters beat themselves.

That recipe has worked beautifully against clubs pressing at the plate.

The Cardinals are pressing at the plate.

Virgil Barnes is expected behind him Tuesday carrying a 2 and 2 mark with a 2.97 earned-run average, while Hugh McQuillan, Jack Scott, and Jimmy Ring remain available deeper in the set.

McGraw is bringing waves of experienced pitching into a park where the Cardinals have just dropped five of seven.

That is the plain shape of the thing.

And yet there is another story underneath it.

The Cardinals are beginning to look younger.

Not better yet.

Younger.

Taylor Douthit remains in the lineup despite carrying a miserable .109 batting mark into the Giant series. Tommy Thevenow, now increasingly the daily shortstop, enters at .224. Bill Hallahan has just made his first start of the season. Wattie Holm keeps seeing more work. Ernie Vick has entered the picture.

The old guard is still here — Hornsby at .317 remains the one sure bat in the order, Bottomley sits at .258 despite his fifth home run Sunday, Les Bell at .286 continues to swing livelier than most of the club, and Bob O’Farrell remains one of the steadiest men on the grounds.

But the shape of the roster is changing in front of everybody’s eyes.

Not because the youngsters are tearing the league apart.

Because the veterans have not stopped the bleeding.

That tension hangs over this series before the first pitch is even thrown.

The Cardinals have not quit on themselves. That much is visible before every game. Extra fungoes still crack around the diamond long after most clubs have left the grass. Infielders stay working deeper into the afternoon. More laps are being run. More drills are being held.

Hornsby is trying to tighten the club through repetition before the season gets entirely away from him.

The crowd sees the effort.

What it wants now is results.

Because the Giants are not arriving in St. Louis as a cure.

They are arriving as another examination.

And right now the Cardinals have been failing too many of them.

— Mike Allen, Bird Chatter Post