Baseball player profiles: Dead ball era

  At Philadelphia the passing of Ira Thomas proved a heavy loss. Thomas was never a flashy or brilliant catcher, but no one excelled him in intimate knowledge of the game or in shrewdness and all around ability in handling his position. Thomas this season took part in forty-six games, batting for .210 and fielding for .971. General slowing up on his part as well as his failure to re-gain his batting eye led Connie Mack to use Lapp most of the season. - Baseball Magazine, Feb. 1913, vol. X issue 4 " The Greatest of all Catchers" by F.C Lane

  Carrigan has always been a heavy hitter but this season was by no means his best. He took part in eighty-seven games and batted for an average of .263. Carrigan has at all times been a good dependable catcher and one who might be expected to rap out a safe hit at almost any critical time during a contest. In fact, he has generally deserved a place in the front rank of American League catchers, but there was nothing particularly brilliant in his record for 1912. Cady, although but a recruit, was given the responsibile posi- tion of catching throughout the World’s Series games. He acquitted himself very creditably in this by no means easy task, and his record was consistently good. In the forty-three games in which he officiated behind the bat he maintained a bat-ting average of .279, while he led the league in fielding with an average of .994. A fielding average, however, is an uncertain quantity at best. It may mean a great deal. It may mean absolutely nothing. The most that coul...

  Street was long one of the great-est catchers in the American League al-though he was a notoriously weak batter. Part of his supremacy lay in the fact that when behind the bat he always kept up a running fire of conversation with the batter in an effort to rattle that unfortun- ate individual. It stands to reason that when a man is facing a pitcher at a critical moment it is not going to make his nerve any steadier to have a tanta-lizing voice behind his ear pouring forth a constant strain of disconcerting re-marks. Street won the nickname of ”Gaby” on this account and no little of his success as catcher was due to his con-stant, irritating flow of language. - Baseball Magazine, Feb. 1913, vol. X issue 4 " The Greatest of all Catchers" by F.C Lane

  Chief Meyers, for instance, is so slow of foot that he misses, in the course of a season, many f lies which a faster man would succeed in getting under Cutting off the runner at third is not so important, large-ly because it happens by no means so frequently. This throw is much shorter but to counterbalance that advantage it has to be made even more quickly and (needless to say) many errors result from the catcher’s tremendous effort to get the ball there in time. Any one who has seen Chief Meyers shoot the ball into left field in a most commendable but ill-fated attempt to locate the third baseman will realize the difficulty of the task. . -Baseball Magazine, Feb. 1913, vol. X issue 4 " The Greatest of all Catchers" by F.C Lane