We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
38 S.
IT WAS quite a rew years ago that Frank Lane and Larry McPhail were officiating a football game between the University of Ohio and Ohio Wesleyan at Delaware, Ohio. Wesleyan was the big favorite, but for a very obvious reason they weren't getting a chance to kick points after touchdown — mainly because they weren't making any touchdowns.
The crowd of 25,000 Wesleyan partisans got it in their heads that there were just two obstacles between their team and \'ictory, and those two obstacles were running around out there on the field in black and white striped jerseys and toot ^ ing whistles.
Larry claimed that Wesleyan was using illegal shift which put the whole forward wall in motion before the ball ^Le^ was snapped. Every time he MJ or Frank spotted the play they called an offside on Wesleyan. Pretty soon the scorekeepers were running out of space to write in the offside penalties.
The crowd was in tantrums. Cops ambled back and forth in front of the stands to keep them off the field. With the first half over, and Ohio Wesleyan gaining about 300 and losing 299 yards on penalties, the crowd clamored for the scalps of their umpships.
During half'time the two unpopular officials walked meekly around the corner of the stands, searching the haven of the dressing rooms. They were met by a posse of fans.
"You guys!" they threatened. "We're gonna mob the bothaya unless
ftg June, 1946
you quit callin' offsides on Wesleyan."
"Lissen, you fellas," Lane roared at the nearest heckler. "You haven't seen anything yet . . . just wait until you see the second half." And Larry gestured his assent. They thought alike and acted with that unison born of a common bond.
When McPhail stepped up from Columbus, Ohio, in the American Association to Cincinnati, in the National League, Frank Lane went along as director of the farm clubs.
Oh, there were hectic days in the Reds' office, too, as well as r\ weary nights on the basketball courts and long, chilly afternoons following the pigskin up and down the gridiron trail. Frank recalls very vividly a jjm few years back when Johnny K) Vander Meer hurled two consecutive no-hitters for the Reds, and how the office force didn't do a tap of work for a week.
In those days before the war the boys who chose baseball as a career had to start in the bush leagues despite the physical hardships it entailed. Time after time Frank got telephone calls in the middle of the night with the bad news that a busload of hungry, weary ball players were waiting to get towed in a hundred miles from nowhere. Transportation in the small leagues is usually by bus or automobile and somebody is forever getting hung up somewhere.
Frank claims that keeping half a dozen bush league ball clubs in line was like pasturing a herd of antelopes