"Third Base Thatcher"

A Handbook of Scholastic Morality by "Deacon" Scott

Even as when a cow eats a cocoanut or an elephant does a high dive, it is an event when a ball player writes a book. There are those, to be sure, who view with unworthy suspicion professional athletes in the world of literature. And it is even whispered that a certain prominent heavyweight and an equally prominent golf champion do not actually compose the treatises attributed to them in the public prints. But be these things as they very well may, Everett ("Deacon") Scott, of the New York Yankees, has entered the field of literature with a novel entitled Third Base Thatcher (Dodd, Mead, $1.75).

Jeff Thatcher is a poor boy. He is forced to leave Pennington Institute under a nasty cloud. Becoming a newspaper reporter, Jeff attends a train wreck. Somewhere under the debris he discovers an absconding cashier with $100,000 of the First National's securities. The reward and the kudos thus accumulated suffice for his return to Pennington, where he "makes" (the quotes are Mr. Scott's) the School Team. Naturally enough the school bully is his defeated rival for third base. In the "big" game of the season Jeff saves the situation with a triple play, unassisted, in the ninth inning. Mr. Scott's concluding paragraphs are notable, viz:

"'Oh, you Third Base Thatcher. Won't the girls be wild about you at the "hop" tonight!'

" Whereupon Jeff colored up like a turkey gobbler, and, breaking away from the crowd, bolted into the gymnasium building and dashed downstairs to the locker room, while the rest of the joyous, grinning players streamed down the stairs after him, laughing and joking at his consternation."

Captious critics will argue that this tardy introduction of the love interest mars the novel. Others will say that the hero lacks fine masculine modesty when he says to Dr. Livingstone, his headmaster: "I am always truthful and I have always taken whatever punishment is coming to me in a manly fashion, I believe."

No one, however, can deny the value of the book, and its serial predecessors in "The Baseball Nine Books," as a series of trenchant treatises on scholastic morality. The scrivener to whom the beginnings of the series are ascribed is Christy Mathewson. His titles read: Pitcher Pollock, Catcher Craig, First Base Faulkner, Second Base Sloan. The array leads one to anticipate Shortstop Sutphen, Left Fielder Lumley, Center Fielder Cathcart and Right Fielder Rabinowitz.

The Author. Everett Scott is captain and shortstop of the New York Yankees, champions of the American League. He is thirty-two, bats and throws right-handed. He has to his credit a world's record of 1,002 consecutive scheduled games played in the big league. He is considered by many critics to be the greatest shortstop in the game.