HE WANTED TO BE A "FREE" AGENT
"Zack Taylor, who has joined the Chicago White Sox as manager of their Waterloo (Iowa) farm, had an audience for one of his remembrances of managing the St. Louis Browns.
'We had a guy on the club who was a real toughie,' said Zack. 'I was afraid he might make trouble, so I persuaded Bill DeWitt (president) to get rid of him. I didn't think he'd make the grade, anyway.
'Well, one day DeWitt got a letter from the gent, who had wound up in prison for life. He wanted us to send him a copy of his official release from the Browns ... so he could be free to demand a bonus to sign with somebody else when he got out.'"
-John P. Carmichael in the Chicago Daily News (Baseball Digest, February 1953)
HE SHOULD HAVE THROWN A SPITTER!
"Zack Taylor, former manager of the St. Louis Browns and now manager of Waterloo, was reminded of a story- as he almost always is.
'I was with Brooklyn in 1920 and we were fighting for the pennant,' he said. 'We went into St. Louis on the last swing and we had to win almost all of them. Jeff Pfeffer, the fellow who put a silver plate in Chick Fewster's head, was throwing for us and it began to rain hard in the last of the fifth, with the Cards at bat and us leading.
'Umpires like to get these important games completed, and Uncle Charley Moran, who coached the Centre football team, was behind the plate. Everybody had his fingers crossed as one batter went down and then another. Just one more hitter and just one more pitch. Wilbert Robinson, our manager, was sweating hard as Jeff leaned to get his sign.
'Then Pfeffer asked Moran for a dry ball. That was all the excuse needed and the umpire called the game on account of rain. I thought that Robinson would go crazy. He was that mad. So was everybody else on the club, but I guess that was a sort of pattern for the Brooklyn team of that day.'"
-Walter Stewart in the Memphis Commercial Appeal (Baseball Digest, June 1953)
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