Pug Bennett, veteran infielder, who is holding down the sack for Vancouver during the present series (said Fawcett), tells an interesting story of winter ball in California. Bennett played second for San Diego this last winter. Longanecker was one of the official umpires.
"Longanecker got away in fine shape down there," says Bennett, "notwithstanding the fact that the umpires have absolutely no jurisdiction over the players and cannot forfeit when we games. . . To show you what kind of a fellow he were playing the final game against the colored Leland Giants in San Diego, Longanecker suddenly stopped proceedings in the fifth inning, turned over his indicator, and calmly walked to the grandstand and sat down.
"'This game is crooked,' he blurted out when the managers crowded around. 'Those Negroes are trying to throw the game and let their backers clean up a bunch of coin. I won't have anything to do with it.' The news spread immediately and caused a small-sized riot in the stands, where folks were speculating at the fierce exhibition being put up by the Giants.
"A new umpire was appointed immediately and we went playing out determined to win the money for our backers worse than the Negroes. Oh, that was an awful exhibition. Neither side wanted to win, and the way we booted the ball was shameful. The farce finally ended up with the colored folks on the big end of the score after using nearly every man on the team in the pitcher's box in an effort to make us hit the ball out of the diamond.
"No, never want to play another game like that."
Fawcett used to start some of his sport stories with apt bits of verse. No evaluation of the quality of his "poetry" will be made here. At the top of snappy interview with "Happy" Hogan, now long since dead, who was manager of the Vernon team in the Pacific Coast League in 1911 (8) was the following bit of rhyme:
When I was young in Dixie, and weighed 12 pounds on the hoof,
I used to love the patter of the rain drops on the roof.
I am a child no longer; I'm in it for the pelf,
So I hate to hear the patter of the rain checks on the shelf.
Fawcett, who became an artillery captain in the World war and later became magazine publisher in the Middle West, undoubtedly injected a snappy note into Portland sport-writing which it has retained, in the main, to this day. He used to run as high as 9 per cent of the paper's non-advertising reading matter on sports in the Sunday paper. Sports he used to feature were baseball, boxing, horse-racing, hiking, motorcycling, tennis, track, motor-boating,
