1925 Gehringer Games and Stats

If you go back to yesterday's post, you will see a wonderful article regarding Gehringer's playing ability and passion.  That article was republished in The Fowlerville Review from a New York paper.  Today's article was another reprinted (similar) article, this time from the Detroit Free Press:

~~Chas. Gehringer Making Good

Charlie Gehringer, a Fowlerville boy, who went to Toronto International league club from the Long Minters via Detroit, has in the past two weeks proved the sensation of the international league.  Experts on that circuit pick the youthful Gehringer as the international's leading second sacker and his work recently substantiates this opinion.

He has been batting exceptionally well of late and has boosted his average from .270 to .319 in about ten days.  He has played 27 games and made 31 hits including three home runs.  In addition to this, his fielding has been extraordinary.  In the last eighteen games, he has accepted 118 chanced without a slip.  In two games he accepted a total of nine chances each.  He has only made one error since the season opened.

Toronto fans hail him as the best second sacker the Leafs have had since Larry Lajoie played there in 1917.  Gehringer brings back memories of the graceful Frenchman as he has the same easy style of fielding the difficult chances and he is a great man in the middle of double plays.

Gehringer is barely twenty years old.  He is with Toronto on an optional agreement, the Detroit Tigers having a string on him.  He played his first year in professional baseball last season with the London Tecumsehs in the Michigan Ontario league.  His work with London attracted the notice of several big league scouts and Gehringer reported to the Tigers after the Mint league closed and figured in three or four games toward the latter end of the American league season.

Gehringer takes his baseball seriously.  He is ambitious and his one aim is to become a regular big leaguer.  When with London, he field exceptionally well but showed a tendency to worry too much over errors.  On one occasion in a particularly tight game, Gehringer booted a grounder that paved the way for a run which eventually defeated the London team.  The second sacker was considerably upset and when one of the London players "rode" him a little for the miscue, Gehringer actually wept.

With the tears streaming down his face, he came in to the bench when the inning was over and Mike Baker, the genial little shortstop, who is now manager of the Tecumsehs, put some humor into the situation by rushing up to Gehringer and offering him a handkerchief with the remark, "Come over into the crying room, kind, and weep a bucketful."~~Detroit Free Press

In the above article, you will see Larry "Napolean" Lajoie's name in bold.  That means you can click on his name and it will take you to a wiki page on his career.  In a short article a few weeks later, comparisons between Lajoie and Gehringer were becoming more numerous.