Faculty

"Just call me Stuffy," the grey-haired man in the well-tailored double breasted told varsity candidates at the opening baseball meeting two weeks ago. Trite? Not the way Harvard's new baseball Coach John McInnis said it. Although Athletic Director Bill Bingham said he looked like a bank president when he first walked into the HAA office last September, McInnis is anything but an executive when he puts on a pair of spikes and a sweat-suit, tucks a baseball in his hip pocket, and walks into Briggs Cage.

Battery men who have been working in the Cage with him for the past week admire him for his patience and individualized instruction. "He goes from one player to another," one pitcher observes, "regardless of whether that man happens to be a star." That's the way Stuffy wants it. "The most obscure boy may be a future great," he points out. "Take Bob Feller. There were only 13 boys in his senior class at high school." If there are any Fellers at Harvard, the new coach will probably find them. He's had plenty of experience.

John P. (Stuffy) McInnis was born in Gloucester on September 19, 1890. When he was big enough to shoulder a baseball bat, he started playing ball. "Just as soon as the snow was off the streets," Stuffy explains, "we'd be out playing under the lights with a yarn ball our mothers would knit for us. When we knocked the yarn apart, we'd pull it back together with black tape." Stuffy did his share of the knocking. In fact, his nickname resulted from it. Whenever the youngster would make a hit or come up with a hard grounder, the older boys he played with would yell, "That's the stuff, kid."

In 1907, as shortstop for Gloucester High, Stuffy blocked enough grounders and broke up enough ball games with his bat to get himself taken on by Haverhill of the New England League. Billy Madden, who managed the Beverly team and also scouted for Connie Mack, was so impressed by young McInnis' hitting ability that he persuaded him to join with Beverly. "My association with Harvard started then," says Stuffy. "The 1907 Beverly club had Eddic Grant, Bill Matthews, and Eddic Loughlin, all students at Harvard Law School."

Stuffy didn't stay long at Beverly. In 1908, Madden signed him for Connic Mack, and the following spring, Stuffy, a beardless youth of 19, was heading south for New Orlcans with the Athletics. This was the start of an 18-year major league career that was to see Stuffy get over 2000 hits, make over 16,000 put-outs, slip below 300 only once, go through 119 games at first base without an error (1921-22), and appear in World Series lineups for three different teams, the Athletics, Red Sox, and Pirates.

Stuffy had his greatest years with the Athletics as first baseman in Connie Mack's $100,000 infield. Frank (Home Run) Baker, Jack Barry, and Eddic Collins were the other members of the famous group. These men carried the A's to world championships in 1910, 1911, and 1913. A yellowing newsclipping dated August 5, 1912, tells how Stuffy helped make the team click.

"It's worth the price of admission to see McInnis play. A little over five feet eight inches in height and carrying about 150 pounds. Stuffy is the whole works around one of the greatest infields ever gotten together. He wears a uniform that has been through many a battle and his glove appears to the onlooker to be bigger than himself. He is always working. While his teammates are going to the bat he scampers around the coaching lines begging of them to connect with the ball. When his time arrives, he rushes to the bench, picks up a bat and without any ceremony, walks right up to the ball. He has a fancy way of meeting it-chopping it right on the nose and whenever he connects, you can depend upon seeing it take the long route."

Not that the "long route" meant over the fence. "It was almost impossible to hit a ball out of the park in those days," Stuffy muses. "Everything favored the pitchers. The ball was deader than it is today, and the pitchers all chewed tobacco, so that by the eighth or ninth inning the ball was like a chunk of coal."

Stuffy blames spring football for the decline of college baseball. "Most of the big high schools today have at least six weeks of football practice in the spring," he claims, "and at some schools, they say 'let the chemistry master coach the baseball team.' That's why a lot of your college players lack the fundamentals." Like football Coach Art Valpey, Stuffy believes in making sure every player knows the fundamentals. He taught them at Norwich University, Brooks School, and Amherst for 15 years.

Now he's explaining them at Briggs Cage, driving down every afternoon from his Manchester-by-the-Sea home around 1, and staying until 5. His only worry is track Coach Jaakko Mikkola's shot put and weight throw corps, which operates daily in the Cage. "If we can dodge those 35-pound weights for the next couple of weeks," Stuffy says, "we'll make out fine this spring."