El Paso Herald · El Paso, Texas · 1913

"Eddie" Plank, the Athletics' Lanky Southpaw

Before the 1913 World's Series, a syndicated panel sizes up Eddie Plank: he winters on his farm at Gettysburg, he is a bachelor and a most enthusiastic automobilist, and his famous cross-fire has sent several capable first basemen of the Athletics to the chiropodists.

The Men Who Will Fight For the World’s Championship series takes up the Philadelphia side, and the dossier on Eddie Plank opens on the farm. Two whiskered neighbors flag him down: “We surtny missed ye Ed,” and, less charitably, “Uh- playin’ baseball all summer were ye — well you hader right to be here tendin the reunion.” The caption confirms the setting: “Mr. Plank winters on his farm at Gettysburg Pa.”

The modern side of the man gets equal billing: “Plank is a bachelor and a most enthusiastic automobilist,” and he is drawn goggled at the wheel with a cupid loosing heart-tipped arrows after him, the automobile being, as the Tesreau installment established, the era’s leading indicator of imminent matrimony.

The baseball is saved for the scroll, and it is worth the wait: “Edward S. Plank and his famous cross-fire have sent several capable first basemen of the Athletics to the chiropodists.” The cross-fire came sidearm across the body, and evidently what it did to hitters was nothing next to what the first basemen’s feet absorbed catching its results, dramatized by the hopping figure in the corner: “Eh-!!! Git offer me toe you’re on me feet!” The credit line reads “(By Sloane Gordon),” and the signature tucked by Plank’s boot reads Scar, the same mark that signs the How Great Men series. A wire feature could carry a writer and an artist both, which is the likeliest reading of two names on one panel.