CLYDE SUKEFORTH: I was signed in '25 for the 1926 season. My first spring training was in Orlando, Florida. I imagine things have changed a little bit. Mr. Dealey, the road secretary, gave us $26 a week. That was for our meals and laundry. That was three-and-a-half a day for meals, a dollar-and-a-half a week for laundry. That adds up, I think, to $26.

Now, you won't believe this, but that was ample. We'd eat in [---'s] restaurant that was right underneath the ground floor of our hotel. It was a nice restaurant. We'd get orange juice and ham and eggs in the morning for eighty-five or ninety cents. At noon, we'd get a good sandwich and everything that goes with it. And at night, for a dollar and a half, we'd get a nice steak and vegetables.

Things were very much different. There was only the regular ballclub and about three or four of us rookies. They had two catchers, a pitcher, and an infielder who were rookies. The club had finished second the year before; they'd made a pretty good run for it.

All of the older fellows were [?]. I didn't feel too much out of place. I didn't expect to make the club, and I didn't. In 26, I filled in as an emergency in Minneapolis. Their catcher got hurt and they wanted a catcher for a few days. It was a desperate thing, I guess. I caught five or six games there and then they optioned me to the New England League.

The New England League is now in organized baseball. That industrial league that I had been playing in was semi-pro, amateur, was now taken into professional baseball. The New England League. And I had a good year up there. I hit .368, and I was satisfied with my year. I was playing for Manchester. I think one or two guys hit more than I did.

Now, Bubbles Hargrave [the Reds' regular catcher] had led the league in hitting. And by the time I got a chance to play, Bub couldn't run too well. But, as I say, he was a good hitter. He'd get a hit late in the game and we were behind, and we usually were, I'd run for Bub and maybe get a chance to hit once. This is in 1927 and '28. I felt like I'd get a good piece of the ball; I hit a few balls good, but I didn't get many hits. I couldn't reach that fence anyway. Well, that went on for a couple of years.

It doesn't do your ego any good to pick up the paper and see you're hitting a hundred and sixty. Nobody had tampered with me; nobody had tried to change me. But I changed myself.

I knew I could run. I got a big handled bat and choked up on it and I became a contact hitter. And I legged a few. Rather than those long fly balls.

[Clyde hit .354 in 1929.]

1929. That's the year. I became a choke hitter, a contact hitter. And if I had continued as an orthodox hitter, holding the bat down on the end, at least I looked like a hitter. But I choked up and became strictly a contact hitter.

The big leagues were a raise proportionately, compared to the economic conditions. But the big jump [?]. I remember some young fellow as brought up; I forget who he was now. And I think the meal money was forty-two or forty-eight dollars-a-day. Something like that. And he thought, well I'll save some money. But his breakfast cost him twenty-four dollars! And so he said, I don't think I'm going to save as much a I expected.

I forget who that guy was.

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