STL All Sports

Unquestionably, the most traveled player in big-league history was the one-time colorful Louis "Bobo" Newsom, who in nineteen seasons pitched for fifteen teams in both major leagues. Nevertheless, he won more than two hundred games, and he was a WorId Series hero, too. He was also celebrated as a merry clown who was quick with an amusing answer in defense of his faults and vices.

That wandering character had a weakness for the horses. A baseball day rarely passed when Bobo failed to place a bet on a horse race. Eventually, the famous iron-fisted Czar of Baseball, the late Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who abhorred gambling in any form, heard about Bobo's vice, and he promptly called him up on the carpet for a judicial accounting.

"Look here, Newsom," snapped the stern Baseball Commissioner, "a ballplayer who bets on race horses can't keep his mind on the game! Suppose you're pitching in a tight ballgame and have to go to bat in the eighth inning when you've got a big bet going on a horse. What will you be thinking of then, baseball or your bet?"

Pitcher Bobo Newsom looked the tough Judge squarely in the eye, and squashed him with a direct and honest reply:

"Mr. Commissioner, you don't have to worry about that. If it's a tight ballgame in the eighth, it's a sure bet 01' Bobo won't be in there batting!"