A Ball Player's Career, page 49 by Adrian C. Anson
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there a very long time.
I towered over McLean like a mountain over a mole hill, and I remember well that the first time that I faced him I thought what an easy matter it would be for me to knock his reputation into a cocked hat, and that before a man could say "Jack Robinson." In a very few moments, however, I had changed my opinion. I had fancied that I was a pretty good sort of a man myself with or without the gloves, but long before the end of that first lesson I had come to the conclusion that my education in that line, as well as others, had been neglected, and that I still had considerable to learn. McLean went around me very much as a cooper goes around a barrel, hitting me wherever and whenever he pleased, and the worst of the matter was that I could not hit him at all. It was not until after he had convinced me just how little I knew that he began to teach me, beginning with the rudiments of the art. I proved to be an apt pupil and soon became quite proficient at the game, in fact so good was I that I sometimes fancied that I could lick a whole army of wildcats, this being especially the case when the beer was in and the wit was out, for be it beer or wine, the effect is generally the same, a fact that I had not yet learned, though it dawned on me long before I left Philadelphia, and I quit it for good and all, to which fact I attribute the success that I have since met with both in the sporting and the business world.
It was in 1875 and during my last season with the Athletics, if I remember rightly, that I became involved in a saloon row, that, to say the least of it, was not to my credit, and that I have been ashamed of ever since. We had been out to the grounds practicing until nearly nightfall and on the way home we stepped into a German saloon on the corner for the purpose of refreshing the inner man and washing the dust out of our throats. In some way the conversation turned on the doings of various fighters and I expressed myself pretty freely concerning their merits and demerits,