Keystone Kids (7 page)

Spike, too, was upset this time. He simply wouldn’t have believed it, and somehow even yet it didn’t make sense. He knew enough baseball to realize that Ed Davis with his arm at its best was not as good a man as Bob around second, not from any angle. And they needed a fast pair at that keystone sack if they hoped to overhaul the Pirates or the Cards, who were also improved. The fans liked them, too, the fans were for them, the fans and the writers as well.

“Shucks, I b’lieve he’s stalling. If he isn’t, he isn’t. We must sit tight, Bob. We aren’t through, not by any means. Nine thousand is just fishcakes; so is eleven. Maybe Grouchy will take us on. I hear they’re talking of Grouchy as manager for the Cards next season.”

But both boys spent some bad nights for a week until suddenly a wire arrived from Buffalo, New York.
“HAVE A CHANCE TO BUY YOUR CONTRACTS STOP WOULD YOU PLAY WITH US PLEASE REPLY BY WESTERN UNION COLLECT IMMEDIATELY REGARDS STEVE O’HARE MANAGER.”

Bob agreed at once to Spike’s reply,
“IF WE WOULDNT PLAY WITH THE DODGERS WE CERTAINLY WOULDNT PLAY WITH BUFFALO SPIKE AND BOB RUSSELL.”

Then followed another week of uncertainty and suspense until the telegram came from MacManus, who was on his way South, saying that he would stop off en route. Now Bob began to feel that possibly Spike’s tactics had been correct. But he was extremely nervous as they both went upstairs in the elevator of the Andrew Jackson that evening to the boss’s room, Spike in his working overalls, Bob in the clothes he wore on his electrical job. This was the older brother’s idea. He wanted the owner of the club to see they weren’t fooling.

That evening it was the genial MacManus, agreeable, affable, putting them at their ease, remembering they didn’t smoke, pouring out double cokes for them; in short, Mac at his most charming. Two contracts were spread out on a table in one corner of the room. Evidently this time he meant business.

He lighted a cigarette. “Now, boys, I’m going to be frank with you; I’m going to put my cards on the table and take you both behind the scenes so you’ll understand why we cannot under any consideration pay you more than eleven thousand dollars. Let me explain. These figures I’m telling you are seen by no one except the owner and stockholders of the club. They concern things you maybe never thought about, you probably didn’t even know.

“Boys, we get, as the visiting team, twenty-three cents for every customer when we’re away from home. We pay out twenty-three cents for every customer to all visiting clubs at Ebbets Field. Those are National League rules. We have nothing to say about them. Now where does all the money we take in go? Last year we played to a million here at home and over a million on the road. Well, we spent $180,000 on salaries, yours and Fat Stuffs and Razzle’s and the Slugger’s and the rest. That doesn’t count what we pay our manager, the Doc, the rubbers, the clubhouse boy, and so forth and so on. Then we spent $19,856 for railroad fares. You travel well, don’t you, boys? Yep, and that costs us money. Your uniforms were worth exactly $4,626. We spent $8,111 for baseballs. Your bats alone cost the club $632.”

He spoke the words slowly, rolling over the figures on his tongue.

“I made out a check the other day to the Brooklyn Laundry for $6,789 for cleaning your uniforms, your underwear, and the towels. Away from home your hotel bills amounted to $17,146.”

He was certainly a wonderful man. Figures rippled from his lips as he continued.

“And so on. You like a nice, good bounding ball, don’t you, Spike, when you get set out there at short? You, too, Bob? So do the other boys. O.K. Our sprinkler system to keep the grass fresh and the turf solid so you’ll get good bounds meant $10,000 last summer. Know what the lights cost? About $1,000 a month. I spent two-fifty grand repairing the stands and having the posts sunk in concrete last year. Then there’s the amortization, depreciation, ushers’ wages, groundkeepers, loss due to rain...”

Bob was dazed by this Niagara of figures. So, too, was Spike. But not completely. He interrupted the owner. “Yessir, yessir, I can see you have to spend a lot of money.”

He suddenly produced a bill from his pocket and extended it toward the business man.

“Mr. MacManus, sir, here’s a five spot if it’ll help you any.”

MacManus started in his chair. He would either lose his temper or laugh heartily at himself. There was a moment of tension in the room, broken by his explosion of merriment.

He roared with laughter. “Spike, you’re a card! Well now, boys, what do you say? This’ll give you an inside, a really inside picture of the situation. You both started well for us but, of course, we have to recognize that you slumped a bit there toward the end.”

“Yessir. And we made forty-eight doubleplays while we were up with the club, Mr. MacManus. That’s... that’s...”

By the expression on his face, Spike saw the owner had been talking with Ginger Crane.

“Doubleplays! Doubleplays! Do doubleplays get a man on first? Hits win ballgames. Now, boys, I’m sure we understand each other. I’ve got just so much money, and even if you made a doubleplay in every chance you handled I couldn’t pay you five cents more. I’ve put back those ups in your contract; that means eleven between the two of you. But I want to be generous, I want to do the right thing by you. I appreciate you did a good job jumping in there the way you both did the end of the season. So suppose we say twelve. That gives you six apiece. Six for both of you, how’s that, hey?”

He looked at them closely, seeing Bob’s tense, eager expression. What the older boy was thinking and how he would respond to this offer Jack MacManus had no idea nor could his brother, searching that face for a hint, guess either.

“Yes, sir. Yes, Mr. MacManus,” said Spike at last. “I’d like to be able to sign up but it just wouldn’t be fair to you, sir. We wouldn’t be able to do our best for you.”

Now MacManus was annoyed. He had made concessions, too many concessions. They’d sign now, by ginger, or else...

“Boys, this is your last chance. I really mean business.” He looked it, too. His grimness frightened Bob, who turned to his brother.

“Spike, I think we oughta sign for twelve, don’t you?”

Then Jack MacManus, a rare judge of human nature, made one of his rare mistakes.

“O.K. If he won’t sign, how ’bout you putting your John Hancock on that contract, Bob? I promise you won’t be sorry.”

No one spoke. The silence lasted and lasted.

“You mean... I should leave Spike, Mr. MacManus?” What was the man saying? Leave Spike and go back up there alone? Not a chance!

MacManus, shrewd, intelligent, realized instantly he had made a bad mistake. But before he could correct himself the boy replied.

“Thank you very much indeed, sir, but I reckon I better stick with my brother.”

“What? Why, you young fatheads! You fresh young bushers... throwing away your last chance... you two chowderheads! This
is
your last chance... don’t you appreciate...”

Now he was angry. MacManus liked to jockey with other people, but he enjoyed winning these battles and he usually did win. When losing he didn’t enjoy himself at all. And he was losing, he knew he was losing, although the two scared boys did not. For almost the first time in the long weeks of indecision, Spike was thoroughly frightened as the Dodger owner, red in the face, rose from his chair, strode across the room, took the two contracts off the table and hurled them over.

“Take ’em, take ’em, you young bushers, you fresh young rookies... you...”

They reached over and each picked up a contract from the floor. Both contracts were made out in typewritten figures for the same sum—seven thousand five hundred dollars!

T
HE
F
LORIDA SUN
beat down on the small ballpark so reminiscent of those the Russell boys had known in their minor league days; on the veterans and the rookies, on Slugger Case and Fat Stuff and Elmer McCaffrey, who knew all the answers and worked out slowly and deliberately; on Ginger Crane, the manager, no longer on the active list for the first time in his fourteen seasons in the majors; and on the Russell boys cavorting like two ponies in the dust behind second base. Standing in the rear of the batting cage, Ginger surveyed his squad and listened to Bob Russell, the chatterbox of the team, in action.

“Uhuh, he does more talking than all the rest of the team put together. Shoot, we needed some chin music out there; it helped toward the end of last season. We’d never have finished third without those kids in there.”

“Ginger, do you expect to play those boys together, or will you break ’em up and shove Ed Davis in?” asked one of the sportswriters.

“I can’t tell, can’t tell a thing. Too early yet. Depends on how the kid shapes up, how Ed’s arm holds out, on a lot of different things. Listen to him out there now.”

From the dust of the infield came the harsh, brazen chatter of the little second baseman. “Boy, you gotta get your hands round that thing,” he yelled to a rookie outfielder. “You have to get your hands round it; there aren’t any handles on the ball.”

Spring training was a grind, yet Spike and Bob enjoyed it. For one thing, much of it was new to them. They liked being with a big league club, liked living in a comfortable and luxurious hotel; they liked the players, no longer strange faces but friends; most of all they liked this chance to show what they really could do without the pressure of the pennant race to tighten them up. The only thing they really disliked was the badgering of the newspapermen who pestered them continually.

Nothing bothered Spike and Bob in all baseball as much as this interviewing. Once during the second week of spring training, a reporter was trying hard to get a story from them.

“Just what do you boys find is the main difference between the majors and the minors?”

They looked quickly at each other. As usual, Spike spoke for the pair. “The pitchers, I’d say. A man faces a good pitcher every day in the week up here. Down at Nashville we used to have a lamb every now and then to fatten up the old batting average. When you come up to the majors you don’t notice much difference at first except that the pitchers are all tough.”

“Isn’t the fielding better?”

“Sure is. Everything’s faster; there’s... oh... there’s a lot of little things; more polish; the hitters don’t go after the bad balls so much.”

Yet deep in their hearts both boys felt there was one difference they wouldn’t discuss with any writer. That was the difference they most noticed—the difference in managers.

Grouchy Devine was a laconic, deeply religious Irishman who went to Mass each morning, a man of great sensitivity and a feeling of affection for every one of his twenty-five players. To him every man was an individual problem to be solved. He was quiet, kept to himself off the grounds. In their stay on the Vols they had learned enormously from him, but they had never seen him criticize a player in public nor ever dispute an umpire’s decision. In fact, his reputation for grouchiness came mostly from the fact that he stayed away from reporters asking for interviews about the team. Whenever one of the sportswriters asked him early in the season, “Well, Grouchy, how does the team look?” he would wave his hand in the direction of his perspiring athletes and reply, “There they are. Take a look for yourself.”

This did not endear him to the press. But the two brothers had often heard him growl in the dressing room, after evading a reporter in search of a story, “When you don’t say anything, you don’t never have to eat your own words.” Spike and Bob remembered this line in their own dealings with the sportswriters covering the Dodgers in spring training, and talked as little as possible to the gentlemen of the press.

Ginger Crane was exactly Grouchy’s opposite. He was loud, loquacious, liked to talk and be with talkative people who were good listeners, as well. He was quick, nervous, excitable, and in action could always be depended on to do the unexpected. His relations with the press astonished the two Russells. Where Grouchy avoided newspapermen at all times, Ginger hobnobbed with them, ate with them occasionally, even went on fishing trips with them. He was never reluctant to discuss the chances of his team or any team in the league. He was bold, belligerent on the field, and it seemed to the boys he was on the field a good part of every game. He delighted in battles with the umpires or with opposing players, and he thought no more of being sent to the clubhouse than of ordering his dinner at night.

Ginger ran his team on hunches, shifting his fielders about like chessmen, and throwing in pitcher after pitcher until some games resembled the dying moments of a football battle with substitutes pouring in to get their letters. On hunches he had won one pennant, and notwithstanding his setback of the previous summer he was confident he could win again. Spike and Bob had imagined that his nervousness of the year before was due entirely to the strain of the pennant race. Not at all. Ginger was just as tense in a practice game between the regulars and the yannigans in that little bandbox under the Florida sun.

The two Russells were dressing for the second exhibition game against the Giants at Miami, listening to the merry chatter of the locker room as the team prepared for the afternoon’s workout.

“What’s this-here-now Harris—fella used to play third for the Yankees—what’s he doing now?” asked a voice.

“I understand he’s coaching at Yale.”

“Coaching baseball at Yale!” Ginger’s contemptuous tone dominated the room. “Shoot! He can do that mornings over the telephone.”

There was a burst of genuine laughter. Ginger was one manager at whose jokes a guy could really laugh. Spike bit at the top of his sweatshirt as he put it under his supporter, holding it in his teeth by one end to be sure to give himself freedom under the arms. He liked to be nice and loose in his movements and hated clothes that hampered him in any way. While he picked up his sliding pads, Bob was climbing into a pair of basketball pants. This was about the only thing on which the two brothers ever disagreed—the merits of these garments for sliding into bases. Spike heard Cassidy’s voice, strong, acidulous.