the Red Headed Outfield (1948) (13 page)

Fortunately, it was his strange gift to pitch better the angrier he got; and the more the Quakers flayed him, the more he let himself out to their crushing humiliation.

The innings swiftly passed to the eighth with Chicago failing to score again, with Philadelphia failing to score at all. One scratch hit and a single, gifts to the weak end of the batting list, were all the lank pitcher allowed them. Long since the bleachers had crowned the Rube. He was theirs and they were his; and their voices had the peculiar strangled hoarseness due to over-exertion.

The grand stand, slower to understand and approve, arrived later; but it got there about the seventh, and ladies' gloves and men's hats were sacrificed.

In the eighth the Quakers reluctantly yielded their meed of praise, showing it by a cessation of their savage wordy attacks on the Rube. It was a kind of sullen respect, wrung from the bosom of great foes.

Then the ninth inning was at hand. As the sides changed I remembered to look at the feminine group in our box. Milly was in a most beautiful glow of happiness and excitement. Nan sat rigid, leaning over the rail, her face white and drawn, and she kept saying in a low voice:

``Will it never end? Will it never end?'' Mrs.

Nelson stared wearily.

It was the Quakers' last stand. They faced it as a team that had won many a game in the ninth with two men out. Dugan could do nothing with the Rube's unhittable drop, for a drop curve was his weakness, and he struck out. Hucker hit to Hoffer, who fumbled, making the first error of the game. Poole dumped the ball, as evidently the Rube desired, for he handed up a straight one, but the bunt rolled teasingly and the Rube, being big and tall, failed to field it in time.

Suddenly the whole field grew quiet. For the first time Cogswell's coaching was clearly heard.

``One out! Take a lead! Take a lead! Go through this time. Go through!''

Could it be possible, I wondered, that after such a wonderful exhibition of pitching the Rube would lose out in the ninth?

There were two Quakers on base, one out, and two of the best hitters in the league on deck, with a chance of Lane getting up.

``Oh! Oh! Oh!'' moaned Nan.

I put my hand on hers. ``Don't quit, Nan.

You'll never forgive yourself if you quit. Take it from me, Whit will pull out of this hole!''

What a hole that was for the Rube on the day of his break into fast company! I measured it by his remarkable deliberation. He took a long time to get ready to pitch to Berne, and when he let drive it was as if he had been trifling all before in that game. I could think of no way to figure it except that when the ball left him there was scarcely any appreciable interval of time before it cracked in Sweeney's mitt. It was the Rube's drop, which I believed unhittable. Berne let it go by, shaking his head as McClung called it a strike. Another followed, which Berne chopped at vainly. Then with the same upheaval of his giant frame, the same flinging of long arms and lunging forward, the Rube delivered a third drop.

And Berne failed to hit it.

The voiceless bleachers stamped on the benches and the grand stand likewise thundered.

Callopy showed his craft by stepping back and lining Rube's high pitch to left. Hoffer leaped across and plunged down, getting his gloved hand in front of the ball. The hit was safe, but Hoffer's valiant effort saved a tie score.

Lane up! Three men on bases! Two out!

Not improbably there were many thousand spectators of that thrilling moment who pitied the Rube for the fate which placed Lane at the bat then. But I was not one of them. Nevertheless my throat was clogged, my mouth dry, and my ears full of bells. I could have done something terrible to Hurtle for his deliberation, yet I knew he was proving himself what I had always tried to train him to be.

Then he swung, stepped out, and threw his body with the ball. This was his rarely used pitch, his last resort, his fast rise ball that jumped up a little at the plate. Lane struck under it. How significant on the instant to see old Cogswell's hands go up! Again the Rube pitched, and this time Lane watched the ball go by. Two strikes!

That whole audience leaped to its feet, whispering, yelling, screaming, roaring, bawling.

The Rube received the ball from Sweeney and quick as lightning he sped it plateward. The great Lane struck out! The game was over--Chicago, 1; Philadelphia, 0.

In that whirling moment when the crowd went mad and Milly was hugging me, and Nan pounding holes in my hat, I had a queer sort of blankness, a section of time when my sensations were deadlocked.

``Oh! Connie, look!'' cried Nan. I saw Lane and Cogswell warmly shaking hands with the Rube. Then the hungry clamoring fans tumbled upon the field and swarmed about the players.

Wereupon Nan kissed me and Milly, and then kissed Mrs. Nelson. In that radiant moment Nan was all sweetness.

``It is the Rube's break into fast company,'' she said.

THE KNOCKER

``Yes, Carroll, I got my notice. Maybe it's no surprise to you. And there's one more thing I want to say. You're `it' on this team. You're the topnotch catcher in the Western League and one of the best ball players in the game--but you're a knocker!''

Madge Ellston heard young Sheldon speak.

She saw the flash in his gray eyes and the heat of his bronzed face as he looked intently at the big catcher.

``Fade away, sonny. Back to the bush-league for yours!'' replied Carroll, derisively. ``You're not fast enough for Kansas City. You look pretty good in a uniform and you're swift on your feet, but you can't hit. You've got a glass arm and you run bases like an ostrich trying to side. That notice was coming to you. Go learn the game!''

Then a crowd of players trooped noisily out of the hotel lobby and swept Sheldon and Carroll down the porch steps toward the waiting omnibus.

Madge's uncle owned the Kansas City club.

She had lived most of her nineteen years in a baseball atmosphere, but accustomed as she was to baseball talk and the peculiar banterings and bickerings of the players, there were times when it seemed all Greek. If a player got his ``notice'' it meant he would be released in ten days. A

``knocker'' was a ball player who spoke ill of his fellow players. This scrap of conversation, however, had an unusual interest because Carroll had paid court to her for a year, and Sheldon, coming to the team that spring, had fallen desperately in love with her. She liked Sheldon pretty well, but Carroll fascinated her. She began to wonder if there were bad feelings between the rivals--to compare them--to get away from herself and judge them impersonally.

When Pat Donahue, the veteran manager of the team came out, Madge greeted him with a smile. She had always gotten on famously with Pat, notwithstanding her imperious desire to handle the managerial reins herself upon occasions.

Pat beamed all over his round ruddy face.

``Miss Madge, you weren't to the park yesterday an' we lost without our pretty mascot. We shure needed you. Denver's playin' at a fast clip.''

``I'm coming out today,'' replied Miss Ellston, thoughtfully. ``Pat, what's a knocker?''

``Now, Miss Madge, are you askin' me that after I've been coachin' you in baseball for years?'' questioned Pat, in distress.

``I know what a knocker is, as everybody else does. But I want to know the real meaning, the inside-ball of it, to use your favorite saying.''

Studying her grave face with shrewd eyes Donahue slowly lost his smile.

``The inside-ball of it, eh? Come, let's sit over here a bit--the sun's shure warm today. . . .

Miss Madge, a knocker is the strangest man known in the game, the hardest to deal with an' what every baseball manager hates most.''

Donahue told her that he believed the term ``knocker'' came originally from baseball; that in general it typified the player who strengthened his own standing by belittling the ability of his team-mates, and by enlarging upon his own superior qualities. But there were many phases of this peculiar type. Some players were natural born knockers; others acquired the name in their later years in the game when younger men threatened to win their places. Some of the best players ever produced by baseball had the habit in its most violent form. There were players of ridiculously poor ability who held their jobs on the strength of this one trait. It was a mystery how they misled magnates and managers alike; how for months they held their places, weakening a team, often keeping a good team down in the race; all from sheer bold suggestion of their own worth and other players' worthlessness.

Strangest of all was the knockers' power to disorganize; to engender a bad spirit between management and team and among the players.

The team which was without one of the parasites of the game generally stood well up in the race for the pennant, though there had been championship teams noted for great knockers as well as great players.

``It's shure strange, Miss Madge,'' said Pat in conclusion, shaking his gray head. ``I've played hundreds of knockers, an' released them, too.

Knockers always get it in the end, but they go on foolin' me and workin' me just the same as if I was a youngster with my first team. They're part an' parcel of the game.''

``Do you like these men off the field--outside of baseball, I mean?''

``No, I shure don't, an' I never seen one yet that wasn't the same off the field as he was on.''

``Thank you, Pat. I think I understand now.

And--oh, yes, there's another thing I want to ask you. What's the matter with Billie Sheldon?

Uncle George said he was falling off in his game.

Then I've read the papers. Billie started out well in the spring.''

``Didn't he? I was sure thinkin' I had a find in Billie. Well, he's lost his nerve. He's in a bad slump. It's worried me for days. I'm goin' to release Billie. The team needs a shake-up.

That's where Billie gets the worst of it, for he's really the makin' of a star; but he's slumped, an' now knockin' has made him let down. There, Miss Madge, that's an example of what I've just been tellin' you. An' you can see that a manager has his troubles. These hulkin' athletes are a lot of spoiled babies an' I often get sick of my job.''

That afternoon Miss Ellston was in a brown study all the way out to the baseball park. She arrived rather earlier than usual to find the grand- stand empty. The Denver team had just come upon the field, and the Kansas City players were practising batting at the left of the diamond.

Madge walked down the aisle of the grand stand and out along the reporters' boxes. She asked one of the youngsters on the field to tell Mr.

Sheldon that she would like to speak with him a moment.

Billie eagerly hurried from the players' bench with a look of surprise and expectancy on his sun- tanned face. Madge experienced for the first time a sudden sense of shyness at his coming. His lithe form and his nimble step somehow gave her a pleasure that seemed old yet was new.

When he neared her, and, lifting his cap, spoke her name, the shade of gloom in his eyes and lines of trouble on his face dispelled her confusion.

``Billie, Pat tells me he's given you ten days' notice,'' she said.

``It's true.''

``What's wrong with you, Billie?''

``Oh, I've struck a bad streak--can't hit or throw.''

``Are you a quitter?''

``No, I'm not,'' he answered quickly, flushing a dark red.

``You started off this spring with a rush. You played brilliantly and for a while led the team in batting. Uncle George thought so well of you.

Then came this spell of bad form. But, Billie, it's only a slump; you can brace.''

``I don't know,'' he replied, despondently.

``Awhile back I got my mind off the game. Then --people who don't like me have taken advantage of my slump to----''

``To knock,'' interrupted Miss Ellston.

``I'm not saying that,'' he said, looking away from her.

``But I'm saying it. See here, Billie Sheldon, my uncle owns this team and Pat Donahue is manager.

I think they both like me a little. Now I don't want to see you lose your place. Perhaps----''

``Madge, that's fine of you--but I think--I guess it'd be best for me to leave Kansas City.''

``Why? ''

``You know,'' he said huskily. ``I've lost my head--I'm in love--I can't think of baseball--

I'm crazy about you.''

Miss Ellston's sweet face grew rosy, clear to the tips of her ears.

``Billie Sheldon,'' she replied, spiritedly.

``You're talking nonsense. Even if you were were that way, it'd be no reason to play poor ball. Don't throw the game, as Pat would say.

Make a brace! Get up on your toes! Tear things! Rip the boards off the fence! Don't quit!''

She exhausted her vocabulary of baseball language if not her enthusiasm, and paused in blushing confusion.

``Madge!''

``Will you brace up?''

``Will I--will I!'' he exclaimed, breathlessly.

Madge murmured a hurried good-bye and, turning away, went up the stairs. Her uncle's private box was upon the top of the grand stand and she reached it in a somewhat bewildered state of mind. She had a confused sense of having appeared to encourage Billie, and did not know whether she felt happy or guilty. The flame in his eyes had warmed all her blood. Then, as she glanced over the railing to see the powerful Burns Carroll, there rose in her breast a panic at strange variance with her other feelings.