I returned to Earle’s, already missing him. Could bare coincidence have thrown us together? Not likely. But what else explained it?
I retreated into the day’s newspapers. Monday, June 14. I’d been back in time for two weeks. It seemed an eternity.
The Stockings were getting more coverage as the victory streak lengthened. After whipping Boston’s champion Lowells and Tri-Mountains, they’d taken on the strong Harvard team. Powered by Waterman’s early homer, they coasted, 30-11. Their record was now 14-0, and Manhattan writers drooled over the next day’s clash with the Mutuals.
Seeing their names in print, I realized that they were my people, the only family I had in this world. I realized something else: I didn’t want to stay in New York. Even in this slower time it was too big, too fast-paced, too impersonal for me. Maybe I could think of a way to stay on with the club.
At 8 p.m. they arrived at the New York & New Haven depot behind Madison Square. I watched as teams of horses drew the New Haven’s straw-colored cars along rails in the street. The city’s ordinance against steam vehicles forced the disconnecting of trains from locomotives fifteen blocks from the passenger station.
Andy ran up and hugged me hard, recoiling when he remembered my wound. I assured him it didn’t hurt. Brainard and George and the others crowded around, marveling at my recovery.
As Andy brought me up to date at the hotel, I kept thinking inanely, He’s the greatest little brother I never had. He said they’d rented boats in Springfield and rowed miles up the Connecticut River; played on Boston Common’s lower parade ground and Jarvis Field in Cambridge; visited the penitentiary at Charlestown; cruised Boston Harbor on a revenue cutter; seen the Peace Jubilee’s grand organ—the largest in America—with pipes so large a man could stand upright in them; been guests at a burlesque, Humpty Dumpty, filled with gorgeous women in tights soaring over the stage in swings.
“But not one of ’em a dinger like the peach we saw in Troy,” he concluded. “I’m freezin’ to cross her path again.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him. According to the papers, Holt was leaving New York for Philadelphia anyway. I described meeting Twain, but Andy insisted that either I was telling him stretchers or I’d been taken in by a humbug. It must have bothered him to think I’d had high times while he’d pictured me suffering in bed.
Champion tried to keep everybody in the hotel that night. It worked with Allison, Hurley, Mac, and Gould—all from outside the New York area. But Brainard and Waterman vanished before supper, and Andy and Sweasy went out with friends from Newark. George took off for Morrisania, a village across the bridge from the Harlem flats where he’d grown up. Harry, ever responsible, stuck around.
I met with Champion and Harry later on. They asked me to recount the details of the shooting. “You’re positive you saw McDermott and Le Caron?” Champion said. “But nobody else? No possible witnesses?”
I shook my head.
“We’d never get a conviction,” he said. “You think it all stemmed from the cash box incident?”
“And the Haymaker game.” I told him of McDermott’s losses.
“I’ve heard the same,” Harry confirmed.
Champion looked as if he wished it would all go away. “Are you safe here, Fowler?”
I took the big plunge and told them I wanted to stay with the club. I’d serve as a sub on tour. In Cincinnati I’d work on marketing and publicity innovations I was sure would prove productive.
“You wish employment?” Champion said incredulously. “But only the first nine are salaried. We’re a club, Fowler. Our affairs are handled voluntarily, by members.”
“I’d like to stay connected,” I persisted. “I’ll volunteer, if that’s the only way. Meanwhile, I’d like to finish the tour.”
“But your injury invalidates you as a substitute.”
“I can play in a pinch.”
“He’s not asking much,” Harry said.
Champion sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Very well, but no further incidents, Fowler. We can’t afford trouble.”
“I didn’t ask to get shot—” I began, and stopped as Harry flashed a look that said to quit while I was ahead.
The next afternoon, in uniforms and topcoats, we took the Fulton St. Ferry across a dark, wind-frothed East River. Mist blurred our surroundings and rain swooped in occasional patters. To my left Champion grumbled about the wretched weather dogging the tour. To my right Millar polished his early dispatch for the Commercial. I looked over his shoulder.
. . . the Knights of the Sanguinary Hose can carry off the palm of victory in each of these contests; but as to whether they will, we must let the caution of good old Captain Harry, who knows the tricks of the Eastern gamesters . . .
Knights of the Sanguinary Hose, I thought. Good God. “All I’ve been hearing lately,” I said cheerfully, “is ‘Wait’ll you country-club bastards tangle with our Mutes.’” I saw Millar and Champion wince visibly at the word bastards. “Are they the toughest club we’ll face?”
“Probably,” Millar said, adding that if we got past the Mutuals today, the powerful Brooklyn Atlantics tomorrow, and last year’s consensus champs, the Athletics, in Philly next week, we might finish the tour undefeated. But those were three formidable obstacles.
“The guys seem pretty relaxed,” I said.
“It’s friendly here, unlike Troy,” Millar said. “Brainard and the Wrights played for New York clubs over the years. Waterman was a Mute only two seasons ago. Andy and Sweasy came up with some of the Mutes’ young ballists.”
“They recruit top players, then?” To me the Mutuals were starting to seem like the all-conquering Yankees of my youth.
“All the city treasury can afford,” Champion said acidly. “Currently around thirty thousand a year, tied up neatly in the rolls of the street-cleaning department. How they pass themselves off as amateurs
