Well, the time went by one way and another and the happiest day o’ my life, bar one, was when us Wellfeds clumb aboard a rattler headed north. Our trainin’ season was over and we was in every bit as good shape as if we’d just left the operatin’ table. Our team was picked and they was ball players in every position except two, but Carmody and Wade was the only ones in the lot that was playin’ where they belonged. The two kids that acted like they had a little ability was in the outfield with me. Jimmy Boyle’d been tried at second base and third base, but he was lost both places, so they’d stuck him on first and shifted Hi Boles, a first sacker, to third. Red Fulton, another catcher, was pretendin’ to play second base. Carmody was at shortstop and it looked like Charley Wade was elected to catch whenever it didn’t rain. That was the club that was goin’ to take the pennant by su’prise and spend the winter in Monte Carlo.
But I was too happy over leavin’ Dixie Springs to be worryin’ about how rotten we looked.
“Lord!” I says to Charley Wade, “I guess it won’t seem great to be in a real town!”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m afraid I’ll be nervous when I get where they’s people.”
III
They wasn’t enough people in the park the day we opened to bother Charley Wade or anybody else. Old Grant had made such a success o’ keepin’ us a secret that only about eight hundred knowed we was goin’ to perform; anyway, that’s all that come out to watch us, and in his great, big new stands, they looked like a dozen fleas on a flat car.
It was a crime, too, that we didn’t have a crowd, because we win the ball game. The records will show that; you don’t have to take my word. The Old Boy had predicted a su’prise and his prophecy come true. And the ones that was most su’prised was us and the fellas we beat.
When that Buffalo bunch first come out and seen our lineup in battin’ practice, they laughed themself hoarse. But they didn’t do no laughin’ after the game started and they got a sample o’ Steele’s stuff. The weather was twice as cold as any we’d ran into down South, but it didn’t seem to make no difference to him. He was lightnin’ fast and steady as Matty. He didn’t give ’em one real chance to score.
We trimmed ’em two to nothin’ and I drove in the both of our runs. Along with that I was lucky enough to make quite a catch o’ the only ball they hit hard off o’ Steele.
When we got in the clubhouse afterwards, Mr. Grant was there, actually cryin’ for joy. He throwed his arms round Steele and was goin’ to do the same to me, but I backed off and told him I was engaged.
O’ course they was reporters lookin’ us over this time and the next mornin’ the population was informed that Grant and Carmody’d made quite a ball club out of a bunch of misfits. So when she started that afternoon, the stands was pretty near filled.
Our whole pitchin’ staff, except Steele, was in there at one time or another. The Buffalo club hadn’t been able to hit Steele. They didn’t have to hit these other babies. I don’t know how many bases on balls was gave, but I bet it was a world’s record. Charley Wade, back o’ the bat, did more shaggin’ than all the outfielders. When Buffalo was battin’ the umps could of left his right arm in the checkroom. Fourteen to nothin’ it wound up and they was no spoonin’ in the clubhouse after the game.
Steele was beat his next time out, but win his third start. And one o’ the cockeyes come acrost with a win in the second series, gettin’ some valuable help from an umpire that’d been let out o’ the Association for bein’ stone blind. I think altogether we copped four games in April. Along the last part o’ May or the first o’ June we grabbed two in succession, but the streak was broke up when Jimmy dropped three pegs in the eighth and ninth innin’s o’ the third game.
Durin’ the home series in May, four or five hundred people that was fond o’ low comedy come out every afternoon to get our stuff. But we pulled the same gags so often that they quit us after a w’ile. We went round the western half o’ the circuit in June and our split o’ the gate wouldn’t of tipped the porters. Then we come home again and was welcomed by thirty-seven paid admissions, five ushers and two newspaper men.
The Old Boy cut the price to a dime for the bleachers. The ticket takers slept peaceful all afternoon. Then he hired a band to give a concert every day, so for a w’ile we was sure of an attendance o’ thirty, except when the piccolo player got piccoloed.
When August come I was leadin’ the league in hittin’ and Mr. Grant thought I was the most valuable man he had. He overlooked a few things about my record that would of wised up any real baseball man. For instance, though I was battin’ .420, my total o’ stolen bases was three, and all three o’ them was steals o’ second that’d been made in double steals with Hi Boles goin’ from second to third. And I didn’t only have about ten extra base hits, o’ which five was home run drives out o’ the park. In other words, I wasn’t doin’ no more runnin’ than I had to, and I didn’t try to get nowheres where they was a chance that I’d have to slide. And under this kind o’ treatment, Mr. Leggo had held up good. I’d felt him wabble two different times when I
