Short Fiction

one up at that plate.

Carmody’s dead arm wasn’t half his troubles. Findin’ first base with his feet was what bothered him most. Everybody in the league was ridin’ him.

“Tie a bell on the bag!” they’d holler. “Look out! You’ll spike yourself! Get a compass! Who hid first base?”

It was lucky for me that the Old Boy’s box was on the first base side and that he couldn’t see far. He could take in a lot more o’ Carmody’s fox trottin’ than he could o’ my still life posin’. He knowed, though, that I wasn’t a howlin’ success as a shortstopper. When he give me my extra money, he says:

“Warner, you didn’t come up to my expectations.”

“Mr. Grant,” I says, “playin’ that outfield spoiled me for an infield job. I won’t never tackle it again.”

And for once I was tellin’ him the truth.

I ast him what his plans was for another season.

“I ain’t only got the one plan,” he says. “That’s to get out o’ baseball.”

“Well,” I says, “I hope you can find somebody to buy the club.”

“I ain’t goin’ to sell it,” he says. “The next man that does me a dirty trick, I’m goin’ to give it to him.”

IV

Well, sir, I paid my debts first and then I sent the girl’s brother a check for my share o’ the dandy little garage. The marriage nuptials come off on schedule and I guess we wasn’t su’prised when Aunt Julia showed up with a forgivin’ smile and a check for $2,500.

“You can’t tell if it’s old money or not,” I says to Ethel.

“I guess we’ll keep it anyway,” she says.

“Maybe,” I says, “I’ll send it back to old Grant.”

“Maybe you won’t too,” says she. “This money happens to belong to me and I never pretended I could play shortstop.”

I feel better now that’s off’n my chest. I know it was wrong, but as Jimmy Boyle pointed out, if one fella didn’t take it some other fella would. And I think I got a better excuse than anybody else. Come out to the house sometime and see for yourself.

The Crook

Tomorrow mornin’ you’ll see statement in the papers, signed by Ban, sayin’ that it’s been learned that they was some excuse for Bull doin’ what he done, and that the charge of him bein’ pickled on the field wasn’t true, and that he’s been took back on the staff. But they won’t be nothin’ printed about who was the dandy little fixer; my part in it is a secret between you and I and one or two others.

I don’t suppose they’s a ball player in the League that Bull’s chased as often as me. I don’t suppose they’s anybody he’s pulled as much of his stuff on. I can’t count the times I’ve got cute with him, but the times I got the best o’ the repartee I can count ’em on the fingers of a catcher’s mitt. Just the same, it was me that went to Ban with the real dope and was the cause of him gettin’ rehired, and it was me that got him his girl back, though he don’t know about that yet.

I wouldn’t of took no trouble in the case if it was any other umps but Bull. But I come as near likin’ him as a man could like a guy that never give a close one any way but against you. And he’s a good umps, too; he guesses about a third of ’em right, where the rest o’ Ban’s School for the Blind don’t see one in ten. And another thing: I felt sorry for him when he told me the deal he got. And besides that, he’s gave me too many good laughs for me to stand by and see him canned out o’ the League. Many’s the time I’ve made a holler just to hear what he’d say, and he always said somethin’ worth hearin’, even if it stung; that is, up to day before yesterday, when the blow-off come.

I noticed he wasn’t himself when I was throwed out at the plate in the second innin’. I wanted to stop at third, but Jack made me keep goin’, and Duff Lewis all ready to shoot with that six-inch howitzer he wears in his right sleeve. Cady and the ball strolled out to meet me and I couldn’t get past ’em.

“You’re out!” says Bull.

“He didn’t tag me,” I says.

And Bull didn’t say a word.

In the fourth innin’ Hooper was on third base and somebody hit a fly ball to Shano. Hooper scored after the catch and big Cahill run out from the bench and made a holler that he’d left the bag too quick. The ball was throwed over to third base, but Tommy wouldn’t allow the play. Then Cahill went to Bull and ast him hadn’t he saw it. O’ course Bull says he hadn’t.

“No, I guess not!” says Cahill. “Us burglars stick together.” And then, on the way back to the bench, he turned to Bull and says: “You’re so crooked you could sleep in a French horn.”

Bull was just puttin’ on his mask, but he throwed it on the ground and tore after Cahill. He nailed him right on the edge o’ the dugout, and what a beatin’ he give him! It took eight or nine of us to drag him off, and he managed to wallop everybody at least once durin’ the action. Some o’ the boys picked Cahill up and carried him to the clubhouse. He was a wreck. Bull stood there a minute, starin’ at nothin’; then he turned and faced the grand stand.

“Anybody else,” he yelled⁠—“anybody else that thinks I’m a crook can come down and get a little o’ the same.”

Well, they wasn’t no need of extra police to keep the crowd back. But Ban was settin’ in the stand and o’ course he wasn’t goin’ to just set there and not do nothin’. It was too