Right after the game the witnesses was examined. Cahill’s lips was so swelled he couldn’t hardly talk. But several of us had heard the whole thing and could testify they hadn’t been no profanity. Cahill hadn’t no license to call Bull crooked, but if an umps was goin’ to fight for a little thing like that, every ball game’d wind up in a holycaust. Besides, “a crook” was one o’ the mildest things Bull’d ever been called, and till this time nobody’d ever knew him to lose his temper.
As I say, his specialty was conversation. When they was a kick made, he’d generally always pull some remark that got a laugh from everybody but the fella that was crabbin’, and sometimes from he himself. He’d canned plenty o’ guys out o’ the ball game for tryin’ too hard to show him up, but he’d did it as part o’ the day’s work and without displayin’ any venoms. I’d heard ’em tell him he was yellow, and blind, and a jellyfish, and a “homer,” and a thief, and a liar; and that he’d steal the cream off’n his mother’s coffee; and that his backbone was all above the neck. I’d heard ’em call him fightin’ names and saw him take it smilin’. And now, because a fella made an innocent remark about him bein’ crooked, and no naughty words along with it, he’d went off his bean and all but destroyed a good Irish citizen, besides intimidatin’ five or six thousand o’ the unemployed.
It wasn’t no wonder everybody thought what they thought, though Bull hadn’t never been known to touch a drop between April and October.
“I’ll uphold my umpires when they’re right,” Ban says to the reporters; “but when they’re wrong, they got to suffer for it. They’s only just the one explanation for Bull’s actions. So he’s discharged from the staff.”
“What about Cahill?” ast somebody. “Goin’ to suspend him?”
“No,” says Ban. “Bull saved me the trouble.”
Well, Tommy fixed it up to have Bull let out o’ jail and took him back to the hotel where the two o’ them was stoppin’. When Tommy told him he was canned he didn’t make no comments only to say that they was one good thing about the umpirin’ job—you didn’t feel bad if you lost it.
On my way home from the game I got to thinkin’ about Bull and what a shame it was to have him let out for just the one slip, and wonderin’ what he’d do with himself, and so on. So when I’d had supper I rode down to the umps’ beanery to try and find him, and maybe cheer him up.
He’d went out. Tommy told me he’d disappeared after askin’ for his mail and not gettin’ none.
“He’ll come back with a fine package,” says Tommy.
“Do you know what made him fall off?” I says.
“He didn’t fall off,” says Tommy. “That’s the funny part of it. I and him was right up in my room readin’ the papers all mornin’; then we had lunch and went out to the park together and got dressed and went on the field. I noticed he was grouchin’, but I was with him every minute o’ the day up to game time and I know for a fact that he didn’t have nothin’ to drink only his coffee at breakfast. Somethin’s happened to him, but I don’t like to get inquisitive because we haven’t only been teamin’ together a couple o’ weeks.”
I and Tommy didn’t have nothin’ else to do, so we set down in the writin’ room and chinned. Bull, o’ course, was the subject o’ the conversation. You could talk about him all week and not tell half o’ the stuff.
The first game he umpired in our League was openin’ day in Chi, four or five years ago. It was our club and St. Louis. I guess he was about twenty-six years old then, but he didn’t look more’n twenty. So the boys was inclined to ride him. Arnold, the St. Louis catcher, started on him in the first innin’.
“Did you ever see a ball game, kid?” he ast him.
“No,” says Bull, “but if I make good these four days, I’m goin’ to stay here for the Detroit series.”
Arnold come up with the bases full and two out in the fourth or fifth. He took three healthy lunges and fanned. I led off in our half and Bull called the first one a ball. It was pretty close and Arnold, peeved about strikin’ out in the pinch, slammed the pill on the ground.
“You’re a fine umpire!” he says.
“I can’t be right all the time,” says Bull. “Even the best of us misses ’em sometimes. But I’ll have to miss the next two in succession to tie your score.”
We was one run ahead when the ninth begin. We got two o’ them out and then Hank Douglas made a base hit and stole second. The next fella made another base hit, but Shano fielded it clean and Hank was called out at the plate.
“That’s right,” he says to Bull. “Favor the home team. You wouldn’t be umpirin’ in this league if you wasn’t yellow.”
“No,” says Bull, walkin’ away, “and you wouldn’t be in the League at all if you wasn’t a Brown.”
In one o’ the Detroit games Cobb was on second base with a man out and Crawford hit a slow ground ball between short and third. The ball was fielded to first base and Cobb kept right on for home. Parker was catchin’ for us and he was a little spike-shy, especially with Cobb. So
