“Yes, I seen it,” says Parker to Bull, lookin’ for an alibi. “He cut third base.”
“I don’t know about that,” Bull says, “but it’s a safe bet that he’ll never cut you.”
Bull went with us for our first series in Cleveland that year. They was a fly-ball hit to Lawton in the third and he muffed it square, lettin’ in a couple o’ runs. As soon as he’d dropped the ball he looked up in the sky and then stopped the game till he’d ran in and got his glasses, though it was so cloudy that we was hurryin’ to beat the rain. Right afterward, when Lawton come to bat, Bull called a strike on him.
“Too high! Too high!” says Lawton.
“Maybe it was,” says Bull. “I lost it in the sun.”
A little w’ile later the Cleveland club had a chance to tie us up. It was some left-hand batter’s turn to hit, but they was a cockeye pitchin’ for us, so they sent up a kid named Brodie, a right-hander, to pinch hit. He swung at the first one and missed it. The next one was called a strike, and w’ile he was turned round, arguin’ with Bull about it, another one come whizzin’ over and Bull says:
“You’re out!”
“It wasn’t a legal delivery,” says Brodie.
“Why not?” says Bull. “His feet was on the slab and you wasn’t out o’ your box.”
“You got a lot to learn about baseball,” says Brodie.
“I’m learnin’ fast,” says Bull. “I just found out why they call your club the Naps.”
He didn’t put nobody out of a game till along in the middle o’ that season. We was playin’ Washin’ton and Kennedy was in a battin’ slump. He was sore at the world and tryin’ to take it out on the umps. He’d throwed his glove all over the field and tossed his cap in the air and beefed on every decision, if it was close or not. He struck out twice, and when Bull called a strike on him his third time up, he stooped over and grabbed a handful o’ dirt.
“A yard outside!” he says, and tossed the dirt to’rds Bull.
“Well, Mr. Kennedy,” Bull says, “if there is a yard outside, that’s where you better spend the rest o’ the afternoon.”
“Am I out o’ the game?” says Kennedy.
“Hasn’t nobody told you?” says Bull. “You been out of it pretty near two weeks.”
“You’re about as funny as choppin’ down trees,” says Kennedy.
“Go in and dress,” Bull told him. “Maybe you’ll find your battin’ eye in your street clo’es.”
The next day Bull was umpirin’ the bases. Kennedy didn’t get suspended, and when he come to bat in the first innin’ and seen that Bull had switched, he yelled to him: “Congratulations! You ought to do better out there. It’s a cinch you couldn’t do worse.”
“Walter,” says Bull to Johnson, who was pitchin’, “give Kennedy a base on balls. I want to talk to him.”
In the last game o’ the series Kennedy finally did get a hold o’ one and hit it for two bases.
“Now it’s my turn to congratulate you,” Bull says to him.
“Oh,” says Kennedy, “I can hit ’em all right when they’s a good umps behind that plate.”
W’ile he was still talkin’, whoever was pitchin’ wheeled round and catched him a mile off’n the bag. Bull waved him out and he started to crab.
“Go on in to the bench, Kennedy,” says Bull. “The game must look funny to you from here anyway.”
Big Johnson worked against us in Chi one day and he had more stuff than I ever seen him have. Poor little Weber, facin’ him for the first time, was scared stiff. He just stood there and took three. Next time, he struck at one and let the next two come right over. Bull, who was back o’ the plate, couldn’t help from laughin’ and the kid got sore.
“Why don’t you call ’em all strikes!” he says.
“I would,” Bull says, “only they’s just a few o’ them I can see.”
Well, Weber’s third trip up there was just like his first one. He didn’t even swing. And after Bull had called him out for the third time, he says:
“Fine work, umps! You ought to go to an oculist and get the dust took out o’ your eyes.”
“Yes,” says Bull, “and you ought to go to a surgeon and have the bat removed from your shoulder.”
One afternoon Jennin’s started a kid named Sawyer against us. He was hog wild and he throwed ten balls without gettin’ a strike.
“It looks like a tough day for us, Bull,” says Stanage.
“Well, anyway,” Bull says, “my right arm needs a good rest.”
When two fellas had walked and they was two balls on the next one, Sawyer pitched a ball that you could of called either way. Bull called it a ball.
“What was the matter with that one?” says Sawyer.
“You pitched it,” says Bull.
He was base umpire once when Walsh caught Carney flatfooted off o’ third base. It was in the ninth innin’ and they was only the one run behind us, so Carney begin to whine.
“Kind o’ drowsy, eh?” says Bull. “I’ll bet your mother was up all night with you.”
Before the end of his first season he had the boys pretty well scared o’ that tongue of his’n and they weren’t none o’ them sayin’ much to him. But o’ course, durin’ the winter, they forgot how he could lash ’em, and when spring come again he was as good as ever. It’s been that way every season since. Along about this time, and up to July, they’re layin’ themself wide open and takin’ all he can give. Then, from July on, they’re tired o’ bein’ laughed at and they see they can’t get the best of him, so they lay off.
Not me, though. I
