“Yes,” Bull says to himself, “he’s awful delicate lookin’, like Frank Gotch.”
Before the winter was half over, Bull was givin’ ’em the time o’ their lives, takin’ ’em somewheres every other night. It was a pipe that Maggie liked him, and it was a bigger pipe that she had him on her reserve list, with no chance to get away. But he was too shy to talk to her about anything but the climate; he says she was the first girl he was ever scared of.
Along in March, some o’ the Montgomery ball players showed up for their trainin’. Bull always took some work in the spring to get himself hard and fix up his windpipes, so that year he joined the local bunch and done stunts with them. Martin ast to go along with him the third or fourth day. So out they went together to the Montgomery orchard and Bull got the biggest su’prise of his life.
Instead o’ settin’ up in the stand and lookin’ on, Martin peeled down to his shirtsleeves and busted right into the practice. He tackled the high-low game first, and Bull says to see him at it you wouldn’t of never believed it was the same boy that wouldn’t drink coffee unless you held the cup to his mush. Baseball wasn’t work to him—it was fun. And that made the whole difference.
Well, Martin showed so much life the first day that Bull borrowed a suit for him and fixed it with the Montgomery gang to leave him frolic round their park as much as he liked. And he wasn’t no joke with the ath-a-letes. He didn’t know nothin’, but he had as much mechanical ability as you ever see in a kid. He could whip the ball round like a shot, and he was good on ground balls and he swung the old stick like it was a lath. Bull give him a lot o’ pointers and so did the rest o’ the boys, and by the time Bull was ready to go North, Martin was good enough to hold down an infield job somewhere in the brush.
Maggie and old Gregory was as proud as peacocks. The old woman was proud too, but she was scared to death that the pet would get beaned or stepped on and killed. Bull finally convinced her that baseball was as safe as ridin’ in a rockin’-chair, and Martin was allowed to keep on with the only exercise he’d took in years, outside o’ puttin’ on his pyjamas at night and pullin’ ’em off in the mornin’.
Bull left Montgomery with the understandin’ that he could have his room when he come back in the fall. Maggie squeezed his hand when she told him goodbye, and that, Bull says, along with the post cards she sent him, was all that kept him alive that summer.
In June the Gregorys sent him a clippin’ from a Montgomery paper. Martin had been signed by the Montgomery club to play second base, and he looked like the best thing that had broke into the Southern League in years.
The second off-season that Bull spent with the Gregorys he was still too shy yet to make any play for the lady, outside o’ blowin’ all his loose change in showin’ she and her folks a time. But last fall, after they’d gave him his bit for workin’ in the big series, and he felt like he had enough financial backin’ to justify the plunge, he wired her to meet his train and he pulled his speech on her w’ile his nerve was still with him.
She didn’t say yes or she didn’t say no. She told him she liked him a whole lot bettern’n anybody except Brother Martin, and she appreciated his kindness to all o’ them, and so on. But it would take a lot o’ thinkin’ to decide the question, and could he wait? So he says he could do anything for her and they left it go at that.
As soon as they was off’n the subject, she begin to talk about Martin and what he’d been doin’ in baseball. She admitted that he was the greatest ball player south of Alaska, but o’ course the Montgomery club didn’t give him a fair show on account o’ bein’ jealous, and the manager kept him on the bench half the time for the fear some big league scout’d see him and steal him away from Montgomery. What she wanted Bull to do was tell some manager in our league about him, and have him bought. Martin would do the rest; he’d show ’em if he ever got the chance.
Well, Bull told her it was against the rules for an umps to recommend a ball player to a club in his own league. It wouldn’t be fair to the Boston club, for instance, if Bull give Detroit first whack at a second Cobb. O’ course Bull knowed that plenty o’ scouts must of saw Martin and passed him up, and that the Montgomery club wasn’t tryin’ to conceal a man for who they could get a big price.
She ast him if he couldn’t get some friend to do the recommendin’ if he couldn’t do it himself. He told her he was scared his part in it would be found out. Then she says that he must care a lot about her if he was afraid to take a little risk like that. He told her he’d try and think of a way to swing it, but she must give him time.
He found Martin more of a dude than ever and as modest as a wrestler. He couldn’t talk about nothin’ but how much better he was than the Southern League, and
