So that’s how Martin stood with Connie at the beginnin’ o’ this series between the Ath-a-letics and Detroit.
The thing didn’t happen the first day. The game wasn’t close and Martin watched it all from the bench. Bull talked to him, but didn’t get what you could call a cordial welcome. Bull wasn’t su’prised at that; they ain’t no ball player that’ll kid with an umps when his dauber’s down. He refused Bull’s invitation to come round to the hotel that night and have supper with him. And Bull decided that the best play was to leave him alone.
They was a letter from the girl waitin’ for Bull that evenin’. She’d heard from her brother and she knowed that he wasn’t burnin’ up the League; but he’d confessed that Connie hadn’t treated him good and the umpires had robbed him blind. She knew, she wrote, that Bull wouldn’t cheat him; if Bull really cared for her, he’d help him if he got a chance. And it would kill her and her father and mother besides if Martin had to face the disgrace o’ not makin’ good.
Bull went to bed and dreamt that Martin was up in a pinch, and he was umpirin’ behind the plate, and Martin turned round and looked at him just before the ball was pitched, and Bull smiled at him to encourage him, and Martin took an awful wallop at the pill and give it a ride to the fence in right center. That’s what Bull dreamt before the second game o’ that series. And here’s what really come off:
Big Coveleskie and Bush was havin’ a whale of a battle. They wasn’t nobody scored till the eighth. Cobb got on then, with only one out. So that give Detroit a run. The ninth looked to be all over. Two o’ the Ath-a-letics was out. Then somebody got hold o’ one and lit on it for three bases, and what was left o’ the crowd decided to stick round a w’ile.
Bull says he knowed Martin was comin’ up before he ever looked. And he smiled at him when he announced himself as the batter.
Coveleskie come with a fast ball. Martin had to duck to keep from gettin’ hit. Coveleskie come with a curve. Martin made a feeble swing and missed it. Jennin’s hollered from the bench:
“Run out with the water! The boy’s goin’ to swoon!”
Another curve ball that broke over, and Martin left it go.
“Strike two!” says Bull.
“It was inside,” says Martin.
“You’ll never drive in that run with a base on balls,” says Bull.
Coveleskie come with a curve that was high and outside. It was the second ball. He come with another curve, in the same spot. It was three and two.
“Give him all you got!” yelled Jennin’s. “Get it over there! He’s too scared to swing!”
Bull told me that w’ile Coveleskie was gettin’ ready for that next pitch he could see Maggie and the old folks in front of him just as plain as if they was there, and a voice kept sayin’ to him, “Call it a ball! Call it a ball!”
The ball come—a fast one. Bull knowed what it was and where it was comin’, and he bit his tongue to keep from sayin’ “Swing!” Right across the middle it come, as perfect a strike as was ever pitched. And Martin’s bat stayed on his shoulder.
“You’re out!” says Bull. “It cut the heart!”
The heart o’ the plate, and Bull’s too, I guess.
Bull met Connie again next day, outside o’ the park.
“I’ve canned your friend Gregory,” says Connie.
“Do you know,” says Bull, “I come near callin’ that last one a ball?”
“If you had,” says Connie, “the kid would of been let out anyway, and you’d of fell, in my estimation, from the best umpire in the league to the worst in the world.”
Now what does dear little Brother Martin do next? Instead o’ goin’ back to Montgomery like a man and tryin’ to get a fresh start with the club that he’d been borrowed off of, he sets down and writes Maggie that Connie would of kept him only for Bull callin’ him out on a ball that was so low and so far outside that the Detroit catcher had to lay down to get it, and that Bull done it because he didn’t like him, and if Maggie didn’t tie a can to Bull, Martin was through with her and with the old man and old lady too.
Well, the girl wrote back to Bull callin’ off the engagement, sayin’ how sorry her and her parents was to find out that he would stoop to such meanness and askin’ him not to communicate with her no more. And Bull’s bullheaded enough so as he wouldn’t make a move to square things.
He got that letter from her day before yesterday, just before he left his hotel to come out to the yard. Is it any wonder he didn’t say nothin’ when I claimed Cady didn’t tag me, and went entirely off’n his nut when Cahill called him a crook?
W’ile he was spillin’ me the story I got enough into him to make a good sleepin’ potion, and then helped him to the hay. The first thing yesterday mornin’ I seen Ban and fixed that end of it by repeatin’ the romance. But don’t never breathe that Ban knows all about it. Bull thinks he’s takin’ him back because it was his first offense. And he’s comin’ back; Ban says he’s promised to be in there tomorrow.
And right here in my pocket I got somethin’ to show him that’ll be better news than gettin’ back his job. As luck would have it, I was the first guy to get to the park yesterday, and when I blowed into the clubhouse, who was settin’ there but young Mr. Gregory himself! He told me his name and wanted to know was they any chance of
