“If that’s a advantage,” I says, “nobody’d never even bunt one safe off o’ you.”
“You’re kiddin’ me now,” he says. “I ain’t stuck on my looks, but they wouldn’t be no sense in me pretendin’ that I didn’t have him beat. I and him was together in the Central, y’know; and I was one o’ the most pop’lar if not the pop’larest feller that ever played ball in Fort Wayne. It takes the skirts to judge if a man’s good-lookin’ or not; and I’m here to tell you without no boastin’ that I could of married any dame in that burg. So far’s Smitty was concerned, he couldn’t get no girl to look at him.”
“Fort Wayne girls ain’t like the ones in Philly, then,” says I.
“Girls is the same everywheres,” says Fogarty. “You can’t never make me believe that they’d chase him, unless it’s out o’ curiosity. You’ll often see a crowd round a monkey cage, but it ain’t ’cause the monkeys is handsome.”
“Some girls likes them big, dark fellers,” I says.
“Yes,” he says, “and some people likes the smell o’ garlic.”
“I s’pose we’ll get a lickin’ tomorrow,” I says. “Red ain’t got nobody left to work, outside of a few bushers.”
“This busher right here works tomorrow,” says Fogarty; “and you can bet a month’s pay that he won’t give no eight bases on balls.”
“Maybe you won’t be in there long enough,” I says.
“I’ll be in there just nine innin’s,” says he; “and at the end o’ that time the St. Louis Club won’t have nothin’ to show they been in a ball game.”
“All you need to do,” says I, “is to work as good as Smitty done today; but that’s too much to look for from most bushers.”
That stung him.
“They ain’t no homely wop got nothin’ on me!” he says. “If I can’t do no better’n he done I’ll quit pitchin’ and peddle bananas, which is what he’d ought to be doin’.”
Well, I kept him goin’ till bedtime and all the next forenoon. He was out to the park and dressed before anybody, and he warmed up enough for three games. Red ast him oncet if he wasn’t workin’ too hard.
“Not me,” he says. “I ain’t delicate like some o’ these here pitchers. Work’s my middle name and you’ll find it out before I get through.”
Say, they wasn’t no kick comin’ on the way he done the job! One o’ the St. Louis guys got as far as second base and was so surprised that Bill caught him off o’ there flatfooted. Three little singles he give ’em and not a man did he walk. Bill told me afterward that it was fast one, fast one, fast one, and hardly three hooks or spitters all through the game. Bill said them fast ones stung right through his big mitt like he’d been barehanded.
And Smitty, on the bench, acted just like Fogarty’d did the day before. He called them St. Louis hitters everything he could think of. When the big Turk whiffed the hull side in the seventh Smitty was so sore he kicked a hole in the ball bag and throwed away his chew.
The rest o’ the bunch couldn’t help noticin’ the way he acted, and I seen where they’d be wise to the whole game before long.
That night Pat took Smitty to a bunch o’ nickel shows and entertained him with conversation about Fogarty’s grand performance. The result was that the wop got Red out o’ bed at seven the next mornin’ and ast him whether he could pitch the game. Red stalled him, ’cause he didn’t know then how strong the both o’ them was—him and Fogarty.
Anyway, it rained, so Smitty’d had two days’ rest before we played again, and Red sent him in to wind up the serious. Gavvy saved St. Louis another whitewashin’ by droppin’ a fly ball with a guy on; but that run was all they got. Fogarty’s game wasn’t a bit better’n this second one o’ Smitty’s, and I kept rubbin’ that into Fogarty all the way back to Philly.
They ain’t no use goin’ on and tellin’ you about all the rest o’ the games they pitched. They was both beat a few times, but it wasn’t ’cause they didn’t try. Every pitcher with a arm and a glove’d cop more’n two-thirds of his games if he’d work as hard as these babies done. Some o’ the papers come out and said that Red was overworkin’ ’em, but the reporters that wrote that didn’t know what they was talkin’ about. It was all Red could do to keep either o’ them on the bench. If they’d of had their way about it they’d of both been out there in the middle o’ the diamond every day, fightin’ for possession o’ the ball.
When Red sent Mayer or one o’ the other boys in, the pair o’ them’d sit on the bench growlin’ and makin’ remarks about each other. The minute the feller in there workin’ showed any signs o’ weakenin’, Fogarty and Smitty’d both jump up and race down to the bullpen. And when Red got ready to take the guy out and sent for one or the other o’ the two handsome birds the one he didn’t pick would slam his glove on the ground and start kickin’ it. Everybody on the ball club kept at ’em on the bench; but Red, figurin’ they might get suspicious, give orders that nobody but I and Pat was to ride ’em in private.
We was right up on the Giants’ heels by the first of August. Then Rixey and Alexander joined us, but all they was ast to do was fill in when Red could
