One day Smitty held the Brooklyn Club to six hits in a doubleheader and beat ’em both games. Fogarty ast me a hundred times in the next few days when we was goin’ to have another doubleheader. And a week before it come off he made Red promise to let him tackle it alone. It was agin the Cubs and he beat ’em clean as a whistle; but they got a couple more hits than Brooklyn’d made agin Smitty. So the big Turk was just as discontented as though he hadn’t did nothin’ at all. You ought to of heard Hank rave, though! He couldn’t figure how Red could get so much work out of a guy who’d been on his bench two or three months and hadn’t did nothin’ but sleep.
But you know what they done. What I set out to tell you was how I and Pat kept ’em goin’. We soon found out that they wasn’t only jealous of each other’s looks and their pitchin’. Neither one o’ them would let the other have anything on him at all. If I’d make a remark about what a classy necktie Smitty was wearin’, Fogarty’d go out and buy the loudest one he could find. If Pat mentioned to Smitty that Fogarty always kept his shoes shined up nice, Smitty’d sneak away to a shine parlor and make the boy work his fool head off for a hour. They just naturally hated each other and acted like a pair o’ grand opery stars or a couple o’ schoolgirls that was both tryin’ to be teacher’s pet.
I and Pat would get together and figure out different things to rile ’em up with. Pat was singin’ “The River Shannon” in the clubhouse one day. Fogarty was standin’ right by me.
“Pat’s got a good voice,” he says.
“Fair,” says I; “but the best singer on the club is Smitty.”
Now I hadn’t heard Smitty sing—didn’t know whether he could or not. Fogarty’d ought to of knew somethin’ about it, as they’d been at Fort Wayne together a hull season; but, regardless o’ the fact that neither one o’ the two had a voice—as we soon learned—the Turk joined right in with Pat, and it wasn’t two seconds before Smitty was whinin’ too. Pat quit when he seen he had competition. Everybody stopped talkin’ and listened.
I wisht you could of heard it! It was like as though all the ferryboats in East River had got into trouble at once. Their idea o’ singin’ was to see how many sour notes they could hit and how loud they could hit ’em. The bunch give ’em a hand when they got through, and each o’ them figured it was on the square and was for him personally. Well, that was a big laugh with us for a while; but it got so’s it was no joke when they done it every day and yelled different songs at the same time.
Another thing we done was to write letters to both o’ them and sign a girl’s name. The letters was just the same, and they said that she was a great fan and was pullin’ for our club, and just loved to see them two pitch. We wound them up somethin’ like this:
“I think you’re so handsome and I would love to meet you. I’ve already met Mr. Smith.” We said Mr. Smith in one and Mr. Fogarty in the other. “I think he’s the handsomest man I ever seen, but maybe you’re just as handsome when a person sees you up close. I sit in the third or fourth row o’ the stand, right back o’ your bench, every afternoon.”
Say, you’d ought to of seen them birds fall for that! They rubbered for that dame every day we played at home for the last two months o’ the season. Sometimes, when neither o’ them was workin’, they’d both get up and lean on the roof o’ the bench and try to get a smile from every skirt in the place, thinkin’ one o’ them must be the girl who’d wrote.
On the road we’d get the telephone girls in the hotels to call up Smitty and ask him if he was Mr. Fogarty. When he’d say no she’d ring off; but she’d call him up again in about ten minutes and ask him the same question. We worked this on Fogarty, too, and both o’ them pretty near went nuts ’cause the other was gettin’ so many calls.
Pat pulled a hot one in Pittsburgh. He told Smitty that Fogarty was the most generous guy he’d ever met.
“Why?” says Smitty.
“He’s so good to the waiters and bellhops,” says Pat. “He gives the waiters a quarter tip at every meal and slips the boys two bits when they bring him ice water.”
That started a battle that was pretty costly to the both o’ them, but mighty sweet for the hops and waiters. If I’d of been Pat I’d of made ’em slip me a commission.
We had ’em both ridin’ in taxis to and from all the parks on the last trip West. We had ’em gettin’ their clo’es pressed every night, and buyin’ new shirts and collars in every burg we blowed into, and gettin’ shaved twicet a day, till Red made us cut some of it out, sayin’ they was touchin’ the club for too much dough. And all season I never seen ’em speak to each other, though neither one couldn’t talk about nothin’ else but the other when they was separated.
The pennant race was settled when we won a doubleheader in Cincy on the fifteenth o’ September. When we got back to the hotel Red told us the lid was off for
