“What happened?” I ast.
“Oh, you’d think I was crazy if I told you,” he says. “They was too rough for me. I can fight as good as the next guy when it’s just usin’ your fists. But I can’t stand guns. Between you and I, I’m scareder o’ them than I am o’ girls. It started, I guess, one night when they was a scrap in a saloon. Everybody was lit up and, first thing you know, they had their gats out and was pluggin’ away. And the guy that had took care o’ me, when I first come to the camp, was shot dead right in front o’ my eyes. I got sick at the time, watchin’ it, and ever since then I get sick every time I see one o’ the damn things.”
“You’re gun-shy and girl-shy,” I says. “Anything else you’re scared of?”
“Yes,” he says; “a fast ball that’s comin’ at my bean. But I guess I got plenty o’ company there.”
“Well, Lefty,” I says, “I can say one thing for you: You’re brave enough when it comes to pitchin’ against a .400 hitter in a pinch. And that’s more than can be said for some o’ the rest of our beautiful pitchers.”
V
One o’ the prettiest girls I ever seen was a telegraph operator at the hotel where we stop at in Detroit. Her name was Mary Lloyd. All the single guys on the ball club was more’n half crazy about her, and even the married ones was never heard objectin’ when she give ’em a smile. To see us in that hotel, you’d of thought we was the greatest bunch o’ telegram senders in the world.
Harry Childs had probably fell for her stronger than any o’ the rest. When he wasn’t busy talkin’ base hits or kiddin’ Crosby, he was tellin’ somebody what a pippin she was, like nobody else had suspected it. And I guess he’d sent her enough cards from round the circuit to start a pinochle deck.
“Bill,” he’d say to me, “she’s the only one I ever met that I felt like I wanted to marry her.”
“Go ahead!” I’d tell him. “I’d want to marry her, too, only I kind o’ feel my own Missus might make a holler.”
“Go ahead!” he’d say. “It’s all right to say ‘Go ahead’; but every time I start she says ‘Back up!’ She’s worse’n a traffic cop.”
“Keep tryin’, Harry,” I’d say to him. “Maybe she’s heard about you bein’ the world’s champion joker and thinks you’re just triflin’ with her.”
“She does all the jokin’ when I’m round,” he says. “She makes a regular monkey out o’ me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t blame that on her!” I says.
Now Mary wasn’t no flirt, but she didn’t mind bein’ admired. She never give one guy more encouragement than another; she didn’t play no favorites, or she didn’t never let nobody on the club get the idear that she was to be had for the astin’. But she wasn’t never too busy to talk to any of us, or to smile back when we smiled at her.
I and Gilbert was standin’ there kiddin’ with her the first time she seen Crosby. We’d just got in that mornin’, and when he come out from breakfast he beat it through the lobby past her desk and out on the front walk.
“Who’s that handsome wretch?” she ast us.
“That’s the guy that made a sucker out o’ Cobb and Veach over home,” says Gilbert.
“Maybe if I ast him not to,” she says, “he’ll leave our team win a game or two this series.”
“You got a sweet chance of astin’ him anything,” says I, “unless you got a megaphone.”
“Is he deef?” says Mary.
“When they’s girls round he’s deef and dumb and blind,” I says.
“He must of been disappointed in love,” she says.
“Not him,” says Gil. “The only time he was ever disappointed was when they postponed the game he was goin’ to pitch.”
“What’s the trouble between him and girls?” says Mary.
“He just naturally don’t like ’em—that’s all,” I says.
“Well,” says Mary, “I don’t think that’s hardly fair to our sex. They ain’t so many handsome men in the world that we can afford to have ’em woman haters.”
“No,” I says; “and they ain’t so many good pitchers on our ball club that we can have him scared to death by gettin’ a smile from you. So when you happen to run into him, face to face, kindly act like you didn’t see him.”
“I’m much obliged,” she says, “for bein’ told that my smile is terrifyin’. I’ll keep it to myself after this.”
“Not at all,” says I. “I’d pretty near rather miss a hit-and-run sign than that smile o’ yours. But this kid is just plain bashful; he ain’t no woman hater; he’s too backward to hate anything. He wants to be left alone—that’s all. If a girl looks at him cross-eyed it takes him a week to get so’s he can pitch again.”
“I believe I’ll go right out now,” says Mary, “and look at him cross-eyed. You know I ought to be loyal to the Tigers.”
“You ought to be loyal to this here beanery,” says I; “and if you put him out o’ commission, why, we’ll just pass up this hotel.”
“All right,” she says. “I won’t pay no attention to him, because I know I’d simply die if you boys stopped somewheres else and gave me a chance to do a little work.”
“Has Childs been round yet?” says Gilbert.
“Foolish Question 795!” I says. “He was here even before he went in for his prunes.”
“What’s the matter with Harry Childs?” she ast us. “Why ain’t he playin’?”
“We like to win once in a while,” says Gilbert.
“The reason Harry ain’t playin’,” I says, “is a young outfielder from the Coast, named Patrick.”
“Why,” says Mary, “Harry told me he was out of it with a Charley Horse.”
“Yes,” I says; “and a battin’ average last year o’ .238.”
Crosby pitched the first game for
