“Well, I thought to myself, I’ll give this dame an unpleasant surprise, so I didn’t even hold her hand all evenin’. When I got up to go she says she supposed it would be the last time she seen me as she expected to go back to Ligonier the next day. She didn’t have no more intentions of goin’ back the next day than crossin’ Lake Erie in a hollow tooth. But she knowed if I thought it was goodbye I’d kiss her. Well, I knowed it wasn’t goodbye, but what the hell! So that’s how it started, and I went to Ligonier that fall to see her, and we got engaged to be married. At least she seemed to think so.”
“Look at that!” interrupted Young Jake, his eyes on the field of action. “What could Sam of been thinkin’!”
“Thinkin’!” said Gephart. “Him!”
“What would Sam do,” wondered Lefty, “if they played baseball with only one base? He wouldn’t enjoy the game if he couldn’t throw to the wrong one.”
“That play’s liable to cost us somethin’,” said Gephart.
“I went up in Michigan on a huntin’ trip with some friends of mine,” Healy continued. “I froze my feet and was laid up all through January and February and shouldn’t of never went South. It was all as I could do to wear shoes, let alone play baseball. I wasn’t really myself till along the first of May. But, as I say, Johnnie Lambert had a new least of life and was lookin’ better than he’d looked for years. His knee wasn’t troublin’ him at all.
“Well, that’s how things went till around the last part of June. I didn’t get no action except five or six times goin’ up to hit for somebody. And I was like a young colt, crazy to be let loose. I knowed that if I once got in there and showed what I could do Judge Landis himself couldn’t keep me on the bench. I used to kneel down every night and pray to God to get to work on Lambert’s knee.
“The gal kept writin’ me letters and I answered ’em once in a w’ile, but we hadn’t saw each other since before Christmas. She hinted once or twice about when was we goin’ to get married, but I told her I didn’t want to even disgust the subject till I was somethin’ besides a bench warmer.
“We had a serious in Chi the tail-end of June, and the first night we was there I got a long-distance call from Ligonier. It was the gal’s sister, sayin’ the gal was sick. She was delirious part of the time and hollerin’ for me, and the doctor said if she could see me, it’d probably do her more good than medicine.
“So I said that’s all right, but they ain’t no off days in the schedule right now and I can’t get away. But they had looked up the time table and seen where I could leave Chi after the ball game, spend the night in Ligonier and get back for the game the next day.
“So I took a train from Englewood in the evenin’ and when I got off at Ligonier, there was my gal to meet me. She was the picture of health and no more delirious than usual. They said she had been just about ready to pass out when she learned I was comin’ and it cured her. They didn’t tell me what disease she’d had, but I suppose it was a grasshopper bite or somethin’.
“When I left next mornin’, the weddin’ date was set for that fall.
“Somewheres between South Bend and Laporte, the train stopped and liked it so well that we stayed there over three hours. We hit Englewood after four o’clock and I got to the park just in time to see them loadin’ Lambert into a machine to take him away. His knee had broke down on him in the first innin’s. He ain’t never played ball since. And Smitty, who’s always been a natural second baseman, he had my job.”
“He’s filled it pretty good,” said Lefty.
“That’s either here or there,” retorted Healy. “If I’d been around, nobody’d ever knowed if he could play third base or not. And the worst of him is,” he added, “that he never gets hurt.”
“Maybe you ain’t prayed for him like you done for Lambert,” said Young Jake. “What happened to the gal? Did you give her the air?”
“No, I didn’t,” said Healy. “When I give my word, I keep it. I simply wrote and told her that I’d agreed to marry her and I wouldn’t go back on it. But that my feelin’s towards her was the same as if she was an advanced case of spinal meningitis. She never answered the letter, so I don’t know if we’re still engaged or not.”
The inning was over and the boys were coming in.
“Joe was lucky to get out of that with only two runs,” remarked Lefty. “But of course it was Sam that put him in bad.”
“I’m goin’ to see if he’ll leave me get up on the lines,” said Young Jake, “so I can get a better look at that dame.”
The manager waited for Sam to catch up.
“What the hell was the matter with you, Sam?” he demanded.
Sam looked silly.
“I thought—”
“That’s where you make your mistake!” the manager broke in. “Tough luck, Joe! But two runs are nothing. We’ll get ’em back.”
“Shall I go up on the lines?” asked Young Jake, hopefully.
“You? No!” said the manager. “You, Mike,” turning to Healy, “go over and coach at third base. You brought us luck yesterday.”
So it was Mike who was held partly responsible a few moments later when Smitty, who had tripled, was
