“Nice coachin’, Mike!” said Lefty, as Healy came back to the bench.
“Why don’t he watch hisself!” growled Mike. “And besides, I did yell at him!”
“You’re a liar!” said Lefty. “Your back was to the ball game. You were lookin’ up in the stand.”
“Why would I be lookin’ at the stand!” demanded Healy.
But nobody answered him. There was silence for a time. The boys were depressed; in their own language, their dauber was down. Finally Young Jake spoke.
“She’s starin’ right over this way!” he said.
“Who?” asked Gephart.
“That dame I pointed out. In the tan suit. Way over behind third base, the other side of the screen, in the fourth row.”
“I see her. Not bad!”
“I’ll say she’s not bad!” said Jake.
“Women!” said Healy. “You better get your mind on baseball or you’ll be back in that silo league, jumpin’ from town to town in a w’eelbarrow.”
“I don’t see why you should be off all women just because one of them brought you a little hard luck.”
“She wasn’t the only one! Why, say, if it wasn’t for women I’d be playin’ regular third base for McGraw right now and cuttin’ in on the big money every fall.”
“I didn’t know you was ever with McGraw.”
“I wasn’t,” said Healy, “but I ought to been, and would of been only for a woman. It was when I was playin’ with the Dayton club; my first year in baseball. Boy, I was fast as a streak! I was peggin’ bunts to first base before the guy could drop his bat. I covered so much ground to my left that I was always knockin’ the shortstop down and bumpin’ heads with the right fielder. Everybody was marvelin’ at me. Some of the old timers said I reminded them of Bill Bradley at his best, only that I made Bradley look like he was out of the game for a few days.
“Baldy Pierce was umpirin’ in our league that year. He wasn’t a bad umps, but he never left business interfere with pleasure. Many’s the time he called the last fella out in the last innin’s when the fella was safer than a hot chocolate at the Elks’ convention—just because Baldy was hungry for supper.
“He was so homely that dogs wouldn’t live in the same town, and his friends used to try and make him wear his mask off the field as well as on. And yet he grabbed some of the prettiest gals you ever see. He said to me once, he said, ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘you tell me I’m homelier than Railroad Street, but I can cop more pips than you can with all your good looks!’ ”
At this point there were unprintable comments by Lefty, Gephart, and other occupants of the bench.
“One of these gals of his,” Healy went on, “was a gal named Helen Buck from Hamilton, Ohio. She was visitin’ in Dayton and come out to the ball game. The first day she was there a lot of the boys was hit in the face by thrown balls, and every time a foul went to the stand the whole infield run in to shag it. But she wouldn’t look at nobody but Pierce.
“Well, McGraw had heard about me, and he sent a fella named McDonald, that was scoutin’ for him, to look me over. It was in September and we was just about through. How the games come out didn’t make no difference, but I knowed this McDonald was there and what he was there for, so I wanted to make a showin’. He had came intendin’ to stay two days, but he’d overlooked a skip in the schedule that left us without no game the second day, so he said one game would have to be enough, as he had to go somewheres else.
“We was playin’ the Springfield club. I had a good day in the field, but Bill Hutton, who started pitchin’ for them, he was hog wild and walked me the first two times up. The third time they was a man on third and I had to follow orders and squeeze him home. So I hadn’t had no chance to really show what I could do up there at the plate.
“Well, we come into the ninth innin’s with the score tied and it was gettin’ pretty dark. We got two of them out, and then their first baseman, Jansen, he got a base on balls. Bill Boone caught a hold of one just right and cracked it to the fence and it looked like Jansen would score, but he was a slow runner. Davy Shaw, our shortstop, thought he must of scored and when the ball was thrown to him he throwed it to me to get Boone, who was tryin’ for three bases.
“Well, I had took in the situation at a glance; I seen that Jansen hadn’t scored and if I put the ball on Boone quick enough, why the run wouldn’t count. So I lunged at Boone and tagged him before Jansen had crossed the plate. But Pierce said the score counted and that Boone wasn’t out because I’d missed him. Missed him! Say, I bet that where I tagged him they had to take stitches!
“Anyway, that give ’em a one run lead, and when the first two fellas got out in our half everybody thought it was over. But Davy Shaw hit one to right center that a man like I could of ran around twice on it, but they held Davy at third base. And it was up to me to bring him in.
“By this time Jim Preston was pitchin’ for Springfield, and Jim was always a mark for me. I left the first one go by, as it was outside, but Pierce called it a strike. Then they was a couple of balls that he couldn’t call strikes. I cracked the next one over the leftfield fence, but it was a few inches foul. That made it two and two, and the
