In the fall—that’s a year and a half ago—Dave pulled the trade with Boston and St. Louis that brought us Frank Miller and Lefty Glaze in exchange for Robinson, Bullard and Roy Smith. The three he gave away weren’t worth a dime to us or to the clubs that got them, and that made it just an even thing, as Miller showed up in the spring with a waistline that was eight laps to the mile and kept getting bigger and bigger till it took half the Atlantic cable to hold up his baseball pants, while Glaze wanted more money than Landis and didn’t report till the middle of June, and then tried to condition himself on wood alcohol. When the deal was made, it looked like Dave had all the best of it, but as it turned out, him and the other two clubs might as well have exchanged photographs of their kids in Girl Scout uniforms.
But Dave never lost no sleep over Glaze or Miller. We hadn’t been in Florida three days before him and everybody on the ball club was absolutely nuts about big Kane. Here was a twenty-year-old boy that had only pitched half a season in Waco and we had put in a draft for him on the recommendation of an old friend of Dave’s, Billy Moore. Billy was just a fan and didn’t know much baseball, but he had made some money for Dave in Texas oil leases and Dave took this tip on Kane more because he didn’t want to hurt Billy’s feelings than out of respect for his judgment. So when the big sapper showed up at Fort Gregg, he didn’t get much of a welcome. What he did get was a laugh. You couldn’t look at him and not laugh; anyway, not till you got kind of used to him.
You’ve probably seen lots of pictures of him in a uniform, but they can’t give you no idear of the sight he was the first day he blew in the hotel, after that clean, restful little train ride all the way from Yuma. Standing six foot three in what was left of his stockings, he was wearing a suit of Arizona store clothes that would have been a fair fit for Singer’s youngest Midget and looked like he had pressed it with a tractor that had been parked on a river bottom.
He had used up both the collars that he figured would see him through his first year in the big league. This left you a clear view of his Adam’s apple, which would make half a dozen pies. You’d have thought from his shoes that he had just managed to grab hold of the rail on the back platform of his train and been dragged from Yuma to Jacksonville. But when you seen his shirt, you wondered if he hadn’t rode in the cab and loaned it to the fireman for a washcloth. He had a brown paper suitcase held together by bandages. Some of them had slipped and the raw wounds was exposed. But if the whole thing had fell to pieces, he could have packed the contents in two of his vest pockets without bulging them much.
One of the funniest things about him was his walk and I’ll never forget the first time we seen him go out to take his turn pitching to the batters. He acted like he was barefooted and afraid of stepping on burrs. He’d lift one dog and hold it in the air a minute till he could locate a safe place to put it down. Then he’d do the same thing with the other, and it would seem about a half-hour from the time he left the bench till he got to his position. Of course Dave soon had him pretty well cured of that, or that is, Dave didn’t, but Kid Farrell did. For a whole week, the Kid followed him every step he took and if he wasn’t going fast enough, he either got spiked in the heel or kicked in the calf of his hind leg. People think he walks slow yet, but he’s a shooting star now compared with when he broke in.
Well, everybody was in hysterics watching him make that first trip and he looked so silly that we didn’t expect him to be any good to us except as a kind of a show. But we were in for a big surprise.
Before he threw a ball, Dave said to him: “Now, go easy. Don’t cut loose and take a chance till you’re in shape.”
“All right,” says Kane.
And all of a sudden, without no warning, he whammed a fast ball acrost that old plate that blew Tierney’s cap off and pretty near knocked me down. Tierney hollered murder and ran for the bench. All of us were pop-eyed and it was quite a while before Dave could speak. Then he said:
“Boy, your fast one is a fast one! But I just got through telling you not to cut loose. The other fellas ain’t ready for it and neither are you. I don’t want nobody killed this time of year.”
So Kane said: “I didn’t cut loose. I can send them through there twice as fast as that. I’m scared to yet, because I ain’t sure of my control. I’ll show you something in a couple more days.”
Well when he said “twice as fast,” he was making it a little strong. But his real fast one was faster than that first one he threw, and before the week was over we looked at speed that made it
