“No,” said Bull. “I mean we had four pitchers that could blow up all of a sudden. It was their hobby. Dave used to work them in turn, the same afternoon; on days when Olds and Carney needed a rest. Each one of the four would pitch an innings and a half.”
Kane thought quite a while and then said: “But if they was four of them, and they pitched an innings and a half apiece, that’s only six innings. Who pitched the other three?”
“Nobody,” says Bull. “It was always too dark. By the way, what innings is your favorite? I mean, to blow in?”
“I don’t blow,” says the sap.
“Then,” said Bull, “why was it that fella called you ‘Hurry’ Kane?”
“It was Lefty Condon called me ‘Hurry,’ ” says the sap. “My last name is Kane, and a hurricane is a big wind.”
“Don’t a wind blow?” says Bull.
And so on. I swear they kept it up for two hours, Kane trying to explain his nickname and Bull leading him on, and Joe Bonham said that Kane asked him up in the room who that was he had been talking to, and when Joe told him it was Wade, one of the smartest ball players in the league, Hurry said: “Well, then, he must be either stewed or else this is a damn sight dumber league than the one I came from.”
Bull and some of the rest of the boys pulled all the old gags on him that’s been in baseball since the days when you couldn’t get on a club unless you had a walrus mustache. And Kane never disappointed them.
They made him go to the clubhouse after the key to the batter’s box; they wrote him mash notes with fake names signed to them and had him spending half his evenings on some corner, waiting to meet gals that never lived; when he held Florida University to two hits in five innings, they sent him telegrams of congratulation from Coolidge and Al Smith, and he showed the telegrams to everybody in the hotel; they had him report at the ball park at six thirty one morning for a secret “pitchers’ conference”; they told him the Ritz was where all the unmarried ball players on the club lived while we were home, and they got him to write and ask for a parlor, bedroom and bath for the whole season. They was nothing he wouldn’t fall for till Dave finally tipped him off that he was being kidded, and even then he didn’t half believe it.
Now I never could figure how a man can fool themself about their own looks, but this bird was certain that he and Tommy Meighan were practically twins. Of course the boys soon found this out and strung him along. They advised him to quit baseball and go into pictures. They sat around his room and had him strike different poses and fix his hair different ways to see how he could show off his beauty to the best advantage. Johnny Abbott told me, after he began rooming with him, that for an hour before he went to bed and when he got up, Kane would stand in front of the mirror staring at himself and practising smiles and scowls and all kinds of silly faces, while Johnny pretended he was asleep.
Well, it wasn’t hard to kid a fella like that into believing the dames were mad about him and when Bull Wade said that Evelyn Corey had asked who he was, his chest broke right through his shirt.
I know more about Evelyn now, but I didn’t know nothing than except that she was a beautiful gal who had been in Broadway shows a couple of seasons and didn’t have to be in them no more. Her room was two doors down the hall from Johnny’s and Kane’s. She was in Florida all alone, probably because her man friend, whoever he was at that time, had had to go abroad or somewheres with the family. All the ball players were willing to meet her, but she wasn’t thrilled over the idear of getting acquainted with a bunch of guys who hadn’t had a pay day in four or five months. Bull got Kane to write her a note; then Bull stole the note and wrote an answer, asking him to call. Hurry went and knocked at her door. She opened it and slammed it in his face.
“It was kind of dark,” he said to Johnny, “and I guess she failed to recognize me.” But he didn’t have the nerve to call again.
He showed Johnny a picture of his gal in Yuma, a gal named Minnie Olson, who looked like she patronized the same store where Kane had bought his suit. He said she was wild about him and would marry him the minute he said the word and probably she was crying her eyes out right now, wishing he was home. He asked if Johnny had a gal and Johnny loosened up and showed him the picture of the gal he was engaged to. (Johnny married her last November.) She’s a peach, but all Kane would say was, “Kind of skinny, ain’t she?” Johnny laughed and said most gals liked to be that way.
“Not if they want me,” says Kane.
“Well,” said Johnny, “I don’t think this one does. But how about your friend, that Miss Corey? You certainly can’t call her plump, yet you’re anxious to meet her.”
“She’s got class!” said Kane.
Johnny laughed that off, too. This gal of his, that he’s married to now, she’s so far ahead of Corey as far as class is concerned—well, they ain’t no comparison. Johnny, you know, went to Cornell a couple of years and his wife is a college gal he met at a big house-party. If you put her and Evelyn beside of each other you wouldn’t have no trouble telling which of them belonged on Park Avenue and which Broadway.
Kane kept on
