“I’m myself,” says Kane and got up and left the table, but not quick enough so that Johnny didn’t see tears in his eyes.
That afternoon’s crowd beat all records and I was tickled to death to see it, because Hurry had always done his best work in front of crowds that was pulling against him. He warmed up fine and they wasn’t nobody on our club, nobody but Kane himself and two others, who didn’t feel perfectly confident that we were “in.”
The White Sox were starting Sam Bonner and while he had beat us three or four times, we’d always got runs off him, and they’d always been lucky to score at all against Kane.
Bonner went through the first innings without no trouble. And then we got the shock of our lives. The first ball Hurry pitched was high and outside and it felt funny when I caught it. I was used to that old “zip” and I could have caught this one in my bare hand. Claymore took a cut at the next one and hit it a mile to left center for three bases. King hit for two bases, Welsh was safe when Digman threw a ground ball into the seats, and Kramer slapped one out of the park for a homer. Four runs. The crowd was wild and we were wilder.
You ought to have heard us on that bench. “Yellow so-and-so” was the mildest name Hurry got called. Dave couldn’t do nothing but just mumble and shake his fists at Kane. We was all raving and asking each other what in hell was going on. Hurry stood in front facing us, but he was looking up in the stand and he acted like he didn’t hear one word of the sweet remarks meant for his ears.
Johnny Abbott pulled me aside.
“Listen,” he says. “This kid ain’t yellow and he ain’t wore out. They’s something wrong here.”
By this time Dave had found his voice and he yelled at Kane: “You so-and-so so-and-so! You’re going to stay right in there and pitch till this game is over! And if you don’t pitch like you can pitch, I’ll shoot you dead tonight just as sure as you’re a yellow, quitting—!”
We’d forgot it was our turn to bat and Hildebrand was threatening to forfeit the game before he could get Bull Wade to go up there. Kane still stood in front of us, staring. But pretty soon Dave told young Topping to run out to the bull pen and warn Carney and Olds to both be ready. I seen Topping stop a minute alongside of Kane and look up in the stand where Kane was looking. I seen Topping say something to Kane and I heard Kane call him a liar. Then Topping said something more and Hurry turned white as a sheet and pretty near fell into the dugout. I noticed his hand shake as he took a drink of water. And then he went over to Dave and I heard him say:
“I’m sorry, Boss. I had a bad inning. But I’ll be all right from now on.”
“You’d better!” says Dave.
“Get me some runs is all I ask,” says Kane.
And the words wasn’t no sooner out of his mouth when Bull smacked one a mile over Claymore’s head and came into the plate standing up. They was another tune on the bench now. We were yelling for blood, and we got it. Before they relieved Bonner, we’d got to him for three singles and a double—mine, if you must know—and the score was tied.
Say, if you think you ever seen pitching, you ought to have watched Kane cut them through there the rest of that day. Fourteen strikeouts in the last eight innings! And the only man to reach first base was Kramer, when Stout dropped an easy fly ball in the fifth.
Well, to shorten it up, Bull and Johnny Abbott and myself had some luck against Pierce in the seventh innings. Bull and Johnny scored and we licked them, 6 to 4.
In the clubhouse, Dave went to Hurry and said:
“Have you got anything to tell me, any explanation of the way you looked at the start of that game?”
“Boss,” said Kane, “I didn’t sleep good last night. Johnny will be a witness to that. I felt terrible in that first innings. I seemed to have lost my ‘fast.’ In the second innings it came back and I was all right.”
And that’s all he would say.
You know how we went ahead and took the big series, four games out of five, and how Hurry gave them one run in the three games he pitched. And now you’re going to know what I promised to tell you when we first sat down, and I hope I ain’t keeping you from a date with that gal from St. Joe.
The world’s series ended in St. Louis and naturally I didn’t come back East when it was over. Neither did Kane, because he was going home to Yuma, along with his Minnie. Well, they were leaving the next night, though most of the other boys had ducked out right after the final game. Hurry called me up at my house three or four hours before his train was due to leave and asked me would I come and see him and give him some advice. So I went to the hotel and he got me in his room
