Fallin’ down on that made me meaner’n ever, and I doped out something else. I tells the colleger he stood too far from the plate when he swung at a ball. I says: “When you go up to bat in the game, keep one foot on the plate.” figurin’ that the guy that pitched for Philly would try to drive him away and either wound him or scare him to death.
Alexander worked for them, and Baker stood right on top o’ the plate. Dooin called the umps’ attention, and the umps warned him, but he wouldn’t move. Fin’lly Alexander shot one up there and he didn’t duck in time. It catched him in front o’ the ear, and he dropped like as if he was shot. I bet I was the most scared guy in the world. For a minute I felt like a murderer, and I wasn’t never so glad in my life as when I seen him get up. He staggered round a little, and I had ’em bring him over to the bench. I stuck myself in to run for him, and some o’ the boys took him in the clubhouse and got him fixed up. He wasn’t hurt bad, though he got a mean lookin’ bump.
We was startin’ West again that night and I didn’t never expect him to show up for no trip. But there he was, down to the train, with his wagonload o’ scenery.
“Well,” I says, “you got your nerve.”
“Yes,” he says, “I’m goin’ to show Hub that they’s more’n one game ball player in the world.”
He was still thinkin’ about that one-legged guy in the Southern League.
We opened up in Pittsburgh, and I kept him on the bench. I knewed Mrs. Hayes would wire and ask me why wasn’t he playin’, and when she did, I wrote to her sayin’ he was hurt by that there blow on the head. But that alibi wouldn’t get by very long, and I figured I’d have to frame somethin’ new.
The first night in St. Louis, I thought up somethin’ and got Doc, the trainer, to help me pull it. I buys two tickets to a show and gives ’em to Doc with instructions to ask the colleger to go along. After the show, they was to go to Tony’s for lunch. He was to order two beers, and then I was to drop in and catch Baker with a big stein in front of him. Then I was to swell up and suspend him for drinkin’. Doc done his best, but the bird says beer made him sick and he wouldn’t have nothin’ to do with it. So when I come in, he was eatin’ some kind o’ fancy sandwich and lappin’ up a lemonade or somethin’.
He ast me the next afternoon why didn’t I let him play, and I says:
“You ain’t no ball player and you wouldn’t be no ball player if you kept at it a thousand years. You should ought to be trimmin’ hats.”
“Mrs. Hayes thinks I’m all OK,” he says.
“Yes,” I says, “and you could start one o’ these here Carnegie li-berries with what she don’t know about baseball.” I says: “Why don’t you quit?”
Then he says: “I can’t quit because I can’t afford to lose this here sal’ry.”
I says: “What do you mean, you can’t afford? You had plenty o’ clo’es when you joined us,” I says, “and you must of had money o’ your own or you couldn’t of boughten them clo’es.”
Then he says his old man give him a allowance of a hundred a month and he spent all o’ that on his clo’es, and that the old man had told him he would double this here allowance if the boy showed he could earn five thousand bucks a year when he got out o’ college, and the old man didn’t care how he earned it. So he’d told Mrs. Hayes the whole story and she’d tooken pity on him and give him the job. I ast him wasn’t they no other way he could “earn” the money, and he says he s’posed they was lots o’ ways, only this here way was easiest.
I says: “Yes, but you ain’t earnin’ nothin’ here. You might just as well stick fellas up on the street as draw a sal’ry as a ball player. You’re stealin’ it either way.”
He just laughed, and then I says:
“Don’t your old man care if you mix up with us tough guys?”
“No,” he says, “the old man don’t care, but the old lady does. I told her you was a nice, polite bunch o’ fellas and she fell for it, or else she’d of made me cut this out and come home.”
The hunch come to me all of a sudden, and I says:
“What’s your old lady’s name and where does she live at?”
He told me, and I couldn’t hardly wait till I got back to the hotel.
I don’t know now just what I wrote, but it was some letter. I told her we was a bunch o’ stews and that when we wasn’t lushin’ beer or playin’ poker, we was going to burlesque shows. I says her son was pickin’ up a awful bunch o’ language and drinkin’ his fool head off. I says he was stuck on a burlesque queen and was spendin’ all his dough on her. And I wound it up by sayin’ that Dixon, the manager, had killed his wife and they wasn’t no tellin’ when he’d cut loose and kill somebody else. I didn’t sign no name, but just put “From a Friend in Need” down at the bottom.
It was in your town that he heard from her, and he showed me the letter. She says he was to come home at oncet and that she’d made the old man promise to come through with a extra allowance without makin’ him do no work for
