I felt so good about gettin’ him off’n my hands that I went out there and played like Cobb or somebody the rest o’ the trip. Maybe you fellas remember how I hit ag’in’ you them last two days. I done even better’n that in Cincinnati and New York. It was the best trip we’d made in a good many years, and the bugs at home went crazy over us. They was ten thousand out to the first game of our serious at home with St. Louis—on a Thursday, at that.
O’ course I knowed they’d be a argument with the skirt. Our winnin’ streak wouldn’t make her forget to ask me what had became o’ Baker. When she ast me, I sprung the stuff about him gettin’ a letter from his mother, but I didn’t tell her nothin’ about the letter I’d wrote. She didn’t have nothin’, but she looked pretty sore and forgot all about givin’ me the glad hand for what we’d did in the West.
We done pretty well at home ag’in’ St. Louis and Pittsburgh. Then you fellas come along and I guess I don’t need to tell you that we was goin’ good. I was beginnin’ to think we maybe might keep it up and throw a scare into some o’ you birds.
She didn’t never come out to yesterday’s game, but I didn’t suspect nothin’ wrong till Kelly, the secretary, come into the clubhouse after me. He tells me that she wants to see me down to the downtown office.
“All right,” I says. “I’ll beat it down there right after the game.”
“No,” says Kelly, “she wants you right now.”
So I took my unie off and beat it down there in a taxi. The girl in the front office told me to go right on in, and in I went. There was the dame, settin’ at the desk where poor old Hayes used to set. And they was two big coppers with her. Without sayin’ “How d’ya do” or nothin’, she opens right up on me and says:
“These here officers is here to protect me. If you start somethin’, you’ll get nothin’ but the worst of it.” Then she pulls a letter out o’ the desk and says: “This here letter is from Mr. Baker’s mother, and in it she tells me why she made her boy come home. Somebody has tooken the trouble to tell her some fac’s about this here ball club—my ball club that I was proud of! But I ain’t proud of it no more. I ain’t proud o’ no gang o’ hoodlums that don’t do, nothin’ but gamble and drink and run round with actresses and lead young men astray.”
“Is that all?” I says.
“No,” she hollers, “that ain’t all. Mr. Dixon, you killed your wife!”
“That’s a whole lot o’ bunk,” I says. “I didn’t never have no wife, so how could I kill my wife when I didn’t never have none?”
“Don’t lie to me!” she says. “Even if you didn’t never have no wife, you killed somebody, maybe a innocent girl that was wronged.”
“Cut the comedy,” I says. “They’s nothin’ to that stuff. Somebody’s went and gave the old lady a bum steer.”
“What for?” she ast.
“Prob’ly,” I says, “because somebody was tired o’ having that boob on the ball club and figured that was the best way to get rid of him.”
“We won’t discuss it no fu’ther,” she says. “I called you up to tell you you ain’t managin’ the club no longer. You can stay here under the terms o’ your contract and play ball if you want to, but maybe you wouldn’t want to work for the new manager.”
“Who is it?” I says.
“That’s none o’ your business,” she says. “I will tell you when the proper time comes.”
Then I says: “Is the seamstress comin’ back?”
“The who?” she hollers.
“That there colleger,” I says. “If I was you, I’d get him back, because you and him is certainly a grand combination. It’s hard to tell which one o’ you knows the most about baseball, you or that bird. Even if you couldn’t use him as no ball player, you could chop up his head and build a new grandstand.”
“He was smart enough to go through Yale college,” she says.
“No.” says I. “He didn’t never go through no Yale college. If they was any college that he went through, it was this here Wellesley college.”
Then I turns and beats it for the door.
Well, sir, they ain’t nothin’ more to tell except one thing. When I come out o’ the door into the outside office, I bumped right square into “Gertie.” He was smilin’ like a big kid, and he says: “Hello, there!” Well, I didn’t say nothin’ to him, but I give him a good kick in the shin, and I stepped all over his patent-leather shoes. Then I went on about my business.
I wired and they wasn’t nothin’ to it. He told me to come on and join ’em in Pittsburgh, and I just had time to get my stuff together and catch this train.
I guess she won’t try and get no injunction out agin’ me. But I wisht she would. I’d like to tell my story to a judge, provided the judge wasn’t no woman.
You know who’s goin’ to manage that club, don’t you? And you know who’s goin’ to be president of it. Well, sir, I’ll bet you anything you want to bet that they won’t even finish in Mass’chusetts.
