“I wisht I had more to offer you,” I told her. “I’m flat outside o’ my salary and I owe a plain four thousand.”
“I don’t care how much or how little you’ve got,” she says. “Your salary’ll keep us all right. But I don’t want to marry you till you’re clear o’ debt.”
“We’ll do some waitin’ then,” I says. “A year from this fall is the best I can promise. I’ll live on nothin’ this winter and I won’t spend nothin’ next summer and I think I can just about get cleaned up. It’ll be somethin’ new for me to try and save, but you’re worth starvin’ for.”
“And you’re worth waitin’ for,” says she.
So we says goodbye and I went to Chicago with the club. And the second day there I slipped roundin’ first base and throwed my knee pretty near out o’ my stockin’.
It wasn’t no common sprain or strain. The old bird just simply flew out of his cage and flew out to stay. I seen two doctors there and two more back home. They all says the same thing; that I was through playin’ ball.
“After it’s had a rest,” they told me, “just walkin’ on it won’t hurt nothin’. But the minute you run you’re liable to get crippled up good and proper. And if you stooped quick or made a quick turn or if your leg got bumped into, you might serve a good long sentence on the old hair mattress.”
I didn’t want Ethel to find out how bad it was, so all that come out in the paper was that I had a Charley horse. Mac, o’ course, knowed the truth, but he couldn’t do nothin’ except feel sorry for me. He knowed about the girl too.
“I wisht I had a place for you,” he says, “but you wouldn’t be satisfied scoutin’, and with the low player limit we can’t carry no men that ain’t goin’ to do us some good. You’ll get paid, o’ course, up to the end o’ the season. But I can’t offer you no contract for next year.”
“That’s all right,” I says. “I just want it kept quiet till I find somethin’ I can do.”
And w’ile I was still half dazed over the shock of it I got a letter from the girl. She had some big news, she says. Her Aunt Julia’d been told about I and her bein’ engaged and had promised her a present o’ $2,500 on the day we was married. And we was to put this money with another $2,500 that her brother, Paul, was goin’ to save up, and I and her brother was goin’ to buy a garage in Hopsboro from a fella that’d promised Paul he’d sell it to him in a year. And it was the only garage in Hopsboro and done a whale of a business. And Paul was a swell mechanic and I’d take care o’ the business end. And I could quit playin’ ball and never be away from home. It sounded mighty good to me just then. But they was still a little trifle o’ four thousand that’d have to be took care of.
I’d just mailed back an answer, as cheerful as I could write, when a call come over the phone that Mr. A. T. Grant wanted to see me at the Kingsley Hotel. I’d saw his name mentioned in connection with a club in the new league, but I didn’t know if he’d bought it or not.
Well, I went down there in a taxi and was showed right up to his room.
He shook hands with me and then ast me if I was signed up for next year. I told him I wasn’t.
“I’ve just bought the club I was after,” he says. “I wanted to know if you’d consider an offer.”
I done some tall thinkin’. I made up my mind that it wouldn’t do no harm to sign. If I found I couldn’t play nobody’d be hurt. But if the old knee wasn’t as bad as the doctors thought I’d probably get a better job here than anywheres else.
“Who’s goin’ to be your manager?” I ast him.
“Billy Carmody,” he says. “He was the shortstop on the club this year.”
“I never met him, but o’ course I’ve heard of him,” I says.
Then I done some more thinkin’.
“What’s your offer?” I says.
“Five thousand,” says Mr. Grant.
“Where would you want me to play?” I ast him.
“Where would you want to play?” says he.
That give me a hunch. I’d heard they was one or two short fences in the league. Maybe I could play an outfield position even if my legs wouldn’t stand the infield strain.
“In the outfield,” I told him.
“Which field?” he says, and then I knowed he was a bug.
“Right field,” says I.
“That suits me,” he says, and he sent for his secretary to fix up a contract.
So I signed to play right field, and nowheres else, for Mr. Grant’s club for one year at $5,000.
“This business is new to me,” he says, “but I believe I’ll get a lot o’ pleasure out of it.”
“What other men have you got signed?” I ast him.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you,” he says. “But I may tell you that most o’ them is young men that’s as new to professional ball as I am. I believe in gettin’ young fellas, for enthusiasm’s more valuable than experience in a sport o’ this kind.”
“Oh, easy,” I says.
Then we shook hands again and I beat it to a train for Dayton, where the girl was stayin’. And when I seen her I give her the whole story. It looked now like they was a little bit o’ hope.
II
The papers I’d saw durin’ the winter hadn’t wasted no space on our club and I didn’t know exactly who was my teammates till I blowed into Dixie Springs, the first
