“What position does he play?” I ast.
“Third base,” says Jimmy, “and for the fear everybody won’t know it, he always keeps one foot on the bag. But don’t get the idear that he’s a bigger eater than the rest o’ them. They ain’t no more difference in their appetites than in their ball playin’. When they got their noses in the feed-trough, though, they look like they was at home. And when they’re out there on the field, you’d think they was It for blindman’s buff.”
I ast him about the Old Man havin’ their lunch sent out.
“Even Carmody laughed at that,” he says; “but Carmody’s figured that the way to get along with old Grant is to agree with him in everything. So we’re relieved from two changes o’ clo’es, and a half mile walk that might help some of us get down to weight.”
“Is it a regular lunch?” I ast him.
“All but the tools,” says Jimmy. “And that makes it the favorite meal with Griffin and them. They can throw it in faster and without near as much risk. And all you have to do to start a riot is drop a bone or part of a potato on the grass.”
“How is the grounds?” I says.
“Just as good as the club,” says Boyle.
“Who picked out this joint?” says I.
“The same old bug that picked up these ball players,” says Jimmy. “He was lookin’ for a quiet place and he got it. The burg’s supposed to have a population o’ twelve hundred, but I haven’t even saw the twelve. Dixie Springs they call it, but the only springs is in Carmody’s bed. The town and the grounds is both jokes. The hotel’s all right outside o’ the rooms. I’ll own up the eatin’s good, but that’s the one thing that don’t make no difference to this bunch of our’n. They’d go to it just the same if it was raw mule chops.”
“How much longer do we stick?” I ast him.
“Plain five weeks,” says Jimmy. “We don’t play no exhibitions nowheres because they might be spies from the other clubs watchin’ us. We stay right here and do all our practicin’ in a park that was laid out by a steeplechase fan, and then we go straight home and win the openin’ game and the pennant by su’prise. You’re lucky you come a week late. If I’d knew the dope in advance I wouldn’t of never reported till the day o’ the big su’prise party. But leave us hurry downstairs or it’ll be too late for you to get a look at a fine piece of American scenery.”
“What’s that?” I ast.
“The Royal Gorge,” says Jimmy.
Well, he hadn’t lied when he told me about their eatin’. It was just like as if they knowed the league wasn’t only goin’ to last this one more season, and they all o’ them expected to live to be over ninety, and was tryin’ to get fixed up in a year for the next sixty-five. You remember how them waiters down South come one-steppin’ in with their trays balanced on their thumb a mile over their head? Well, they didn’t pull that stunt with the orders these here boys give ’em. Each fella’s meal took two pallbearers, with a couple o’ mourners followin’ along behind to pick up whatever floral pieces fell off when the casket listed.
I and Boyle and Fulton and Hi Boles had a table to ourself, and you ought to saw them Ephs quarrel over who’d wait on us. Besides our four orders together not bein’ as big as one o’ them other guys’, we wasn’t so exhausted at the end o’ the meal that we couldn’t dig down in our pocket and get a dime. Mr. Grant and Carmody and the secretary set next to our table and it seemed to worry the Old Boy that our appetites was so poor. He’d say:
“Warner, I’m afraid you ain’t feelin’ good. You don’t eat hardly nothin’.”
“I’m all right,” I’d tell him; “but eatin’ ain’t no new experience for me. I ett for several years before I broke into baseball and I been gettin’ regular meals ever since.”
The lunch served out to the grounds was worth travelin’ south just to look at it. It always come prompt at twelve, and for a half hour before that time every ground ball was a base hit because the fielders was all lookin’ up at the sun. And when the baskets full o’ nourishment was drug in, no matter if we was right in the middle of an innin’, everybody’d throw away their bats and gloves and race for the front. Carmody’d follow along smilin’, like it was a good joke.
I was hungry my first day out. I
