The Crook

Tomorrow mornin’ you’ll see statement in the papers, signed by Ban, sayin’ that it’s been learned that they was some excuse for Bull doin’ what he done, and that the charge of him bein’ pickled on the field wasn’t true, and that he’s been took back on the staff. But they won’t be nothin’ printed about who was the dandy little fixer; my part in it is a secret between you and I and one or two others.

I don’t suppose they’s a ball player in the League that Bull’s chased as often as me. I don’t suppose they’s anybody he’s pulled as much of his stuff on. I can’t count the times I’ve got cute with him, but the times I got the best o’ the repartee I can count ’em on the fingers of a catcher’s mitt. Just the same, it was me that went to Ban with the real dope and was the cause of him gettin’ rehired, and it was me that got him his girl back, though he don’t know about that yet.

I wouldn’t of took no trouble in the case if it was any other umps but Bull. But I come as near likin’ him as a man could like a guy that never give a close one any way but against you. And he’s a good umps, too; he guesses about a third of ’em right, where the rest o’ Ban’s School for the Blind don’t see one in ten. And another thing: I felt sorry for him when he told me the deal he got. And besides that, he’s gave me too many good laughs for me to stand by and see him canned out o’ the League. Many’s the time I’ve made a holler just to hear what he’d say, and he always said somethin’ worth hearin’, even if it stung; that is, up to day before yesterday, when the blow-off come.

I noticed he wasn’t himself when I was throwed out at the plate in the second innin’. I wanted to stop at third, but Jack made me keep goin’, and Duff Lewis all ready to shoot with that six-inch howitzer he wears in his right sleeve. Cady and the ball strolled out to meet me and I couldn’t get past ’em.

“You’re out!” says Bull.

“He didn’t tag me,” I says.

And Bull didn’t say a word.

In the fourth innin’ Hooper was on third base and somebody hit a fly ball to Shano. Hooper scored after the catch and big Cahill run out from the bench and made a holler that he’d left the bag too quick. The ball was throwed over to third base, but Tommy wouldn’t allow the play. Then Cahill went to Bull and ast him hadn’t he saw it. O’ course Bull says he hadn’t.

“No, I guess not!” says Cahill. “Us burglars stick together.” And then, on the way back to the bench, he turned to Bull and says: “You’re so crooked you could sleep in a French horn.”

Bull was just puttin’ on his mask, but he throwed it on the ground and tore after Cahill. He nailed him right on the edge o’ the dugout, and what a beatin’ he give him! It took eight or nine of us to drag him off, and he managed to wallop everybody at least once durin’ the action. Some o’ the boys picked Cahill up and carried him to the clubhouse. He was a wreck. Bull stood there a minute, starin’ at nothin’; then he turned and faced the grand stand.

“Anybody else,” he yelled⁠—“anybody else that thinks I’m a crook can come down and get a little o’ the same.”

Well, they wasn’t no need of extra police to keep the crowd back. But Ban was settin’ in the stand and o’ course he wasn’t goin’ to just set there and not do nothin’. It was too raw. So he give orders for the cops to grab Bull and get him out o’ the way before he committed murder. They led him to his dressin’ room and stuck with him w’ile he changed clo’es. Then they called the wagon and give him a ride. Tommy handled the rest o’ the game alone and we was beat just as bad as if nothin’ had happened.

Right after the game the witnesses was examined. Cahill’s lips was so swelled he couldn’t hardly talk. But several of us had heard the whole thing and could testify they hadn’t been no profanity. Cahill hadn’t no license to call Bull crooked, but if an umps was goin’ to fight for a little thing like that, every ball game’d wind up in a holycaust. Besides, “a crook” was one o’ the mildest things Bull’d ever been called, and till this time nobody’d ever knew him to lose his temper.

As I say, his specialty was conversation. When they was a kick made, he’d generally always pull some remark that got a laugh from everybody but the fella that was crabbin’, and sometimes from he himself. He’d canned plenty o’ guys out o’ the ball game for tryin’ too hard to show him up, but he’d did it as part o’ the day’s work and without displayin’ any venoms. I’d heard ’em tell him he was yellow, and blind, and a jellyfish, and a “homer,” and a thief, and a liar; and that he’d steal the cream off’n his mother’s coffee; and that his backbone was all above the neck. I’d heard ’em call him fightin’ names and saw him take it smilin’. And now, because a fella made an innocent remark about him bein’ crooked, and no naughty words along with it, he’d went off his bean and all but destroyed a good Irish citizen, besides intimidatin’ five or six thousand o’ the unemployed.

It wasn’t no wonder everybody thought what they thought, though Bull hadn’t never been known to touch a drop between April and October.

“I’ll uphold my umpires when they’re right,” Ban says to the reporters; “but when they’re wrong, they got to suffer for it. They’s only just the one explanation for Bull’s actions. So he’s discharged from the staff.”

“What about Cahill?” ast somebody. “Goin’ to suspend him?”

“No,” says Ban. “Bull saved me the trouble.”

Well, Tommy fixed it up to have Bull let out o’ jail and took him back to the hotel where the two o’ them was stoppin’. When Tommy told him he was canned he didn’t make no comments only to say that they was one good thing about the umpirin’ job⁠—you didn’t feel bad if you lost it.

On my way home from the game I got to thinkin’ about Bull and what a shame it was to have him let out for just the one slip, and wonderin’ what he’d do with himself, and so on. So when I’d had supper I rode down to the umps’ beanery to try and find him, and maybe cheer him up.

He’d went out. Tommy told me he’d disappeared after askin’ for his mail and not gettin’ none.

“He’ll come back with a fine package,” says Tommy.

“Do you know what made him fall off?” I says.

“He didn’t fall off,” says Tommy. “That’s the funny part of it. I and him was right up in my room readin’ the papers all mornin’; then we had lunch and went out to the park together and got dressed and went on the field. I noticed he was grouchin’, but I was with him every minute o’ the day up to game time and I know for a fact that he didn’t have nothin’ to drink only his coffee at breakfast. Somethin’s happened to him, but I don’t like to get inquisitive because we haven’t only been teamin’ together a couple o’ weeks.”

I and Tommy didn’t have nothin’ else to do, so we set down in the writin’ room and chinned. Bull, o’ course, was the subject o’ the conversation. You could talk about him all week and not tell half o’ the stuff.

The first game he umpired in our League was openin’ day in Chi, four or five years ago. It was our club and St. Louis. I guess he was about twenty-six years old then, but he didn’t look more’n twenty. So the boys was inclined to ride him. Arnold, the St. Louis catcher, started on him in the first innin’.

“Did you ever see a ball game, kid?” he ast him.

“No,” says Bull, “but if I make good these four days, I’m goin’ to stay here for the Detroit series.”

Arnold come up with the bases full and two out in the fourth or fifth. He took three healthy lunges and fanned. I led off in our half and Bull called the first one a ball. It was pretty close and Arnold, peeved about strikin’ out in the pinch, slammed the pill on the ground.

“You’re a fine umpire!” he says.

“I can’t be right all the time,” says Bull. “Even the best of us misses ’em sometimes. But I’ll have to miss the next two in succession to tie your score.”

We was one run ahead when the ninth begin. We got two o’ them out and then Hank Douglas made a base hit and stole second. The next fella made another base hit, but Shano fielded it clean and Hank was called out at the plate.

“That’s right,” he says to Bull. “Favor the home team. You wouldn’t be umpirin’ in this league if you wasn’t yellow.”

“No,” says Bull, walkin’ away, “and you wouldn’t be in the League at all if you wasn’t a Brown.”

In one o’ the Detroit games Cobb was on second base with a man out and Crawford hit a slow ground ball between short and third. The ball was fielded to first base and Cobb kept right on for home. Parker was catchin’ for us and he was a little spike-shy, especially with Cobb. So when the ball was relayed to him from first base he backed off in an alley somewheres and give Tyrus the right o’ way. Somebody hollered from the bench that Cobb hadn’t touched third.

“Yes, I seen it,” says Parker to Bull, lookin’ for an alibi. “He cut third base.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bull says, “but it’s a safe bet that he’ll never cut you.”

Bull went with us for our first series in Cleveland that year. They was a fly-ball hit to Lawton in the third and he muffed it square, lettin’ in a couple o’ runs. As soon as he’d dropped the ball he looked up in the sky and then stopped the game till he’d ran in and got his glasses, though it was so cloudy that we was hurryin’ to beat the rain. Right afterward, when Lawton come to bat, Bull called a strike on him.

“Too high! Too high!” says Lawton.

“Maybe it was,” says Bull. “I lost it in the sun.”

A little w’ile later the Cleveland club had a chance to tie us up. It was some left-hand batter’s turn to hit, but they was a cockeye pitchin’ for us, so they sent up a kid named Brodie, a right-hander, to pinch hit. He swung at the first one and missed it. The next one was called a strike, and w’ile he was turned round, arguin’ with Bull about it, another one come whizzin’ over and Bull says:

“You’re out!”

“It wasn’t a legal delivery,” says Brodie.

“Why not?” says Bull. “His feet was on the slab and you wasn’t out o’ your box.”

“You got a lot to learn about baseball,” says Brodie.

“I’m learnin’ fast,” says Bull. “I just found out why they call your club the Naps.”

He didn’t put nobody out of a game till along in the middle o’ that season. We was playin’ Washin’ton and Kennedy was in a battin’ slump. He was sore at the world and tryin’ to take it out on the umps. He’d throwed his glove all over the field and tossed his cap in the air and beefed on every decision, if it was close or not. He struck out twice, and when Bull called a strike on him his third time up, he stooped over and grabbed a handful o’ dirt.

“A yard outside!” he says, and tossed the dirt to’rds Bull.

“Well, Mr. Kennedy,” Bull says, “if there is a yard outside, that’s where you better spend the rest o’ the afternoon.”

“Am I out o’ the game?” says Kennedy.

“Hasn’t nobody told you?” says Bull. “You been out of it pretty near two weeks.”

“You’re about as funny as choppin’ down trees,” says Kennedy.

“Go in and dress,” Bull told him. “Maybe you’ll find your battin’ eye in your street clo’es.”

The next day Bull was umpirin’ the bases. Kennedy didn’t get suspended, and when he come to bat in the first innin’ and seen that Bull had switched, he yelled to him: “Congratulations! You ought to do better out there. It’s a cinch you couldn’t do worse.”

“Walter,” says Bull to Johnson, who was pitchin’, “give Kennedy a base on balls. I want to talk to him.”

In the last game o’ the series Kennedy finally did get a hold o’ one and hit it for two bases.

“Now it’s my turn to congratulate you,” Bull says to him.

“Oh,” says Kennedy, “I can hit ’em all right when they’s a good umps behind that plate.”

W’ile he was still talkin’, whoever was pitchin’ wheeled round and catched him a mile off’n the bag. Bull waved him out and he started to crab.

“Go on in to the bench, Kennedy,” says Bull. “The game must look funny to you from here anyway.”

Big Johnson worked against us in Chi one day and he had more stuff than I ever seen him have. Poor little Weber, facin’ him for the first time, was scared stiff. He just stood there and took three. Next time, he struck at one and let the next two come right over. Bull, who was back o’ the plate, couldn’t help from laughin’ and the kid got sore.

“Why don’t you call ’em all strikes!” he says.

“I would,” Bull says, “only they’s just a few o’ them I can see.”

Well, Weber’s third trip up there was just like his first one. He didn’t even swing. And after Bull had called him out for the third time, he says:

“Fine work, umps! You ought to go to an oculist and get the dust took out o’ your eyes.”

“Yes,” says Bull, “and you ought to go to a surgeon and have the bat removed from your shoulder.”

One afternoon Jennin’s started a kid named Sawyer against us. He was hog wild and he throwed ten balls without gettin’ a strike.

“It looks like a tough day for us, Bull,” says Stanage.

“Well, anyway,” Bull says, “my right arm needs a good rest.”

When two fellas had walked and they was two balls on the next one, Sawyer pitched a ball that you could of called either way. Bull called it a ball.

“What was the matter with that one?” says Sawyer.

“You pitched it,” says Bull.

He was base umpire once when Walsh caught Carney flatfooted off o’ third base. It was in the ninth innin’ and they was only the one run behind us, so Carney begin to whine.

“Kind o’ drowsy, eh?” says Bull. “I’ll bet your mother was up all night with you.”

Before the end of his first season he had the boys pretty well scared o’ that tongue of his’n and they weren’t none o’ them sayin’ much to him. But o’ course, durin’ the winter, they forgot how he could lash ’em, and when spring come again he was as good as ever. It’s been that way every season since. Along about this time, and up to July, they’re layin’ themself wide open and takin’ all he can give. Then, from July on, they’re tired o’ bein’ laughed at and they see they can’t get the best of him, so they lay off.

Not me, though. I beef on every decision he makes against me all season long. I can get as good a laugh when it’s me that’s the goat as when it’s somebody else.

He’s pulled some pippins on me. I wisht I’d wrote down even half o’ them, but anyway they don’t sound as good when I tell ’em as when he sprung ’em on me.

I remember we was playin’ our last series with the Boston club in 1912. They’d cinched the pennant already and nobody cared a whole lot how our games come out. I’ve got plenty o’ friends in Boston, and the first night we was there I neglected to go to bed. So the next afternoon I was kind o’ logy.

I dropped a couple o’ thrown balls at first base and was off the bag once when I had all the time in the world to find it. Well, Bull had three or four close ones to guess and he guessed ’em all against us.

“Are you goin’ to work in the World’s Series?” I ast him.

“I haven’t heard,” he says.

“If you do,” I says, “I’m goin’ to bet my season’s pay on the Red Sox.”

“If you’re lookin’ for easy money,” says Bull, “why don’t you go ahead and bet your season’s pay on the Red Sox, and then sign with the Giants to play first base?”

In 1914 I’d been havin’ a long spell o’ bad luck with my hittin’ and they was just gettin’ ready to bench me when one day, in St. Louis, I got one safe. I tried to make two bases on it, but overslid the bag and Bull called me out.

“Oh, Bull!” I says. “Have a heart.”

“They won’t bawl you for this,” says Bull. “You ain’t been here in so long it’s no wonder you forgot where the station was. I think you done pretty well to remember my name. I been umpirin’ the bases for two weeks.”

Then they was once in Boston, just last year. We still had a chance yet and we was crazy to take a fall out o’ that bunch. I was overanxious, I guess. Anyway, it was a tight game and in the sixth or seventh innin’ I got caught off o’ first. “Bull,” I says, “if you’re with the home club, why don’t you wear a white suit?”

“Larry,” says he, “you ought to play ball in your pyjamas.”

And in New York one day I give somebody the hit and run, and the ball fooled me and I didn’t swing. The fella was throwed out at second base, and Bull called it a strike on me.

“Why, Bull!” I says. “He was wastin’ that ball.”

“Sure he was,” says Bull. “All the good balls is wasted on you.”

And once in Washin’ton, we was two runs to the good in the ninth and had two men out and it looked all over. The next man⁠—Milan, I think it was⁠—hit a fly ball straight up and I hollered I was goin’ to take it. Well, it just missed beanin’ me and Milan pulled up at second base. The next fella hit a ground ball between I and the bag. I missed it clean. Milan scored and the other fella stopped at second. Then somebody made a three-base hit. The score was tied and the winnin’ run was on third base.

A slow ground ball was hit down to’rds me. I seen that Doran, who was pitchin’, was goin’ for the ball instead o’ the bag and I seen that the ball was mine and I’d have to get it and chase back with it myself. I done it as fast as I could and the play was mighty close. Bull called the man safe. It meant the game and we was all sore, but me especially, on account o’ them two flivvers.

“You blind owl!” I says to Bull. “Who told you you could umpire?”

“Who recommended you to Griffith?” says Bull.

That’s the way he was. You could set up all night and figure out what you was goin’ to say to him next day, and then when you said it, he’d come back with somethin’ that made you wish you hadn’t. That is, unless you was like me and kept after him just for the laughs he give you.

I and Tommy set there talkin’ till pretty close to midnight. Then we decided they wasn’t no more use waitin’ for Bull. So Tommy went up to his room and I moseyed out the front door and onto the walk. I hadn’t took more’n a couple o’ steps when I seen the guy we’d been fannin’ about. He was just goin’ in to the hotel bar. I followed him.

“Hello, Bull!” I says, when we was both inside.

“What’s the idear?” he says. “Did you come clear down here to tell me that Cady didn’t tag you?”

“No,” I says. “He tagged me all right. But I’m taggin’ you to find out what’s got into you.”

“I guess I got plenty into me now,” says he. “When a man that’s cold sober gets fired from his job for bein’ lit, they’s only the one thing to do. I’ve been tryin’ my best all evenin’ to deserve the reputation they’ve wished on me.”

I give him the double O. He could walk straight and he could talk straight. But he was kind of owl-eyed and his face looked like a royal flush o’ diamonds.

“Let’s have somethin’,” he says.

“You’ve had enough,” says I.

“That’s no sign I ain’t goin’ to have more,” he says.

“You better go to bed,” I says.

“What for?” says he. “I got nothin’ to do tomorrow or any other tomorrow. I’m through.”

“They’s other leagues,” says I. “You won’t have no trouble gettin’ a job.”

“I don’t want no job,” says Bull. “I haven’t no use for a job.”

“What are you goin’ to live on?” I ast him.

“I don’t want to live,” he says.

“Aw, piffle!” says I. “You’ll feel better for a good night’s sleep.”

“Well,” says Bull, “they’s just as much chance o’ me gettin’ a good night’s sleep as they is o’ them playin’ part o’ the World’s Series in Peoria.”

“Bull,” I says, “I believe they’s somethin’ botherin’ you outside o’ losin’ your job.”

“You’re too smart to be playin’ ball,” he says.

O’ course I knowed then that Tommy’d been right⁠—that the old boy had had a blow o’ some kind. And I was mighty curious to learn what’d came off. But I realized it wouldn’t get me nothin’ to ask.

We h’isted three or four together without exchangin’ a word. Then, all of a sudden, I seen a big tear streakin’ down Bull’s cheek and in another minute I was listenin’ to his story.

Bull’s parents is both dead⁠—been dead five or six years. He never had no brothers or sisters or aunts or uncles or nothin’. He was born down South somewheres and didn’t have no use for cold weather, but his old man moved to Buffalo when Bull was about sixteen, so from that time till his mother and father died he spent his winters, and the summers before he went to umpirin’, up North. They wasn’t no reason why he shouldn’t suit himself after the old people passed out, so back South he went for his winters. He stayed in New Orleans the first couple o’ years, but it cost him a pile o’ money. Then he tried Montgomery, and that’s where he met the lady.

Her name’s Maggie, Maggie Gregory. Bull described her as the prettiest thing he ever seen, and so on. The Gregorys didn’t have so much dough that they didn’t know how to spend it. In fact, they was kind o’ hard up. The head o’ the house worked in a hardware store for somethin’ like fifteen a week. He had a son named Martin; yes, sir, the same Martin Gregory that Connie Mack let go last week and we got signed up now.

Martin and Maggie was twins. Maggie was learnin’ the milliner trade, but at the time Bull met ’em Martin wasn’t workin’ at all, except durin’ meals. He was one o’ the kind o’ guys that’d rather go to the electric chair, where he could be sure o’ settin’ down, than attend the theater and take a chance o’ havin’ to stand up w’ile they played the “Star-Spangled Banner.” If he’d lived in a town where they wasn’t no letter carriers he wouldn’t never got no mail. He’d of starved to death in a cafeteria with a pocket full o’ money.

He treated the whole of his family like they was waiters, and they treated him like he was the Kaiser. His mother was crazy over him, and Maggie used to split fifty-fifty with him on her princely salary. The old man never called him, and seemed to just take it for granted that Martin was born to have the best of it.

Bull landed in Montgomery the same time that the Gregorys made up their mind to take a boarder. They put an ad in the paper and Bull answered it. He answered it in the evenin’, when Maggie was home. After gettin’ a look at her, he’d of stayed there if they made him sleep in the sink and give him nothin’ to eat but catnip.

Maggie and Martin was eighteen then. They ain’t no use o’ me tryin’ to give you Bull’s description of her. Martin, accordin’ to Bull, was a handsome kid and had the best clo’es his sister’s money could buy. He was built like an ath-a-lete and his features was enough like the girl’s to make him good-lookin’. Bull fell for him this first night; he didn’t know nothin’ then about the feud between Martin and Work.

Well, they all treated Bull like he was an old friend and made him feel more like it was his own house than just a place to board. Maggie smiled at him every time she seen him, though it wasn’t no case o’ love at first sight on her part; she was just tryin’ to be friendly. The old lady worried if he didn’t take nine or ten helpin’s o’ whatever was on the table, and kept his room as neat and clean as Martin’s. The old man played rummy with him three or four times a week and give Bull good laughs on all his quick stuff. And Martin took kindly to him, too, figurin’ probably that the dough Bull paid for board would mean more dude clo’es in the wardrobe. Bull says he never knowed what this here Southern hospitality was till he went to live with the Gregorys.

It wasn’t till Bull had been there about three weeks that he told ’em what he done for a livin’. Well, the old people and Maggie didn’t know nothin’ about baseball except that Martin, when he was a kid, had been the best player in the school where he attended at. He’d told ’em so. But Martin himself, it turned out, was a nut on the national pastime. He knowed who Cobb was and who Matty was and their records, right down to little bits o’ fractions. Not only that, but he went to see the Montgomery bunch perform whenever they had the courage to face the home crowd. So Bull was a hero to him, in spite of his profession.

At meals, Martin wouldn’t talk nothin’ but baseball, and Bull had to talk it with him. I suppose the proud parents and Maggie felt kind o’ sorry for Bull, figurin’ that the kid, bein’ perfect, was gettin’ all the best of him in the arguments. The old boy was foxy enough to see that the easiest way to win Maggie was by helpin’ to make Martin look good. So when they’d got about so far in a fannin’ bee, Bull’d stop dead and say, “By George! You’re right,” even if Martin was arguin’ that Walter Johnson ought to learn to throw left-handed and play third base.

Bull thought he was just a fresh kid. He thought the reason he wasn’t workin’ was probably because he’d lost a job and hadn’t found another. He liked Martin OK till he begin to suspect that he was too proud to toil. It was the old lady that give him the hunch, when she says somethin’ about the kid’s delicate health.

“Yes,” Bull says to himself, “he’s awful delicate lookin’, like Frank Gotch.”

Before the winter was half over, Bull was givin’ ’em the time o’ their lives, takin’ ’em somewheres every other night. It was a pipe that Maggie liked him, and it was a bigger pipe that she had him on her reserve list, with no chance to get away. But he was too shy to talk to her about anything but the climate; he says she was the first girl he was ever scared of.

Along in March, some o’ the Montgomery ball players showed up for their trainin’. Bull always took some work in the spring to get himself hard and fix up his windpipes, so that year he joined the local bunch and done stunts with them. Martin ast to go along with him the third or fourth day. So out they went together to the Montgomery orchard and Bull got the biggest su’prise of his life.

Instead o’ settin’ up in the stand and lookin’ on, Martin peeled down to his shirtsleeves and busted right into the practice. He tackled the high-low game first, and Bull says to see him at it you wouldn’t of never believed it was the same boy that wouldn’t drink coffee unless you held the cup to his mush. Baseball wasn’t work to him⁠—it was fun. And that made the whole difference.

Well, Martin showed so much life the first day that Bull borrowed a suit for him and fixed it with the Montgomery gang to leave him frolic round their park as much as he liked. And he wasn’t no joke with the ath-a-letes. He didn’t know nothin’, but he had as much mechanical ability as you ever see in a kid. He could whip the ball round like a shot, and he was good on ground balls and he swung the old stick like it was a lath. Bull give him a lot o’ pointers and so did the rest o’ the boys, and by the time Bull was ready to go North, Martin was good enough to hold down an infield job somewhere in the brush.

Maggie and old Gregory was as proud as peacocks. The old woman was proud too, but she was scared to death that the pet would get beaned or stepped on and killed. Bull finally convinced her that baseball was as safe as ridin’ in a rockin’-chair, and Martin was allowed to keep on with the only exercise he’d took in years, outside o’ puttin’ on his pyjamas at night and pullin’ ’em off in the mornin’.

Bull left Montgomery with the understandin’ that he could have his room when he come back in the fall. Maggie squeezed his hand when she told him goodbye, and that, Bull says, along with the post cards she sent him, was all that kept him alive that summer.

In June the Gregorys sent him a clippin’ from a Montgomery paper. Martin had been signed by the Montgomery club to play second base, and he looked like the best thing that had broke into the Southern League in years.

The second off-season that Bull spent with the Gregorys he was still too shy yet to make any play for the lady, outside o’ blowin’ all his loose change in showin’ she and her folks a time. But last fall, after they’d gave him his bit for workin’ in the big series, and he felt like he had enough financial backin’ to justify the plunge, he wired her to meet his train and he pulled his speech on her w’ile his nerve was still with him.

She didn’t say yes or she didn’t say no. She told him she liked him a whole lot bettern’n anybody except Brother Martin, and she appreciated his kindness to all o’ them, and so on. But it would take a lot o’ thinkin’ to decide the question, and could he wait? So he says he could do anything for her and they left it go at that.

As soon as they was off’n the subject, she begin to talk about Martin and what he’d been doin’ in baseball. She admitted that he was the greatest ball player south of Alaska, but o’ course the Montgomery club didn’t give him a fair show on account o’ bein’ jealous, and the manager kept him on the bench half the time for the fear some big league scout’d see him and steal him away from Montgomery. What she wanted Bull to do was tell some manager in our league about him, and have him bought. Martin would do the rest; he’d show ’em if he ever got the chance.

Well, Bull told her it was against the rules for an umps to recommend a ball player to a club in his own league. It wouldn’t be fair to the Boston club, for instance, if Bull give Detroit first whack at a second Cobb. O’ course Bull knowed that plenty o’ scouts must of saw Martin and passed him up, and that the Montgomery club wasn’t tryin’ to conceal a man for who they could get a big price.

She ast him if he couldn’t get some friend to do the recommendin’ if he couldn’t do it himself. He told her he was scared his part in it would be found out. Then she says that he must care a lot about her if he was afraid to take a little risk like that. He told her he’d try and think of a way to swing it, but she must give him time.

He found Martin more of a dude than ever and as modest as a wrestler. He couldn’t talk about nothin’ but how much better he was than the Southern League, and it was easy to see from his clo’es that he wasn’t contributin’ nothin’ to the family except conversation and his personal attendance at meals.

Hatin’ yourself, though, ain’t nothin’ against a ball player. Take most any real star and when the dialogue ain’t about him he’s bored to death, and if he has a bad day, pitchin’ or hittin’ or whatever it is he does, it’s plain tough luck or rotten umpirin’.

So Bull didn’t think none the less o’ Martin’s ability on account o’ the size of his chest, even if he did get good an’ sick o’ hearin’ nothin’ but Martin, Martin, Martin, all day and half the night.

Bull would of gave anything if Maggie and the rest o’ them had forgot their scheme to land the pet in the big menagerie. But they wasn’t a chance. When he’d rather of been hearin’ that she cared somethin’ about him, she was eggin’ him on to hurry up and think of a way to bring Brother to the attention o’ the real people.

In December Bull read in the paper that Ted Pierce, the manager o’ the Montgomery club, was in town. He made a date to meet him and find out just how good Martin was.

“He’s just good enough to of pretty near drove me wild,” Ted told him. “If we’re ten runs ahead and he comes up with the bases full, he’ll hit one from here to Nashville. Or if we’re fifteen runs behind in the last half o’ the ninth, with two out, it’s fifty to one that he’ll get to first base. But put him up to that plate when everything depends on him and you’d think he had paralysis o’ the arms. He’ll take three in the groove and then holler murder at the umps.”

“Plain yellow, eh?” says Bull.

“I don’t like to say that about nobody,” Ted says. “But if the old U.S. called for volunteers, I’d bet on Benedict Arnold to beat him to the front.”

“Ain’t they no chance of him gettin’ over it?” ast Bull.

“I’ve tried everything,” says Ted. “I’ve called him all the names I could think of. I’ve tried to jolly him too; I’ve told him the pitchers was all scared of him and all he’d have to do was swing that club. But he’s just as bad as when he broke in.”

“He’s a kid yet,” says Bull. “It may be just stage fright.”

“It may be,” says Ted. “He certainly is cocky enough most o’ the time; it’s only in a pinch that he loses it.”

“I’m a friend of his family,” says Bull. “I’d like awful well to see him move up.”

“You wouldn’t like it no better’n me,” says Ted. “I’d like to see him move anywheres. I’m sick o’ lookin’ at him. If you can sell him for any kind of a price, I’ll give you half of it.”

“You know I couldn’t sell him,” says Bull. “But if somebody else recommended him to somebody and I was ast about him, I’d do my best.”

“Well,” says Ted, “I ain’t goin’ to recommend him nowheres, unless it’s to a fella I got no use for. I’m goin’ to try him again in the spring, and if he don’t quit chokin’ to death every time he’s got a chance to be a hero, I’ll tie a can on him whether he’s a friend o’ yours or Woodrow Wilson’s.”

“Outside o’ that, he’s a good ball player, is he?” says Bull.

“They ain’t no man I ever seen with more natural advantages,” Ted told him. “His record shows that he hit .329 and stole thirty-two bases and fielded as good as any second baseman in the league. But he didn’t make none o’ those base hits when we’d of gave a thousand dollars apiece for ’em, and when he could of pulled a pitcher out of a hole with a swell piece o’ fieldin’ he simply booted the ball all over the infield.”

“They’s just the one hope for him, then,” says Bull, “and that’s to go out and get some o’ the old nervine.”

“If you can make him do that,” says Ted, “I’ll guarantee to sell him to any club you name.”

So Bull, that night, told Maggie that Martin was still shy of experience and needed at least another year in minor league ball before he could hope to stick up with the E-light. He figured that he could work on the kid all the rest o’ the winter and maybe succeed in stingin’ him enough with hot conversation to get that streak out of him.

But Maggie right away wanted to know where Bull’d got his information and Bull had to tell her.

“No wonder!” says Maggie. “Pierce never did have a good word for him. Him and all the rest o’ them’s jealous.”

“You’re mistaken,” says Bull. “Pierce wouldn’t like nothin’ better than to sell him for a good price.”

“All right,” says Maggie, “if you think I’m mistaken, that shows you don’t care nothin’ about me.”

So Bull didn’t have no answer to that swell argument only to beg her pardon and say she was probably right.

Well, it finally come to a kind of a showdown: Bull was either to see that Martin got his chance this spring or he’d have to worry along without Maggie. She didn’t come right out and say that the way I’ve put it, but she made it plain enough so’s they wasn’t much chance to misunderstand.

Bull kicked the sheets round for a few nights and then got his idear. O’ course the first thing was to pick a club that was tryin’ to build up, and if possible to pick one that had a manager who’d pay the right kind of attention to a kid. Bull chose Connie as the best bet. The next thing was to persuade Connie to give Martin his trial. Bull wanted to be perfectly square, as you’ll see by the deal he put through. He got a fella there in Montgomery with a good Irish name to write to Connie and recommend the boy, and if Connie didn’t believe Martin was a good prospect he was to ask Bull about him, and if Martin didn’t make good he wouldn’t cost Connie nothin’, not even his railroad fare to the trainin’ camp and back. Bull framed it up with Ted Pierce as a matter o’ friendship to leave the boy go on trial, and if he did su’prise ’em all and make good, the Montgomery club was to get whatever Connie was willin’ to pay.

Well, the letter was sent and Connie wrote back to Bull, and says a boy named Gregory had been mentioned to him, and ast Bull was he worth a trial. Bull answered that Gregory was a kid with great natural ability and one or two faults that’d have to be overcome. Then Connie fixed it with the Montgomery club, and Bull thought he’d finished his job.

But he found out different. W’ile Maggie consented to becomin’ engaged, she wasn’t in no hurry to get married. She says her parents was gettin’ old and she didn’t want to leave ’em all summer, and besides, she didn’t have no clo’es, and besides, it would be a whole lot nicer to wait till fall and spend the honeymoon where they’d first met each other and when Bull was just startin’ his vacation instead of endin’ it. Bull coaxed and coaxed, but her rules was just like his’n⁠—she couldn’t change a decision on a question o’ judgment.

In the three weeks before Martin was to report in Jacksonville, Bull done nothin’ but try and shoot him full o’ confidence.

“The pitchers down here have got everything you’ll see in the big league,” he told him. “You don’t need to be afraid o’ none o’ them. A man that handles a bat the way you do can hit anything in the world if he’ll just swing. Connie or any other manager don’t care how many times you strike out in the pinch, provided you strike out tryin’. You got the stuff in you to make Cobb and Baker and them look like a rummy. Don’t get scared; that’s all.”

Bull pulled that talk on him right up to the day the kid left Montgomery. Down at the train, Bull says to him:

“Remember, they’s nothin’ to be scared of. Make us all proud o’ you! Make good!”

“I’ll make good if they give me a square deal,” he says.

“Yes,” Bull says to himself, “it’s a cinch it’ll be somebody else’s fault if he falls down. It always is.”

Well, in a little w’ile it come time for Bull to leave too. And here’s what the girl sprung on him at the partin’:

“You’ll help him all you can, won’t you?” she says.

“They’s not a chance for me to help him,” says Bull. “A man in my place can’t favor nobody.”

“A man could,” she says, “if a man knowed it would please the girl he was stuck on.”

Now if it’d of been me that she made that remark to, I’d of ast for waivers. But you know what they say about love bein’ blind. And when it’s a combination o’ love and an umpire⁠—well, how can you beat it!

Bull kept close tab on the papers and he seen that Martin was at second base in the lineup o’ the Ath-a-letics’ regular club. This was w’ile they was still South. Then, in one o’ their last exhibitions before the season started, Martin’s name was left out. He wrote to the kid and he wrote to Maggie, tryin’ to find out what was doin’. Maggie wrote back that she didn’t know and Martin didn’t answer at all.

The season begin and Bull was workin’ in the West. Every mornin’ he grabbed the papers and looked to see if Martin was back in. Four times in three weeks the kid went up to bat for somebody, but without doin’ no good. Then come the second week in this month and the first series between the Eastern clubs and us.

Bull had the Detroit⁠–⁠Philadelphia series. Just before the first game he run into Connie outside o’ the park. They shook hands and then Bull says:

“Didn’t you ask me about a ball player this winter?”

“Yes,” says Connie, “a boy named Gregory.”

“How’s he comin’?” says Bull.

“I don’t think he’s comin’,” says Connie. “I think he’s just gettin’ ready to go.”

“What’s the trouble?” ast Bull.

“Well,” says Connie, “once in a w’ile our club happens to not be more’n two or three runs behind, happens to have a chance to tie or win. Gregory’s one o’ the kind o’ ball players that spoils them chances. In practice down South he looked like a find. He hit everything and fielded all over the place. But we got into some tight exhibitions on the way up and when the opportunities come to him to do somethin’ big he faded away. He ain’t there in a pinch; that’s all.”

“Is he with you yet?” Bull ast him.

“He’s with us,” says Connie; “he’s with us for one more trial. If they’s a place in this series where I can use a substitute hitter, Gregory’s goin’ to be the man. And if he don’t swing that club the way he can swing it when it don’t mean nothin’, I’ll hand him his transportation back to Montgomery.”

“Does the kid know that?” ast Bull.

“Yes,” says Connie, “and if they’s any stuff in him the knowledge that this is his last chance should ought to bring it out.”

“You mean,” says Bull, “that if he strikes out again in a pinch he’s through?”

“No, I don’t,” says Connie. “I mean he’s through if he doesn’t try to murder that ball. I don’t care if he strikes out on three pitches, just so he swings.”

“But suppose,” says Bull⁠—“suppose they don’t throw him nothin’ he can hit; suppose they walk him.”

“O’ course,” says Connie, “if the count gets down to two and three, I’d want him to pass the ball up if it was bad. But if it was where he could reach it, I’d want him to take a wallop, just to show me he ain’t scared.”

So that’s how Martin stood with Connie at the beginnin’ o’ this series between the Ath-a-letics and Detroit.

The thing didn’t happen the first day. The game wasn’t close and Martin watched it all from the bench. Bull talked to him, but didn’t get what you could call a cordial welcome. Bull wasn’t su’prised at that; they ain’t no ball player that’ll kid with an umps when his dauber’s down. He refused Bull’s invitation to come round to the hotel that night and have supper with him. And Bull decided that the best play was to leave him alone.

They was a letter from the girl waitin’ for Bull that evenin’. She’d heard from her brother and she knowed that he wasn’t burnin’ up the League; but he’d confessed that Connie hadn’t treated him good and the umpires had robbed him blind. She knew, she wrote, that Bull wouldn’t cheat him; if Bull really cared for her, he’d help him if he got a chance. And it would kill her and her father and mother besides if Martin had to face the disgrace o’ not makin’ good.

Bull went to bed and dreamt that Martin was up in a pinch, and he was umpirin’ behind the plate, and Martin turned round and looked at him just before the ball was pitched, and Bull smiled at him to encourage him, and Martin took an awful wallop at the pill and give it a ride to the fence in right center. That’s what Bull dreamt before the second game o’ that series. And here’s what really come off:

Big Coveleskie and Bush was havin’ a whale of a battle. They wasn’t nobody scored till the eighth. Cobb got on then, with only one out. So that give Detroit a run. The ninth looked to be all over. Two o’ the Ath-a-letics was out. Then somebody got hold o’ one and lit on it for three bases, and what was left o’ the crowd decided to stick round a w’ile.

Bull says he knowed Martin was comin’ up before he ever looked. And he smiled at him when he announced himself as the batter.

Coveleskie come with a fast ball. Martin had to duck to keep from gettin’ hit. Coveleskie come with a curve. Martin made a feeble swing and missed it. Jennin’s hollered from the bench:

“Run out with the water! The boy’s goin’ to swoon!”

Another curve ball that broke over, and Martin left it go.

“Strike two!” says Bull.

“It was inside,” says Martin.

“You’ll never drive in that run with a base on balls,” says Bull.

Coveleskie come with a curve that was high and outside. It was the second ball. He come with another curve, in the same spot. It was three and two.

“Give him all you got!” yelled Jennin’s. “Get it over there! He’s too scared to swing!”

Bull told me that w’ile Coveleskie was gettin’ ready for that next pitch he could see Maggie and the old folks in front of him just as plain as if they was there, and a voice kept sayin’ to him, “Call it a ball! Call it a ball!”

The ball come⁠—a fast one. Bull knowed what it was and where it was comin’, and he bit his tongue to keep from sayin’ “Swing!” Right across the middle it come, as perfect a strike as was ever pitched. And Martin’s bat stayed on his shoulder.

“You’re out!” says Bull. “It cut the heart!”

The heart o’ the plate, and Bull’s too, I guess.

Bull met Connie again next day, outside o’ the park.

“I’ve canned your friend Gregory,” says Connie.

“Do you know,” says Bull, “I come near callin’ that last one a ball?”

“If you had,” says Connie, “the kid would of been let out anyway, and you’d of fell, in my estimation, from the best umpire in the league to the worst in the world.”

Now what does dear little Brother Martin do next? Instead o’ goin’ back to Montgomery like a man and tryin’ to get a fresh start with the club that he’d been borrowed off of, he sets down and writes Maggie that Connie would of kept him only for Bull callin’ him out on a ball that was so low and so far outside that the Detroit catcher had to lay down to get it, and that Bull done it because he didn’t like him, and if Maggie didn’t tie a can to Bull, Martin was through with her and with the old man and old lady too.

Well, the girl wrote back to Bull callin’ off the engagement, sayin’ how sorry her and her parents was to find out that he would stoop to such meanness and askin’ him not to communicate with her no more. And Bull’s bullheaded enough so as he wouldn’t make a move to square things.

He got that letter from her day before yesterday, just before he left his hotel to come out to the yard. Is it any wonder he didn’t say nothin’ when I claimed Cady didn’t tag me, and went entirely off’n his nut when Cahill called him a crook?

W’ile he was spillin’ me the story I got enough into him to make a good sleepin’ potion, and then helped him to the hay. The first thing yesterday mornin’ I seen Ban and fixed that end of it by repeatin’ the romance. But don’t never breathe that Ban knows all about it. Bull thinks he’s takin’ him back because it was his first offense. And he’s comin’ back; Ban says he’s promised to be in there tomorrow.

And right here in my pocket I got somethin’ to show him that’ll be better news than gettin’ back his job. As luck would have it, I was the first guy to get to the park yesterday, and when I blowed into the clubhouse, who was settin’ there but young Mr. Gregory himself! He told me his name and wanted to know was they any chance of him gettin’ a tryout with us?

“Yes,” I says, “they’s one chance and you’ll get it if you do as I say. Connie couldn’t of gave you to the Montgomery club again if we hadn’t waived. But I’ll fix it for you to join us tomorrow and try your luck again on these conditions: In the first place, you got to go right out now and wire your sister and tell her that the ball you was called out on was right through the middle o’ the plate and the best strike you ever seen, and that Connie would of released you anyway, and that if your sister don’t wire right back to Bull, in my care, statin’ that she’s reconsidered and it’s still on between she and him, you won’t never recognize her as your sister.”

“And what if I won’t do that?” he says.

“You won’t get no chance at a job here,” says I, “but you’ll get the worst lickin’ that was ever gave.”

He sent the telegram and I got a night letter this mornin’; addressed to Bull it was, but I read it. I’ve been tryin’ to locate him all day and he’s goin’ to call up as soon as he gets back to his hotel. Everything’s fixed and tomorrow he’ll feel so good that he’s liable to forget himself and give us somethin’ but the worst of it.

As for Martin, if he don’t make good with our club it’ll be because he can’t hit and not because he’s too scared to try. I’ll have him too scared o’ me to be scared of anything else.