Women

Young Jake uttered a few words which it would pain me to repeat.

“And what are you crabbin’ about?” asked Mike Healy from his corner of the bench.

“Oh, nothin’!” said Jake. “Nothin’ except that I’m sick of it!”

“Sick of what?” demanded Healy.

“Of settin’ here!” Jake replied.

“You!” said Mike Healy, with a short laugh. “You’ve got a fine license to squawk! Why, let’s see: what is it? The third of June, and your first June in the league. You ain’t even begin to sit! Look at me! Been on this bench since catchers started wearin’ a mast, or anyway it seems that long. And you never hear me crab, do you, Lefty?”

“Only when you talk,” answered the athlete addressed. “And that’s only at table or between meals.”

“But if this kid’s hollerin’ already,” said Mike, “what’ll he be doin’ along in August or September, to say nothin’ about next August and the August after that?”

“Don’t worry!” said Young Jake. “I’ll either be a regular by the end of this season or I won’t be on this ball club at all!”

“That-a-boy!” said Healy. “Threaten ’em!”

“I mean what I say!” retorted Jake. “I ain’t goin’ to spend my life on no bench! I come here to play baseball!”

“Oh, you did!” said Healy. “And what do you think I come here for, to fish?”

“I ain’t talkin’ about you,” said Young Jake. “I’m talkin’ about myself.”

“That’s a novelty in a ball player,” remarked Lefty.

“And what I’m sayin’,” Jake went on, “is that I’m sick of settin’ on this bench.”

“This ain’t a bad bench,” said Healy. “They’s a hell of a lot worse places you might sit.”

“And a hell of a lot better places!” said Jake. “I can think of one right now. I’m lookin’ right at it.”

“Where at?”

“Right up in the old stand; the third⁠—no, the fourth row, next to the aisle, the first aisle beyond where the screen leaves off.”

“I noticed her myself!” put in Lefty. “Damn cute! Too damn cute for a busher like you to get smoked up over.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Young Jake. “I didn’t get along so bad with them dames down South.”

“Down South ain’t here!” replied Lefty. “Those dames in some of those swamps, they lose their head when they see a man with shoes on. But up here you’ve got to have something. If you pulled that Calhoun County stuff of yours on a gal like that gal in the stand she’d yell for the dog catcher. She’d⁠—”

“They’re all alike!” interrupted Mike Healy. “South, or here, or anywheres, they’re all the same, and all poison!”

“What’s poison?” asked Jake.

“Women!” said Healy. “And the more you have to do with ’em the better chance you’ve got of spendin’ your life on this bench. Why⁠—That’s pitchin’, Joe!” he shouted when the third of the enemy batters had popped out and left a runner stranded at second base. “You look good in there today,” he added to Joe as the big pitcher approached the dugout.

“I’m all right, I guess,” said Joe, pulling on his sweater and moving toward the water bottle. “I wished that wind’d die down.”

The manager had come in.

“All right! Let’s get at ’em!” he said. “Nice work, Joe. Was that a fast one Meusel hit?”

“No,” said Joe. “A hook, but it didn’t break.”

“A couple of runs will beat ’em the way you’re going,” said the manager, stooping over to select his bat. “Make this fella pitch, boys,” he added. “He was hog wild in Philly the other day.”

The half inning wore on to its close, and the noncombatants were again left in possession of the bench. Young Jake addressed Healy.

“What’s women done to you, Mike?”

“Only broke me. That’s all!” said Healy.

“What do you mean, broke you! The boys tells me you ain’t spent nothin’ but the summer since you been in the league.”

“Oh, I’ve got a little money,” said Healy. “I don’t throw it away. I don’t go around payin’ ten smackers a quart for liquid catnip. But they’s more kinds of broke than money broke, a damn sight worse kinds, too. And when I say women has broke me, I mean they’ve made a bum out of my life; they’ve wrecked my⁠—what-do-you-call-it?”

“Your career,” supplied Lefty.

“Yes, sir,” said Healy. “And I ain’t kiddin’, neither. Why say, listen: Do you know where I’d be if it wasn’t for a woman? Right out there in that infield, playin’ that old third sack.”

“What about Smitty?” asked Young Jake.

“He’d be where I am⁠—on this bench.”

“Aw, come on, Mike! Be yourself! You don’t claim you’re as good as him!” Jake remonstrated.

“I do claim it, but it don’t make no difference if I am or I ain’t. He shouldn’t never ought to of had a chance, not on this club, anyway. You’d say the same if you knowed the facts.”

“Well, let’s hear ’em.”

“It’s a long story, and these boys has heard it before.”

“That’s all right, Mike,” said Gephart, a spare catcher. “We ain’t listened the last twelve times.”

“Well, it was the year I come in this league, four years ago this spring. I’d been with the Toledo club a couple of years. I was the best hitter on the Toledo club. I hit .332 the first year and .354 the next year. And I led the third basemen in fieldin’.”

“It would be hard not to,” interposed Lefty. “Anything a third baseman don’t get they call it a base hit. A third baseman ought to pay to get in the park.”

Healy glanced coldly at the speaker, and resumed:

“This club had Johnnie Lambert. He was still about the best third baseman in this league, but he was thirty-five years old and had a bad knee. It had slipped out on him and cost this club the pennant. They didn’t have no other third baseman. They lose sixteen out of twenty games. So that learned ’em a lesson, and they bought me. Their idear was to start Johnnie in the spring, but they didn’t expect his knee to hold up. And then it was goin’ to be my turn.

“But durin’ the winter Johnnie got a hold of some specialist somewheres that fixed his knee, and he come South with a new least of life. He hit good and was as fast as ever on the bases. Meanw’ile I had been on a huntin’ trip up in Michigan that winter and froze my dogs, and they ailed me so that I couldn’t do myself justice all spring.”

“I suppose it was some woman made you go huntin’,” said Gephart, but Healy continued without replying:

“They was a gal from a town named Ligonier, Indiana, that had visited in Toledo the second year I played ball there. The people where she was visitin’ was great baseball fans, and they brought her out to the game with them, and she got stuck on me.”

“Ligonier can’t be a town! It must be an asylum!” said Lefty.

“She got stuck on me,” Healy repeated, “and the people where she was stayin’ asked me to their house to supper. After supper the man and his wife said how about goin’ to the picture show, and the gal said she was tired and rather stay home. So the man and woman excused themselves. They said it was a picture they wanted to see and would I excuse them runnin’ off and leavin’ we two together. They were clubbin’ on me, see?

“Well, I thought to myself, I’ll give this dame an unpleasant surprise, so I didn’t even hold her hand all evenin’. When I got up to go she says she supposed it would be the last time she seen me as she expected to go back to Ligonier the next day. She didn’t have no more intentions of goin’ back the next day than crossin’ Lake Erie in a hollow tooth. But she knowed if I thought it was goodbye I’d kiss her. Well, I knowed it wasn’t goodbye, but what the hell! So that’s how it started, and I went to Ligonier that fall to see her, and we got engaged to be married. At least she seemed to think so.”

“Look at that!” interrupted Young Jake, his eyes on the field of action. “What could Sam of been thinkin’!”

“Thinkin’!” said Gephart. “Him!”

“What would Sam do,” wondered Lefty, “if they played baseball with only one base? He wouldn’t enjoy the game if he couldn’t throw to the wrong one.”

“That play’s liable to cost us somethin’,” said Gephart.

“I went up in Michigan on a huntin’ trip with some friends of mine,” Healy continued. “I froze my feet and was laid up all through January and February and shouldn’t of never went South. It was all as I could do to wear shoes, let alone play baseball. I wasn’t really myself till along the first of May. But, as I say, Johnnie Lambert had a new least of life and was lookin’ better than he’d looked for years. His knee wasn’t troublin’ him at all.

“Well, that’s how things went till around the last part of June. I didn’t get no action except five or six times goin’ up to hit for somebody. And I was like a young colt, crazy to be let loose. I knowed that if I once got in there and showed what I could do Judge Landis himself couldn’t keep me on the bench. I used to kneel down every night and pray to God to get to work on Lambert’s knee.

“The gal kept writin’ me letters and I answered ’em once in a w’ile, but we hadn’t saw each other since before Christmas. She hinted once or twice about when was we goin’ to get married, but I told her I didn’t want to even disgust the subject till I was somethin’ besides a bench warmer.

“We had a serious in Chi the tail-end of June, and the first night we was there I got a long-distance call from Ligonier. It was the gal’s sister, sayin’ the gal was sick. She was delirious part of the time and hollerin’ for me, and the doctor said if she could see me, it’d probably do her more good than medicine.

“So I said that’s all right, but they ain’t no off days in the schedule right now and I can’t get away. But they had looked up the time table and seen where I could leave Chi after the ball game, spend the night in Ligonier and get back for the game the next day.

“So I took a train from Englewood in the evenin’ and when I got off at Ligonier, there was my gal to meet me. She was the picture of health and no more delirious than usual. They said she had been just about ready to pass out when she learned I was comin’ and it cured her. They didn’t tell me what disease she’d had, but I suppose it was a grasshopper bite or somethin’.

“When I left next mornin’, the weddin’ date was set for that fall.

“Somewheres between South Bend and Laporte, the train stopped and liked it so well that we stayed there over three hours. We hit Englewood after four o’clock and I got to the park just in time to see them loadin’ Lambert into a machine to take him away. His knee had broke down on him in the first innin’s. He ain’t never played ball since. And Smitty, who’s always been a natural second baseman, he had my job.”

“He’s filled it pretty good,” said Lefty.

“That’s either here or there,” retorted Healy. “If I’d been around, nobody’d ever knowed if he could play third base or not. And the worst of him is,” he added, “that he never gets hurt.”

“Maybe you ain’t prayed for him like you done for Lambert,” said Young Jake. “What happened to the gal? Did you give her the air?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Healy. “When I give my word, I keep it. I simply wrote and told her that I’d agreed to marry her and I wouldn’t go back on it. But that my feelin’s towards her was the same as if she was an advanced case of spinal meningitis. She never answered the letter, so I don’t know if we’re still engaged or not.”

The inning was over and the boys were coming in.

“Joe was lucky to get out of that with only two runs,” remarked Lefty. “But of course it was Sam that put him in bad.”

“I’m goin’ to see if he’ll leave me get up on the lines,” said Young Jake, “so I can get a better look at that dame.”

The manager waited for Sam to catch up.

“What the hell was the matter with you, Sam?” he demanded.

Sam looked silly.

“I thought⁠—”

“That’s where you make your mistake!” the manager broke in. “Tough luck, Joe! But two runs are nothing. We’ll get ’em back.”

“Shall I go up on the lines?” asked Young Jake, hopefully.

“You? No!” said the manager. “You, Mike,” turning to Healy, “go over and coach at third base. You brought us luck yesterday.”

So it was Mike who was held partly responsible a few moments later when Smitty, who had tripled, was caught napping off the bag.

“Nice coachin’, Mike!” said Lefty, as Healy came back to the bench.

“Why don’t he watch hisself!” growled Mike. “And besides, I did yell at him!”

“You’re a liar!” said Lefty. “Your back was to the ball game. You were lookin’ up in the stand.”

“Why would I be lookin’ at the stand!” demanded Healy.

But nobody answered him. There was silence for a time. The boys were depressed; in their own language, their dauber was down. Finally Young Jake spoke.

“She’s starin’ right over this way!” he said.

“Who?” asked Gephart.

“That dame I pointed out. In the tan suit. Way over behind third base, the other side of the screen, in the fourth row.”

“I see her. Not bad!”

“I’ll say she’s not bad!” said Jake.

“Women!” said Healy. “You better get your mind on baseball or you’ll be back in that silo league, jumpin’ from town to town in a w’eelbarrow.”

“I don’t see why you should be off all women just because one of them brought you a little hard luck.”

“She wasn’t the only one! Why, say, if it wasn’t for women I’d be playin’ regular third base for McGraw right now and cuttin’ in on the big money every fall.”

“I didn’t know you was ever with McGraw.”

“I wasn’t,” said Healy, “but I ought to been, and would of been only for a woman. It was when I was playin’ with the Dayton club; my first year in baseball. Boy, I was fast as a streak! I was peggin’ bunts to first base before the guy could drop his bat. I covered so much ground to my left that I was always knockin’ the shortstop down and bumpin’ heads with the right fielder. Everybody was marvelin’ at me. Some of the old timers said I reminded them of Bill Bradley at his best, only that I made Bradley look like he was out of the game for a few days.

“Baldy Pierce was umpirin’ in our league that year. He wasn’t a bad umps, but he never left business interfere with pleasure. Many’s the time he called the last fella out in the last innin’s when the fella was safer than a hot chocolate at the Elks’ convention⁠—just because Baldy was hungry for supper.

“He was so homely that dogs wouldn’t live in the same town, and his friends used to try and make him wear his mask off the field as well as on. And yet he grabbed some of the prettiest gals you ever see. He said to me once, he said, ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘you tell me I’m homelier than Railroad Street, but I can cop more pips than you can with all your good looks!’ ”

At this point there were unprintable comments by Lefty, Gephart, and other occupants of the bench.

“One of these gals of his,” Healy went on, “was a gal named Helen Buck from Hamilton, Ohio. She was visitin’ in Dayton and come out to the ball game. The first day she was there a lot of the boys was hit in the face by thrown balls, and every time a foul went to the stand the whole infield run in to shag it. But she wouldn’t look at nobody but Pierce.

“Well, McGraw had heard about me, and he sent a fella named McDonald, that was scoutin’ for him, to look me over. It was in September and we was just about through. How the games come out didn’t make no difference, but I knowed this McDonald was there and what he was there for, so I wanted to make a showin’. He had came intendin’ to stay two days, but he’d overlooked a skip in the schedule that left us without no game the second day, so he said one game would have to be enough, as he had to go somewheres else.

“We was playin’ the Springfield club. I had a good day in the field, but Bill Hutton, who started pitchin’ for them, he was hog wild and walked me the first two times up. The third time they was a man on third and I had to follow orders and squeeze him home. So I hadn’t had no chance to really show what I could do up there at the plate.

“Well, we come into the ninth innin’s with the score tied and it was gettin’ pretty dark. We got two of them out, and then their first baseman, Jansen, he got a base on balls. Bill Boone caught a hold of one just right and cracked it to the fence and it looked like Jansen would score, but he was a slow runner. Davy Shaw, our shortstop, thought he must of scored and when the ball was thrown to him he throwed it to me to get Boone, who was tryin’ for three bases.

“Well, I had took in the situation at a glance; I seen that Jansen hadn’t scored and if I put the ball on Boone quick enough, why the run wouldn’t count. So I lunged at Boone and tagged him before Jansen had crossed the plate. But Pierce said the score counted and that Boone wasn’t out because I’d missed him. Missed him! Say, I bet that where I tagged him they had to take stitches!

“Anyway, that give ’em a one run lead, and when the first two fellas got out in our half everybody thought it was over. But Davy Shaw hit one to right center that a man like I could of ran around twice on it, but they held Davy at third base. And it was up to me to bring him in.

“By this time Jim Preston was pitchin’ for Springfield, and Jim was always a mark for me. I left the first one go by, as it was outside, but Pierce called it a strike. Then they was a couple of balls that he couldn’t call strikes. I cracked the next one over the leftfield fence, but it was a few inches foul. That made it two and two, and the next ball he throwed, well, if I hadn’t ducked my head just when I did they’d of been brains scattered all over Montgomery County. And what does Pierce do but yell ‘Batter out!’ and run for the clubhouse!

“Well, I run after him and asked him what the hell, and here is what he said. He said, ‘Mike,’ he said, ‘these games don’t mean nothin’, but if this here game had of wound up a tie it would of meant a game tomorrow, when we got a off day. And I made a date for tomorrow to go on a picnic with my little gal in Hamilton. You wouldn’t want me to miss that, would you?’ ”

“Why,” inquired Young Jake, “didn’t you break his nose or bust him in the chin?”

“His nose was already broke,” said Healy, “and he didn’t have no chin. I tried to get a hold of McDonald, the fella that was there scoutin’ me. I was goin’ to explain the thing to him. But he’d left town before I could catch him. It seems, though, that he’d set over to the side where he couldn’t see what a lousy strike it was and he told a friend of mine that he couldn’t recommend a man that would take a third strike when a base hit would of tied up the game; that on top of me ‘missin’ ’ Boone at third⁠—”

Another half inning was over and Healy started for the third-base coaching line without waiting for the manager to reach the bench. His teammates were not in a position to see the glance he threw at a certain spot in the stand as he walked to his “work.” When the side was retired scoreless and he had returned to his corner of the dugout he looked more desolate than ever.

“Women!” he said. “Why, if it wasn’t for women I’d be playin’ third base for Huggins; I’d have Joe Dugan’s job; I’d be livin’ right here in the capital of the world.”

“How do you make that out?” asked Young Jake.

“It’s a long story,” said Healy, “but I can tell you in a few words. We was playin’ the New York Club out home. Frank Baker had began to slip and Huggins was lookin’ for a good young fella to take his place. He was crazy to get me, but he had heard that I didn’t want to play in New York. This had came from me kiddin’ with some of the boys on the New York Club, tellin’ ’em I wouldn’t play here if they give me the town. So Huggins wanted to make sure before he started a trade. And he didn’t want no one to see him talkin’ to me. So he came around one night to the hotel where I was livin’ at the time. I was up in my room waitin’ for the phone gal to be off duty. She was stuck on me and I had a date to take her for a drive. So when Huggins come to see me she said I was out. She was afraid her date was goin’ to be interfered with. So Huggins went away and his club left town that night.”

“What did you do to her?” asked Jake.

“Oh, I couldn’t do nothin’ to her,” said Healy. “She claimed she didn’t know who it was.”

“Didn’t he give his name?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it was Huggins?”

“She said it was a little fella.”

“He ain’t the only little fella.”

“He’s the littlest fella I know,” said Healy.

“But you ain’t sure what he wanted to see you for.”

“What would Huggins want to see me for⁠—to scratch my back? But as I say, she didn’t know who it was, so I couldn’t do nothin’ to her except ignore her from then on, and they couldn’t of been no worse punishment as far as she was concerned.”

“All and all,” summed up Lefty, “if it wasn’t for women, you’d of been playin’ third base for McGraw and Huggins and this club, all at the same time.”

“Yes,” said Healy, “and with Washin’ton, too. Why⁠—”

“Mike Healy!” interrupted the voice of Dick Trude, veteran usher. “Here’s a mash note and it wants an answer.”

Healy read the note and crumpled it in his hand.

“Who is she?” he asked.

“Look where I point,” said Trude. “It’s that good-lookin’ dame in the tan suit, in the fourth row, back of third base. There! She asked me who you was when you was out there coachin’. So I told her, and she give me that note. She said you could answer yes or no.”

“Make it ‘yes,’ ” said Healy, and Trude went away.

Healy threw the crumpled note under the water bottle and addressed Young Jake.

“What I want you to get through your head, boy⁠—”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, shut up!” said Young Jake.