At the Old Ballgame Read online

  It was in the spring of the following year when the team came straggling into camp for the annual conditioning process, and all but the Crab and one or two others had reported, that the Wolves were subjected to a severe jolt.

  Rube Ferguson who had an eye for the dramatic waited until the gang was at morning batting practice. Then he broke the astounding news.

  “The Crab’s got himself a wife.”

  The Wolves laughed.

  “All right,” said Ferguson, “all right—you fellows know it all; I’m a liar. The Crab’s been married three months. I stood up with him. What’s more, you fellows know the girl.”

  He took advantage of the general paralysis that followed this announcement to sneak up to the plate out of turn. He was still in there swinging when they came to life and rushed him. News is news, but a man’s turn at bat, especially after an idle winter, is an inalienable right. Rube clung to his club.

  “Three more cuts at the old apple,” he bargained, “and I tell you who she is.”

  They fell back grumbling. Ferguson’s last drive screamed into left field and whacked against the fence. Grinning contentedly he surrendered his bat and took his place at the end of the waiting line.

  “Not so bad—I could have gone into third on that baby standing up. Trouble with you fellows is you’re growing old. Now I—”

  Brick McGovern raised a club menacingly.

  “Who’d the Crab marry?”

  “Keep your shirt on,” advised Ferguson. “I’m coming to that. It was the blond at Steve’s place.”

  “Not the Smile Girl?” The quick objection sprang from a dozen lips. “Not the little queen who sings—not the entertainer?”

  Ferguson beamed happily. He had his sensation.

  “You said it,” he told them. “The Smile Girl is now Mrs. Crab. She married Bill because the whole world was picking on him and it wasn’t right. Ain’t that a dame for you?

  They were inexpressibly shocked. The Smile Girl—daintiest wisp of cheer in the city—married to the Crab—surliest lump of gloom in baseball. The thing seemed incredible and yet—that was just the sort of girl she was—gravitating toward any one who was in distress. They swore in awed undertones.

  “What a bonehead play,” sighed Boots Purnell, “what a Joe McGee! Imagine any one, let alone the Smile Girl, trying to live with the Crab! Give her an error—oh, give her six!” He made his sorrowful way to the plate, moaning over the appalling blunder.

  Rube Ferguson’s rich tenor sounded the opening lines of the Smile Girl’s own song:

  “Smiling puts the blues to flight;

  Smiling makes each wrong come right—”

  They joined mechanically in the chorus but they did not smile.

  Pee-Wee Patterson, midget second baseman, expressed what was in every one’s mind:

  “If anyone can tame the Crab, it’s Goldilocks—but I’m betting she slips him his release by June. I wonder will he bring her to camp with him?”

  The Crab settled this point himself the following day by showing up—alone and unchastened. He invited no questions and they forbore to offer any. He was as truculent and peevish as ever. The food was the bunk; someone had the room that he was entitled to; the bushers were too thick for comfort; the weather was “hell,” and the new trainer didn’t know a “charley horse” from a last year’s bunion.

  “The Crab’s going to have a good year,” observed Pee-wee, “twenty bucks says she gives him the gate by the first of June. Who wants it?”

  Rube Ferguson whistled thoughtfully.

  “If Brick will advance it to me I’ll see you,” he hazarded. “Some Janes are bears for punishment and the Crab ain’t so worse. He made her quit her job and he staked her to a set of furniture and a flat. My wife says they’re stuck on one another.”

  Pee-wee snorted. “Flypaper wouldn’t stick to Bill after the first ten minutes.” He raised his voice a little in imitation of Bull Feeney addressing the grandstand: “Batt’ries for today’s game,” he croaked, “the Smile Girl and the Crab. Bon soir, bye-bye, good night.”

  The Rube grinned. “Sure is a rummy battery,” he agreed ruefully, “but the bet stands.” He departed in search of McGovern and a piece of the bankroll.

  Those of the Wolves who had not already met the Smile Girl, and they were mostly the rookies, learned to know her in the final days of the training season when the Wolves sought their home grounds for the polishing-up process.

  She was enough of a child to want to accompany the Crab to the ball park for even the morning workouts and to say pretty things to each one individually. The Crab accomplished the introductions awkwardly, but it was evident that he was very proud of her and that she was very much in love with him.

  “Some guys have all the luck,” lamented Boots Purnell. “If she ever benches the Crab, I’ll be the first one to apply for his job.”

  At the opening game of the season, the Smile Girl’s pink dress and picture hat were conspicuous in the front row of the grandstand just back of third base. Pink for happiness, she always said.

  Rube Ferguson confided an important discovery to Brick McGovern and others between innings as they sat in the Wolf dugout.

  “The Crab’s keeping one eye on the batter and the other on his wife. I don’t think he knows there’s anybody else in the park. They’ve got a set of signals. Every time the Crab starts to splutter, she gives him the tip to lay off the rough stuff, and he chokes it back. Pee-wee, you lose!”

  The diminutive second-sacker did not reply at once. He was searching wildly for his favorite stick. At length he found it and trotted off for his turn at the plate. He was back shortly, insisting loudly that the “last one was over his head.”

  “Now about the Crab,” he confided to Rube, “everything’s coming his way, get me? Wait until we hit the road for a while and the hot weather comes and the ace-in-the-hole boys get to working on him, then we’ll see.”

  The Wolves, always a slow team to round to form because of the many veterans on the roster, trailed along in the second division and swung north in fifth place for their first extended road trip.

  Gradually it became apparent to all that Peewee Patterson had called the turn on the Crab. He was plainly settling back into his old surly ways, snarling at the umpires, grumbling over the work of the pitchers, and demanding angrily that McGovern get someone behind the bat who didn’t have a broken arm—this of Billy Hopper who could handcuff nine third basemen out of ten.

  They were on the road four weeks and the Crab’s batting average climbed steadily while his temper grew hourly worse. This was characteristic. He seemed able to vent considerable of his spite on the inoffensive leather. It was the nerves of his teammates that suffered.

  “What did I tell you?” demanded Patterson, “now when we hit the home grounds next week—the Crab will get the panning of his life and the Smile Girl will break her heart over it. I tell you I’m calling the play!”

  Brick McGovern and Rube Ferguson regarded their comrade-at-arms soberly. They felt that he spoke the truth.

  “Well,” commented Rube, “you can’t bench a man that’s hitting over .300 just to spare his wife’s feelings.” And with that understanding, the Crab was retained in the clean-up role.

  Most ballplayers have a dislike for one or more cities on the circuit. The Crab’s pet aversion was the St. Clair grounds. There, the huge double-decked grandstand, with its lower floor on a level with the infield itself and not forty feet from the foul lines, brought players and spectators into closer contact than was good for either. Back of the heavy screening and paralleling a well-worn path between the home plate and the dugout assigned to the home club, stretched “Sure Thing Row” where men who wagered money in downtown poolrooms before the game congregated like birds of prey to await the outcome.

  “Sure Thing Row” ran to checked suits, diamonds
and stacks of half dollars, the latter held lightly in one hand and riffled with the thumb and forefinger of the other. It broke no law of the land; it knew its rights and exercised every one of them.

  “The Row” maintained a proprietary interest in the Crab. He was theirs by right of discovery. In him they recognized not only the strongest link in the Wolf defense but likewise the weakest. He was an unconscious instrument to be used or not as the odds might require. Now that the Crab was married, the problem was simplified.

  It was in the third game of the series that Rube Ferguson, sitting beside Brick McGovern in the dugout while the Wolves were at bat, reported to his leader what was going on.

  “The ace-in-the-hole boys are after the Crab. When he went up to bat just now they were whispering stuff to him about his wife—get me, Brick? They’re handing him the laugh about the Smile Girl. He’ll blow up before the inning’s over.”

  McGovern nodded. His gnarled and sun-scorched hands opened and shut helplessly. “I know,” he groaned, “I know—they used to hand it to me like that and if it hadn’t been for my wife and kids I’d have done murder twenty times. There’s no law against insulting a ballplayer. That goes with the price of admission. They’ll not break the Crab’s nerve but they’ll get him thrown out. Ah!”

  The gray-clad figures in the Wolf dugout sprang to their feet. The high-pitched yelp of the timber wolf pierced the clamor, followed by cries of “tear ’em, puppy!”

  The Crab had lashed a terrific drive along the right field foul line and was rounding first base in full stride.

  McGovern tore for the coaching box with both arms raised, palms outward. Walker in right field had knocked the drive down. He had one of the best arms in the league.

  “None out,” yelled the Wolf leader, “two bags—play it safe! Back—go back!”

  But the Crab had eyes or ears for no one. He was running wild, bent only on showing “Sure Thing Row” he was its master. Blind with rage and excitement he bore down on third base. The ball zipped into the hands of the waiting fielder in plenty of time. The Crab must have known he was out, but he arose from a cloud of dust, wildly denunciatory, and frantic under the jibes of the bleachers and the fox-faced gentry back of the screen.

  In the old belligerent way, he stalked after Tim Cahill and grabbled the umpire by the arm.

  “You—you—” he foamed.

  McGovern dashed out on the diamond but the mischief was already done. Cahill knew his business and he stood for no breach of discipline. Freeing himself from the Crab’s clutch, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the clubhouse in center field.

  “You’re through for the day,” he snapped, “off the field or I’ll nick you for a ten-spot. Beat it!”

  McGovern pulled his infielder away and shoved him in the direction indicated. “Don’t’ be a fool, Bill,” he advised, “you were out a mile.”

  The target for a storm of derisive hoots, the Crab made his way sullenly along the fence and into the clubhouse shadows. Not until he had vanished from sight did the last sibilant hiss die out.

  McGovern walked back to the Wolves’ pit and shot a quick glance at the Smile Girl sitting in her usual place just back of third. All around her, men were laughing at the Crab’s discomfiture. She was smiling bravely but even at that distance he was certain that her chin was quivering.

  “Sure Thing Row” settled back contentedly and winked. The Crab and his bludgeon had been eliminated from the crucial game of the series.

  The Wolves lost by one run.

  On the last day of June, just before the club left for another long swing around the circle, Rube Ferguson encountered little Patterson in front of the clubhouse. He drew the midget aside and handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Much obliged,” acknowledged Pee-wee, “what’s the idea?”

  “The Crab’s wife has left him.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. She’s been gone three days. She told my wife he came home and beefed because she was sewing something, and she said she could stand his crabbing about everything else but that.”

  The second baseman looked incredulous.

  “Seems like somebody’s got their signals crossed, don’t it? Why should that get her goat particularly? What was she sewing?”

  The Rube shrugged. “What do women always sew? The money’s yours.”

  The little infielder’s eyes hardened. “I’m clean,” he admitted. “I haven’t got a red—but you put that twenty back in your pocket or I’ll beat you to death.”

  Ferguson nodded his comprehension. “I feel that way about it, too. There’s something likable about the Crab but I’ve never found out what it is. Will he be better or worse now?”

  “Does a Crab every change?” asked Pee-wee.

  During the next few weeks it seemed as though Patterson’s question could admit of but one answer. The Crab drew if anything a little closer into his shell. He was more morose, more savage in the clubhouse and on the diamond. He snarled his refusals when they offered him the usual hand of poker up in Boots Parnell’s hotel room. When they left the clubhouse in the afternoons, he disappeared and they did not see him until the next morning. They forbore to question him. The ballplayer’s code of ethics does not include the discussion of domestic averages. While he continued to hit and field as he was doing, he was entitled to behave off the diamond in any way he saw fit.

  Not until August when the club was in third place and going like a whirlwind, did the Crab give any indication that he missed the slim little figure in the pink dress who used to blow him kisses from the grandstand.

  Then, so gradually that they had difficulty in comprehending the process, something under the Crab’s shell began to disintegrate.

  It was his hitting—that infallible barometer to a ballplayer’s condition, that fell off first. Not that the Crab didn’t connect just as frequently as ever, but his swings lacked the old driving power. Outfielders who used to back against the fence when he came up, now moved forward and had no trouble getting under the ball. From fourth place in the batting order he was dropped to sixth and then seventh without result. His huge shoulders seemed devitalized.

  Next it was his fielding. He fumbled ground balls that ordinarily would have given him no trouble. He was slow on his feet and erratic in his throwing.

  Jiggs Peterson, guardian of the right field pasture, called still another deficiency to the attention of the entire club one afternoon when, in a tight game with the Saints, a runner slid safely into third despite a perfect throw from deep right.

  “I had that guy nailed by twenty feet,” he complained to the Crab, “and you let him slide into the bag. What’s the idea of taking the ball in back of the sack?”

  The Crab’s only reply was a mumbled, “You peg ’em right and I’ll get ’em.”

  “Jiggs had called the turn,” whispered Pee-wee, “the Crab is pulling away from the runner’s spikes right along. I don’t understand it.”

  “Nor I,” Ferguson responded, “there was a time when he would have broken Jiggs in two for trying to call him like that.”

  The next day the Crab, seated beside his manager in the dugout, turned suddenly to McGovern.

  “Brick—I can’t find her—it’s August and I can’t find her.”

  McGovern masked his surprise. The Crab’s eyes were bloodshot, the lines on his weather-beaten face sunk to unnatural depths. Several times McGovern opened his mouth but the right words did not occur to him.

  “I can’t find her,” reiterated the Crab dully. “I lost her, and I can’t find her.”

  McGovern scraped in the soft dirt with his cleats. He spoke as one man to another. “I’m sorry, Bill, I didn’t know just how you felt about it.”

  The Crab contemplated the palm of a wornout glove. The muscles of his face twitched.

  “I thought it was doll clothes she was sewing,
Brick—she’s such a kid. Honest to God I thought it was doll’s clothes. I never knew different until I read her note. Now you know why I got to find her.”

  The pilot of the four-time pennant winners was again bereft of speech. He nodded slowly.

  “She left no address,” continued the third baseman. “She thought I was crabbing at her because—” his voice cracked sharply.

  The Wolves came trooping noisily in from across the diamond. Their sorrel-topped pilot threw an arm carelessly around the Crab’s shoulders.

  “The Smile Girl couldn’t hold a grudge against anyone,” he whispered, “you’ll hear from her one of these days. Why, man, any one could see she was nuts about you!”

  The Crab’s fingers closed on his leader’s arm with a grip that made McGovern wince.

  “You think so, Brick—on the level?”

  “On the level, Bill.”

  That afternoon the Crab got two hits, the first he had negotiated in a week, but as the fifteenth of August approached, he slumped again, and McGovern benched him and made three unsuccessful attempts to bolster up the one weak spot in his infield. But good third basemen are not lying around loose in the middle of August. The Crab at his worst was better than the newcomers and McGovern put him back in the fray. Two of three major league scouts who had been attracted by the Crab’s hitting and who had lingered in the hope that he would emerge from his slump, packed their grips and went elsewhere. The third man was a product of the school of McGraw. He studied the Crab through half-closed eyelids and—stayed.

  With seven weeks of the season still unplayed, the Wolves returned from a southern trip in second place. The fine lines of worry between McGovern’s eyes deepened. He caught himself watching the apathetic figure of the Crab and praying that the third baseman would regain just a little of his old fighting spirit.

  And then one afternoon just before the umpire called the Wolves and Tigers together for the opening game of the week, Rube Ferguson, idol of the right field bleachers, tossed a number of neatly folded newspapers into the pit.