At the Old Ballgame Page 16

  “Did you see him, Pat?” says he.

  “Why, no,” says Dunphy. “I—I heard him.”

  For a few seconds there was dead silence. Then Tom O’Connor shoved his chair back, stood up, looked all round the table with a queer grin on his face and coughed once—that same dry, raspy little cough. It sounded so much like Uncle Billy that we all jumped.

  O’Connor didn’t wait for the laugh. He walked out of the dining-room and left us looking at each other with our mouths open.

  II

  I knew a busher once who tore off a home run the first time he came to bat in the big league, and it would have been a lot better for him if he had struck out. The fans got to calling him Home-Run Slattery and he got to thinking he was all of that. He wouldn’t have a base on balls as a gift and he wouldn’t bunt. He wanted to knock the cover off every ball he saw. Uncle Billy shipped him back to Texas in June, and he’s there yet. In a way O’Connor reminded me of that busher.

  He had made a great start as a comedian. The stuff that he put over on the poker players was clever and legitimate; there was real fun it in. His reputation as a two-handed kidder was established then and there, and he might have rested on it until he thought of something else as good. He might have; but we laughed at him, and then of course he wanted to put the next one over the fence too.

  I can see now looking back at it, that we were partly responsible. You know how it is with a comedian—the more you laugh at him, the worse he gets. Pretty soon he wants laughs all the time, and if they’re not written into his part he tries to make ’em up as he goes along. If he hasn’t got any new, clever ideas he pulls old stuff or rough stuff—in other words he gets to be a slapstick comedian. A good hiss or two or a few rotten eggs at the right time would teach him to stay with legitimate work.

  It didn’t take Tom long to run out of clever comedy and get down to the rough stuff. Rough stuff is the backbone of practical joking. Things began to happen round the training camp. We couldn’t actually prove ’em on Tom at the time—and we haven’t proved ’em on him yet—but the circumstantial evidence is all against him. He wouldn’t have a chance with a jury of his peers—whatever they are.

  Tom began easy and worked up his speed by degrees. His first stunts were mild ones, such as leaving a lot of bogus calls with the night clerk and getting a lot of people rung out of bed at four in the morning; but of course that wasn’t funny enough to suit him.

  There was a girl from Memphis stopping at the hotel, and Joe Holliday the pitcher thought pretty well of her. He borrowed an automobile one Sunday to take her for a ride. After they were about twenty miles from town the engine sneezed a few times and laid down cold.

  “Don’t worry,” says Holliday, “I know all about automobiles. I’ll have this bird flying again in a minute.”

  “It sounded to me as if you’d run out of gas,” said the girl who knew something about cars herself.

  “Impossible!” says Holliday. “I had the tank filled this morning and you can see there’s no leak.”

  “Well, I don’t know all about automobiles,” says the girl, “but you’d better take a look in that tank.”

  That made Holliday a little sore, because he’d bought twenty gallons of gasoline and paid for it. They stayed there all day and Holliday messed round in the bowels of the beast and got full of oil and grease and dirt. I’ll bet he stored up enough profanity inside of him to last for the rest of his natural life. And all the time the girl kept fussing about the gasoline tank. Finally, after Joe had done everything else that he could think of, he unscrewed the cap and the gas tank was dry as a bone.

  Somebody with a rare sense of humour had drawn off about seventeen gallons of gasoline.

  “I told you so!” said the girl—which is just about what a girl would say under the circumstances.

  They got back to the hotel late that night. Love’s young dream had run out with the gasoline, and from what I could gather they must have quarreled all the way home. Joe went down and got into a fight with the man at the garage and was hit over the head with a monkey-wrench. From now on you’ll notice that Tom’s comedy was mostly physical and people were getting hurt every time.

  Joe’s troubles lasted O’Connor for a couple of days and then he hired a darky boy to get him a water snake. I think he wrote it in the boy’s contract that the snake had to be harmless or there was nothing doing. He put the snake, a whopping big striped one, between the sheets in Al Jorgenson’s bed, which is my notion of no place in the world to put a snake. Jorgenson is our club secretary—a middle-aged fellow who never has much to say and attends strictly to business.

  Al rolled on to the snake in the dark, but it seems he knew what it was right away. He wrecked half the furniture, tore the door off the hinges and came fluttering down into the lobby, yelling murder at every jump. It was just his luck that the old ladies were all present. They were pulling off a whist tournament that night, but they don’t know yet who won. Al practically spoiled the whole evening for ’em.

  The charitable way to look at it is that Tom didn’t know that Jorgenson was hitting the booze pretty hard and kept a quart bottle in his room. If he had known that, maybe he would have wished the snake on to a teetotaler, like Uncle Billy. To make it a little more abundant Tom slipped in and copped the snake while Al was doing his shirt-tail specialty, and when we got him back to the room there wasn’t any snake there. Tom circulated round among the old ladies and told ’em not to be alarmed in the least because maybe it wasn’t a real snake that Jorgenson saw.

  But Tom had his good points after all. The next morning Al found the snake tied to his door-knob, which relieved his mind a whole lot; but he was so mortified and ashamed that he had all his meals in his room after that and used to come and go by the kitchen entrance.

  Tom’s next stunt—which he didn’t make any secret of—put four of the kid recruits out of business. He framed up a midnight hunt for killyloo birds. It’s the old snipe trick. I didn’t believe that there were four people left in the world who would fall for that stunt. It was invented by one of old man Pharaoh’s boys in the days of the Nile Valley League. It is hard to find one man in the whole town who will fall for it, because it has been so well advertised, but Tom grabbed four in a bunch. It just goes to show how much solid ivory a baseball scout can dig up when his travelling expenses are paid.

  The idea is very simple. First you catch a sucker and take him out in the woods at night. You give him a sack and a candle. He’s to keep the candle lighted and hold the mouth of the sack open so that you can drive the killyloo birds into it. The main point is to make it perfectly clear to the sucker that a killyloo bird when waked out of a sound sleep always walks straight to the nearest light to get his feet warm. After the sucker understands that thoroughly you can leave him and go home to bed. He sits there with his candle, fighting mosquitoes and wondering what has become of you and why the killyloo birds don’t show up.

  Tom staged his production in fine style. He rented a livery rig and drove those poor kids eleven miles into a swamp. If you have ever seen a Louisiana swamp you can begin laughing now. He got ’em planted so far apart that they couldn’t do much talking, explained all about the peculiar habits of the sleepy killyloos, saw that their candles were burning nicely and then went away to herd in the game. He was back at the hotel by eleven o’clock.

  About midnight the boys held a conference and decided that maybe it was a bad time of the year for killyloo birds but that the sucker crop hadn’t been cut down any. They started back for the hotel on foot and got lost in mud clear up to their necks. They stayed in the swamp all night and it’s a wonder that they got out alive. And that wasn’t all: Uncle Billy listened to their tales of woe and said if they didn’t have any more sense than that they wouldn’t make ballplayers, so he sent ’em home.

  The night before we were to leave for the North there was a little informal da
nce at the hotel and the town folks came in to meet the ballplayers and learn the tango and the hesitation waltz.

  It was a perfectly bully party and everything went along fine until the punch was brought in. We’d decided not to have any liquor in it on account of the strong prohibition sentiment in the community, so we had a kind of a fruit lemonade with grape juice in it.

  Well, those fat old ladies crowded round the bowl as if they were perishing of thirst. They took one swig of the punch and went sailing for the elevators like full-rigged ships in a gale of wind.

  Of course I thought I knew what was wrong. It’s always considered quite a joke to slip something into the punch. I’d been dancing with a swell little girl and as we started for the punch-bowl I said:

  “You won’t mind if this punch has got a wee bit of a kick in it, will you?”

  “Not in the least,” said she. “Father always puts a little brandy in ours.”

  So that was all right and I ladled her out a sample. I would have got mine at the same time, but an old lady behind me started to choke and I turned round to see what was the matter. When I turned back to the girl again there were tears in her eyes and she was sputtering about rowdy ballplayers. She said that she had a brother at college who could lick all the big-leaguers in the world, and she hoped he’d begin on me. Then she went out of the room with her nose in the air.

  I was terribly upset about it because I couldn’t think what I had done that was wrong, and just because I had the glass in my hand I began drinking the punch. Then I went out and climbed a telegraph pole and yelled for the fire department. Talk about going crazy with the heat. It can be done, believe me! I felt like a general-alarm fire for the rest of the evening.

  There was an awful fuss about that, and some of us held a council of war. We decided to put it up to O’Connor. He stood pat in a very dignified way and said that he must positively refuse to take the blame for anything unless there was proof that he did it. About that time the cook found two empty tabasco-sauce bottles under the kitchen sink. That didn’t prove anything. We already knew what the stuff was and that too much of it had been used. One bottle would have been a great plenty.

  That was the situation when we started North. Everybody felt that it was dangerous to be safe with a physical humourist like O’Connor on the payroll. We hoped that he’d quit playing horse and begin to play ball.

  We went so far as to hint that the next rough stuff he put over on the bunch would bring him before the Kangaroo Court and it wouldn’t make any difference whether we had any evidence or not. The Kangaroo Court is the last word in physical humour. It’s even rougher than taking the Imperial Callithumpian Degree in the Order of the Ornery and Worthless Men of the World.

  The last straw fell on us in the home town. Jorgenson came into the dressing room one afternoon with a handful of big square envelopes. There was one for every man on the team.

  I opened mine and there was a stiff sheet of cardboard inside of it printed in script. I didn’t save mine, but it read something like this:

  Mr. Augustus P. Stringer requests the honour of your company at dinner, at the Algonquin Club, 643—Avenue, at seven-thirty on the evening of May the Twelfth, Nineteen Hundred and—. Formal.

  Well, there was quite a buzz of excitement over it.

  “Who is this Mr. Stringer?” asks Uncle Billy. “Any of you boys know him!”

  Nobody seemed to, but that wasn’t remarkable. All sorts of people give dinners to ballplayers during the playing season. I’ve seen some winters when a good feed would come in handy, but a ballplayer is only strong with the public between April and October. The rest of the year nobody cares very much whether he eats or not.

  “He’s probably some young sport who wants to show us a good time and brag about what a whale of a ballplayer he used to be in college,” says Pat Dunphy.

  “You’re wrong!” says Peachy Parsons. “Ten to one you’re wrong! I never saw this Mr. Stringer, but I’ll bet I’ve got him pegged to a whisper. In the first place I know about this Algonquin Club. It’s the oldest and the most exclusive club in the city. Nothing but rich men belong to it. You can go by there any night and see ’em sitting in the windows, holding their stomachs in their laps. Now this Mr. Stringer is probably a nice old man with a sneaking liking for baseball. He wants to entertain us, but at the same time he’s afraid that we’re a lot of lowbrows and that we’ll show him up before the other club members.”

  “What makes you think that?” asks Dunphy.

  “Simple enough. He’s got an idea that we don’t know what to wear to a banquet, so he tips us off. He puts ‘formal’ down in one corner.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s not usually put on an invitation. It means the old thirteen-and-the-odd. Clawhammer, white tie, silk hat and all the rest of it.”

  “How about a ‘tux’?”

  “Absolutely barred. A tuxedo isn’t formal.”

  “That settles it!” says Dunphy. “I don’t go. If this bird don’t want to see me in my street clothes he don’t need to see me at all. I never bought one of those beetle-backed coats and I never will!”

  “Come now,” says Uncle Billy, “don’t get excited. I know a place where you can rent an entire outfit for two bucks, shoes and all.”

  “Oh, well,” says Dunphy, “in that case—”

  The more we talked about it, the stronger we were taken with the idea. It would be something to say that we’d had dinner at the Algonquin Club. We warned Tom O’Connor that none of his rough comedy would go. He got awfully sore about it. One word led to another and finally he said if we felt that way about it he wouldn’t go. We tried to persuade him that it wasn’t quite the thing to turn down an invitation, but he wouldn’t listen.

  You never saw such a hustling round or such a run on the gents’ furnishing goods. Everybody was buying white shirts, white ties and silk socks. If we were going to do it at all we felt that it might as well be done right, and of course we wanted to show Mr. Stringer that we knew what was what. Those who didn’t own evening clothes hired ’em for the occasion, accordion hats and all. We met a couple of blocks away from the club and marched over in a body like a lot of honourary pall-bearers.

  We got by the outer door all right and into the main room where some old gentlemen were sitting round, smoking cigars and reading the newspapers. They seemed kind of annoyed about something and looked at us as if they took us for burglars in disguise, which they probably did. Up comes a flunky in uniform, knee-breeches and mutton-chop whiskers. Uncle Billy did the talking for the bunch.

  “Tell Mr. Stringer that we’re here,” says he.

  “I—beg your pardon?” says the flunky.

  “You don’t need to do that,” says Uncle Billy. “Just run along and tell Mr. Stringer that his guests are here.”

  The flunky seemed puzzled for a minute, and then he almost smiled.

  “Ah!” says he. “The—Democratic Club is on the opposite corner, sir. Possibly there has been some mistake.”

  Uncle Billy began to get sore. He flashed his invitation and waved it under the flunky’s nose.

  “It says here the Algonquin Club. You don’t look it, but maybe you can read.”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” says the flunky. He examined the invitation carefully and then he shook his head. “Very, very sorry, sir, says he, “but there is some mistake.”

  “How can there be any mistake?” roars Uncle Billy. “Where is Mr. Stringer?”

  “That is what I do not know, sir,” says the flunky. “We have no such member, sir.”

  Well, that was a knock-out. Even Uncle Billy didn’t know what to say to that. The rest of us stood round on one foot and then on the other like a lot of clothing-store dummies. One of the old gentlemen motioned to the flunky, who left us, but not without looking back every few seconds as if he expected us to start something
.

  “James,” pipes up the old gentleman, “perhaps they have been drinking. Have you telephoned for the police?”

  “They don’t seem to be violent yet, sir,” says James. Then he came back to us and explained again that he was very, very sorry, but there must be some mistake. No Mr. Stringer was known at the Algonquin Club.

  “This way out, gentlemen,” says James.

  I think I was the first one that tumbled to it. We were going down the steps when it struck me like a thousand of brick.

  “Stringer!” says I. “We’ve been strung all right. Tom O’Connor has gone back to the legitimate!”

  “No wonder he didn’t want to come!” says everybody at once.

  We stood on the corner under the lamppost and held an indignation meeting, the old gentlemen looking down at us from the windows as if they couldn’t make up their minds whether we were dangerous or not. We hadn’t decided what we ought to do with Tom when the reporters began to arrive. That cinched it. Every paper had been tipped off by telephone that there was a good josh story at the Algonquin Club, and the funny men had been turned loose on it. Uncle Billy grabbed me by the arm.

  “Tip the wink to Dunphy and Parsons and let’s get out of this,” says he. “I don’t often dude myself up and it seems a shame to waste it. We will have dinner at the Casino and frame up a come-back on O’Connor.”

  I’ve always said that, in spite of his queer notions about certain things, Uncle Billy is a regular human being. The dinner that he bought us that night proved it, and the idea that he got, along with the coffee, made it even stronger.

  “Do you boys know any actresses?” said he. “I mean any that are working in town now?”

  “I know Hazel Harrington,” says Parsons.

  “Ah-hah,” says Uncle Billy. “That’s the pretty one in Paris Up to Date, eh?” Why, the old rascal even had a line on the musical comedy stars! “Is she a good fellow?”