the Shortstop (1992) (8 page)

" Change? How? "

" Now, Chase, don't get sore. You 're a little too soft for this business.

You 're too nice. Lots of boys are that way, but they don't keep so an
d
stay in baseball. Do you understand me?"

"No, I don't."

" Well, baseball is a funny game. It's like nothing else. You've notice
d
how different the players are off the field. They'll treat you white awa
y
from the grounds, but once in uniform, lookout ! When a professiona
l
puts on his uniform he puts on his armor. And it '
s
got to be bullet-proof and spike-proof. The players on your own team will get after you, abuse you, roast you, blame you for everything, make you miserable, and finally put you off the team. This may seem to you a mean thing. But it's a way of the game. When a new player is signed everybody gets after him, and if he makes a hit with the crowd, and particularly with the newspapers, the players get after him all the harder. In a way, that's a kind of professional jealousy. But the main point I want to make clear to you is the aggressive spirit of the players who hold their own. On the field ball-playing is a fight all the time. It's good-natured and it's bitter-earnest. Every man for himself! Survival of the fittest ! Dog eat dog ! "

" Then I must talk back, strike back, fight back?"

" Exactly. Else you will never succeed in this business. Now, don't take a bad view of it. Baseball is all right; so are the players. The best thing is that the game is square -absolutely square. Once on the inside, you'll fin
d
it peculiar, and you've got to adapt yourself."

"Tell me what to do."

" You must show your teeth, my boy, that's all. The team is after your scalp. Apart from this peculiarity of the players to be eternally after someone, I'm sure they like you. Winters said you'd make a star if you had any sand. Thatcher said if you lasted you 'd make his batting average look sick. One of them, I think, has it in for you just because he's that sort of a guy. But I mention no names. I'm not a knocker, and let me tell you this - never knock any lad in the business. The thing for you to do, the sooner the better, is to walk into the dressing-room and take a punch at somebody. And then declare yourself strong. Say you'll punch the block off any one who opens his trap to you again."

"And after that?"

"You'll find it different. They'll all respect you; you'll get on better for it. Then you'll be one of us. Play hard, learn the game, keep sober - and return word for word, name for name, blow fo
r
blow. After a little this chewing the rag becomes no more to you than the putting on of your uniform. It's part of the game. It keeps the life and ginger in you. "

" All right. If I must - I must replied Chase, and as he spoke the set of his jaw boded ill to some one.

"Good. I knew you had the right stuff in you. Now, one thing more. Look out for the players on the other teams. They'll spike you, knee you, put you out, if they can. Don't ever slide to a base head first, as you did to!day. Some second-baseman will jump up and come down on you with both feet, and break something, or cut you all up. Don't let any player think you are afraid of him, either."

IAEm much obliged to you, Cas. What you've told me explains a lot. I suppose every business has something about it a fellow don't like. IAEll do the best I can, and hope I 'll make good, as Mittie-Maru says."

" There's a kid with nerve! " exclaimed Cas, enthusiastically. " Best fan I eve
r
Knew. He knows the game, too. Poor little beggar! "

"Tell me about him," said Chase.

" I don't know much. He turned up here last season, and cottoned to the team at once. Some one found out that he ran off from a poor-house, or home for incurables or bad boys or something. There was a fellow here from Columbus looking for Mittie, but never found him. He has no home, and I don't know where he lives. I'll bet it 's in a garret some!where. He sells papers and shines shoes. And he's as proud as he's game - you can't give him anything. Baseball he's crazy over.

" So is my brother, and he's a cripple too."

"Every boy likes baseball, and if he doesn't, he's not a boy."

Chase left Castorious then and went downstairs, for he expected to meet several of the young men who boarded with him, and who had invited him to spend the evening with them. They came presently and carried him off to an entertainment in one of the halls. Here his ne
w
friends, Harris, Drake, and Mandle, led him from one group of boys and girls to another, and introduced him with evident pride in their opportunity. It was a church fair and well attended. Chase had never seen so many pretty girls.

Being rather backward, he did not very soon notice what was patent to all - that he was the young man of the hour - and when he did see he felt as if he wanted to run away. Facing Mac and the players was easier than trying to talk to these gracious ladies and whispering, arch-eyed girls. Ice-cream was the order of the evening, and as long as Chase could eat he managed to conceal his poverty of speech; but when he absolutely could not swallow another spoonful he made certain he must get away.

When four girls in white vivaciously appropriated him and whirled him off somewhere, his confusion knew no bounds. His young men friends basely deserted him and went to different parts of the hall. He was lost, and he gave up. From booth to booth they paraded with him, all chattering at once. He becam
e
vaguely aware that he was spending money, and attaching to himself various articles; he caught himself saying he would like very much to have this and that, which he did not want at all.

The evening passed very quickly and like a dream. Chase found himself out of the bright lights in the cool darkness of the night. He walked two blocks past his corner. He reached his room at length, struck a light, and saw that he had an armful of small bundles and papers. He made the startling discovery that he had purchased four lace-fringed pin-cushions, a number of hand-painted doilies, one sewing-basket, one apron, two match-scratchers, one gorgeous necktie, and one other article that he could not name.

Discomfited as he was, Chase had to laugh. It was too utterly ridiculous. Then more soberly he began to count the money he had, in order to find out what he had spent. The sum total of his rash expenditures amounted to a little over five dollars.

"Five dollars!" ejaculated Chase.

"For this truck and about a gallon of ice-cream. That's how I save my money. Confound those girls!"

But Chase did not mean that about the girls. He knew the evening had been the pleasantest one he could remember. He tried to recollect the names of the girls and how they looked. This was impossible. Nothing of that wonderful night stood out clearly: as a whole, it left a confused impression of music and laughter, bright eyes and golden hair, smiles and white dresses.

Next morning he wrote to his mother and told her all about it, adding that she must not take the expenditure of his money so much as an instance of reckless extravagance as it was a case of highway robbery.

In the afternoon on the way to the ball-park he met Mittie-Maru, and relating last night's adventure, asked him if he could use a pin-cushion or two.

" Not on yer life ! " cried Mittie-Maru. "Sorry I didn't put you wise to them church sociables. They jobbed you, Chase. Sold you a lot of bricks. Yo
u
want to fight shy of thet bunch, all right, all right." " Don't you ever go to church? "

" I went to Sunday school last Fall. Miss Marjory, she was in the school, got me to come. She 's a peach. Sweeter 'n a basket of red monkeys. She was all right, all right, but I couldn't stand fer the preacher, an' some others, so I quit. An' every time I see Miss Marjory I dodge or hit it up out of sight."

" What was wrong with the preacher?" "He's young, an' I think preachers oughter be old. He fusses the wimmen folks too hard. He speaks soft an' prays to beat the band, an' everybody thinks he 's an angel. But - oh, I ain't a knocker."

" Wait for me after the game."

" Shure. An' say, Chase, are you goinAE to stand fer the things Meade call
s
you? "

" I'm afraid I can't stand it much longer."

If anything, Chase's reception in the dressing-room was more violent than it had been the day before. Nevertheless he dressed without exchanging a wor
d
with any one. This time, however, he was keenly alert to all that was said and to who said it. All sense of personal affront or injustice, such as had pained him yesterday, was now absent. He felt himself immeasurably older; he coolly weighed this harangue at him with the stern necessity of his success, and found it nothing.

And when he went out upon the field he was conscious of a difference in his feelings. The mist that had bothered him did not now come to his eyes; nor did the contraction bind his throat; nor did the nameless uncertainty and dread oppress his breast. He felt a rigidity of muscle, a deadliness of determination, a sharp, cold confidence.

The joy of playing the game, as he had played it ever since he was big enough to throw a ball, had gone. It was not fun, not play before him, but work, - work that called for strength, courage, endurance.

Chase gritted his teeth when the umpire called: " Play ball ! " and he gritted them throughout the game. He staked himself and all he hoped to do for thos
e
he loved, against his own team, the opposing team, and the baseball world. He saw his one chance, a fighting chance, and he meant to fight.

When the ball got into action he ran all over the field like a flash. He was everywhere. He anticipated every hit near him, and scooped up the ball and shot it from him, with the speed of a bullet. He threw with a straight, powerful overhand motion and the ball sailed low, with terrific swiftness, and held its speed. He grabbed up a hit that caromed off Winter's leg, and though far back of third base, threw the runner out with time to spare. He caught a foul fly against the left-field bleachers. He threw two runners out at the plate, and that from deep short field.

He beat out an in-field hit; he got a clean single into right field; and for the third time in three days he sent out a liner that by fast running he stretched into a three-bagger. Findlay had clinched the game before this hit, which sent in two runners, but for all that, the stands and bleachers rose in a body an
d
cheered. The day before Chase had doffed his cap in appreciation of their applause. Today he did not look at them. He put the audience out of his mind .

But with all his effort, speed, and good luck he made an unfortunate play. It came at the close of the eighth inning. Wheeling got runners on second and third, with only one out. The next man hit a sharp bouncer to Chase. He fielded the ball, and expecting the runner on third to dash for home he made ready to throw him out. But this runner held his base. Chase turned to try to get the batter going down to first, when the runner on second ran right before him toward third. Chase closed in behind him, and as the fellow slowed up tried to catch him. Then the runner on third bolted for home. Chase saw him and threw to head him off, but was too late.

In the dressing-room after the game the players howled about this one run that Chase's stupidity had given Wheeling. They called him " wooden head," " sap- head," " sponge - head."

"dead-head." Then Mac came in and delivered himself.

"Put the ball in your pocket! Put the ball in your pocket, didn't you? Countin' your money, wasn't you? Thinkin' about the girls you was with last night, hey? Thet play costs you five. See! Got thet ? You're fined. After this when you get the ball an' some runner is hittin' up the dust, throw it. Got thet ? Throw the ball! Don't keep it! Throw it!"

When the players' shout of delight died away, Chase turned on the little manager.

" What d' you want for fifteen cents -canary birds? " he yelled, in a voice that rattled the windows. He flung his bat down with a crash, and as it skipped along the bench more than one player fell over himself to get out of its way.

" Didn't I say I had to learn the game? Didn't you say you'd show me? I never had that play before. I didn't know what to do with the ball. What d' you want, I say? Didn't I accept nine chances today?"

Mac looked dumfounded. This young lamb of his had suddenly roused into a lion.

" Shure you needn't holler about it. I was only tellin' you." Then he strode out amid a silence that showed the surprise of his players. Winters recovered first, and turned his round red face and began to bob and shake with laughter.

" What - did he - want for fifteen cents - canary birds? Haw! Haw; Haw!" In another moment the other players were roaring with him.

Chapter
VIII.

ALONG THE RIVER
.

CASTORIOUS blanked the Wheeling club next day, and the following day Speer won his game. Findlay players had returned to their old form and were getting into a fast stride, so the Chronicle said. Three straight from Columbus, was the slogan! Mac had signed a new pitcher, a left-hander named Poke, from a nearby country village, and was going to develop him. He was also trying out a popular player from the high-school team.