LEFTY O’ THE TRAINING CAMP

BY

BURT L. STANDISH

Author of “Lefty o’ the Bush,” “Lefty o’ the Big League,” “Lefty o’ the Blue Stockings.”

ILLUSTRATED

GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1914, by GROSSET & DUNLAP, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CHAPTER I THE GROUCH

“Crooked? You never said a truer word in your life, Tethridge. Professional baseball’s so rotten it’s a wonder the board of health don’t get after it.”

The lean, slope-shouldered man sitting next to the window of the smoking car bent a puzzled glance on his more robust companion.

“Board o’ ’ealth?” he echoed, his sandy eyebrows arching in an odd note of interrogation. “I don’t tyke you, old chap. What ’ave the board o’ ’ealth to do with biseball?”

The young man at his elbow frowned, and pushed back a long lock of dark hair straggling down from under the straight brim of an exaggeratedly flat derby.

“Nothing,” he answered, in a resigned tone. “That was only my little joke, old man. In such [12]a bad state the board of health is needed. Get me?”

For a second or two the Englishman preserved that expression of stolid inquiry. Then, suddenly as cracks radiate over a sheet of heavy glass fractured by a stone, that long, solemn face broke into curving lines, and he laughed in a booming bass note quite out of keeping with the lean, narrow-chested figure. “Jolly good, old chap! My word! I ’ad no ideah you was such a bloomin’ joker, Nelson.”

He nudged his companion in the ribs. The latter, striving unsuccessfully to dismiss the expression of utter boredom from his tanned, rather rough-hewn face, pulled a package of cheap cigarettes from his pocket and offered them to the man by the window. Tethridge declined the cigarettes in favor of a blackened, disreputable-looking brier.

“The whole proposition’s as crooked as the fighting game,” declared the man called Nelson; “an’ that’s saying a whole lot, believe me! The crowd that runs it is out for the coin, an’, take my word, they squeeze the public and rob their white slave players to get it.”

He paused a second to send a swift sidelong glance at G. Munby Tethridge, who nodded instant agreement. In the seat just ahead a clean-cut, alert-looking man, with keen brown eyes and a [13]firm chin, moved his broad shoulders impatiently, and frowned at the magazine lying open on one knee.

“Gas bag!” he muttered under his breath.

“Look at the post season last year,” pursued the maligner of organized baseball viciously. “Two-thirds or more o’ the tickets handed over to speculators, an’ anybody wantin’ to see a game had to pay double or triple. Do you think them speculators didn’t have to whack up with the management? Sure they did! It was a put-up job.”

“What I always contended,” agreed the Englishman, pulling hard on the odorous pipe. “A bally crooked gyme through an’ through. Tyke a look at the w’y it’s pl’yed. Anything goes, by Jove, so long as a man ain’t caught. He’ll swear himself black in the fice he wasn’t put out when he was, or that he touched every bise when maybe he missed one; and the lies all go if the umpire didn’t ’appen to see ’im. That’s no gentleman’s gyme, old chap, like cricket, or any other decent sport. There ain’t any honor about it.”

The harsh, penetrating voice, with its irritatingly positive intonation, was audible through the greater part of the half-empty smoker. The brown-eyed young man in front, having ceased making even a pretense at reading, was scowling out at the snow-covered landscape. His expression was one of deep indignation. A muscular [14]hand gripped the edge of the magazine with unconscious force. One foot beat lightly and impatiently on the rod beneath the seat in front of him.

“Huh!” grunted Nelson. “That ain’t nothing. I could sit here by the hour, an’ tell you a line o’ stories that ’u’d make your hair curl. Here’s jest one of ’em I calls to mind: A coupla seasons ago there was a fresh young piece o’ cheese pitching with us that called himself Fred Moore. At that it wasn’t no more his real name than it was mine. He was one o’ these college dudes, playing on his college nine; an’ then, come vacation, he beats it to some far-off bushes, where he pitches professional ball for the rest of the summer under a false monaker. There’s honor for you, ain’t it? That’s the sort of thing as sickens me of the whole business, an’ makes me swear to cut the game the minute I can root out something that’ll bring me in enough coin to live on.”

He hesitated, his scowling glance resting for a second on the broad shoulders of the man in front. At that moment a dark flush, rising from the immaculate collar, had just reached the edge of that heavy brown mane; but apparently Nelson was too moved by his own eloquence to observe this danger signal.

“It’s them college muckers mostly who’ve put the profession where it is to-day,” he went on [15]hotly. “They cheat to go through college, and afterward in baseball they’ll do any crooked thing that’ll help ’em to get ahead of some square, decent man. Look at what happened in the Panthers last year. They was both college dudes, you can bet!”

Mr. Tethridge arched his sandy brows in an expression of curiosity.

“W’at was that?” he inquired quickly. “I don’t seem to remember what ’appened. Dessey it was after I left.”

“It was.” Nelson’s rather full lips curled at the remembrance. “It was the last game of the season between the Panthers an’ Bucks—a double header at that. Didn’t make any difference who won. Panthers bound to stay tail-enders, you know. A guy named Benson, playin’ third, wanted to boost his hittin’ average for the season, so he makes up to Grant, pitchin’ for the Bucks. They was both from the same college, and as sure I sit here, bo, every time that crook Benson comes to bat that other crook Grant lets him make a hit. He was up ten times in the two games, and you can guess what that did to his batting average. That’s your college ball player all over. Do you wonder I hate the very sight of one?”

Tethridge shook his head slowly.

“Not I,” he drawled. “Strynge what rotters education makes of men over hyer. But, I s’y, old [16]chap, ’ow is it nobody saw this an’ myde a ’owl about it?”

In the barely perceptible pause before Nelson answered, the brown-haired man in the forward seat half turned his head with an impulsive movement, his lips parted as if he meant to speak. His face was flushed, his eyes sparkled with anger, but before he could get in a word the pessimistic ball player was speaking again.

“They did,” he answered crisply. “It was too much for even the machine to pull off. The crowd got suspicious, and the reporters took it up. Result was the management had to clear themselves by firing Grant; but, o’ course, all he did was to change his name and get a job with another league.”

“Are you quite sure about that?”

The new voice, breaking in upon the conversation, was superficially quiet, almost drawling. There was a faint undercurrent of something quite different in it, however, which made Nelson hastily raise his head to stare in annoyed surprise at the man in the forward seat, who had turned round upon them.

“Huh?” he grunted, noting in a flash the keen brown eyes and uncompromising chin of the stranger. “’Course I am. What do you know about it, anyhow?”

“I happen to know that both Benson and Grant [17]were blacklisted, and never got back into organized baseball,” was the ready retort. “Benson’s pitching for a wildcat Texas team; Grant’s on the Pacific coast. Moreover, you seem to have forgotten that the manager of the Bucks was also dropped by the president of the league, who did everything in his power to show that such scandals would not be tolerated for an instant.”

Nelson flushed angrily. “Is that so?” he inquired sarcastically. “Reg’lar walking baseball guide, ain’t you? I s’pose somebody was kidding you with this song and dance about Benson, an’ you swallowed it hook, line, an’ sinker. That’s about your style.”

“Not quite,” returned the stranger coolly. “I happened to pitch against him last spring at Ashland, the Hornets’ training camp, you know. He calls himself Pete Nevens now.”

[18]

CHAPTER II THE MAN WITH THE QUEER EYES

At the stranger’s matter-of-fact reference to a Big League organization which was almost at the top of the tree, Nelson’s jaw sagged, and for a second he sat staring at the brown-haired young man in dazed incredulity.

“Is that so?” he sneered again, recovering himself. “On Jim Brennan’s pitching staff, are you? What might be the name you sail under?”

“The same one I took with me to the Blue Stockings,” was the sharp retort. “Tom Locke.”

For a moment there was silence as the two men stared intently at each other. Though he betrayed nothing of what he felt, Lefty was almost startled at this first real glimpse of the stranger’s eyes. A moment before he would have called them black, but now they had lightened strangely, as if behind the iris glowed a baleful, almost uncanny fire. There was something so weirdly fascinating in the transformation that the Big League pitcher was unconscious of everything else until Nelson broke the silence.

“Lefty Locke!” he exclaimed triumphantly at [19]last. “So you’re that bird, are you?” He turned promptly to the Englishman, who sat gaping and bewildered. “Tethridge, old man,” he said, “let me make you acquainted with a fine specimen of what we was just talking about—one o’ them college dudes who makes his living—an’ a mighty good one, at that—off’n professional baseball, but who’s too ashamed of it to play under his own name.”

Lefty’s eyes narrowed slightly. “My reasons for not playing under my own name are certainly no affair of yours,” he said. “At least, I don’t go around blackguarding my profession and every one connected with it.”

“Did I say a single thing that wasn’t true?” demanded Nelson hotly.

“Only about three-quarters of your remarks, that’s all,” returned Lefty. “It’s the same old bunk you hear every now and then from the fan with a grouch. Because organized baseball is conducted on a big scale and with some outside betting upon it, it’s crooked. I couldn’t help hearing all you said, and just about every statement you made was—”

“Gospel, an’ nothing else,” broke in Nelson angrily. “That ticket business in the post season a year ago was so raw it had every newspaper in the country hollering—you can’t deny that.”

“I don’t deny that the ticket sale was badly [20]managed,” returned Locke. “You noticed probably—since you’re so observing—that the speculators didn’t have a show last October.”

“Mebbe not,” snapped Nelson; “but what did happen? The whole thing was cut and dried from the very start. The public was worked to the limit. Whenever there was a chance of the Cubs cinching the pennant before the full seven games had been played, and the limit of gate receipts raked in, then one of their boys would throw a game just to—”

“Ridiculous!” broke in Lefty. He was on his feet now, leaning lightly against the back of the seat ahead of him, with both hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. Though seemingly quite cool and indifferent, there was a dangerous glitter in his brown eyes, and he was apparently oblivious to the half-dozen other passengers, who had left their seats and moved closer, attracted by the argument.

“Ridiculous!” he repeated emphatically. “You’re talking drivel. How could such a thing be done? How could a world-series game possibly be thrown? With two such organizations as the ones fighting it out last fall, what you claim is an absolute impossibility. You, as a ball player, ought to know it as well as I.”

Nelson glared in a cold fury. “The Trojans hit Woodby all over the lot in that fifth game—which [21]never happened before or since,” he growled angrily. “If that wasn’t done a-purpose to throw the game—”

“Shucks!” derided Lefty. “Do you think he was deliberately throwing away over a thousand dollars bonus? Do you think he wanted the distinction of losing the world’s championship for his club? The whole match was fair and square from beginning to end, and organized baseball is as clean and decent a sport as there is.”

“Ah, cut it!” broke in Nelson roughly. His big, muscular hands were tightly clenched; his strange eyes glared balefully; his face expressed eloquently the rage he felt for this cool, confident young man who held such an enviable position in major baseball, and who was quietly disproving every one of the busher’s contentions with an ease and finality which was maddening. “You’re a great piece o’ cheese, ain’t you, butting into a private conversation where you ain’t wanted! S’pose you take the bench and try how it ’u’d feel to mind your own business for a spell!”

Lefty straightened up. His face was somewhat flushed, for there was just enough truth in Nelson’s remark to strike home. “If you want to keep a conversation private it’s a good idea to refrain from the brand of stuff you’ve been reeling off by the yard in a voice that everybody in the car could hear. You’re the sort of critic [22]who hunts out the worst possible example he can find and judges a whole big class by that exception. I’ve heard a few soreheads in the grandstand who talked like you, but I certainly never expected to run against a player—even from the bushes—who blackguarded his profession as you do, and tried to make the sort of stuff you’ve been handing out pass as the truth.”

Nelson leaped to his feet with an imprecation. “You paper-collar dude!” he snarled. “Mebbe you think you can call me a liar and get away with it, but I’ll show you!”

He lunged suddenly across the back of the seat, the whole weight of his body behind his hard fist. If the blow had landed on Lefty’s chin, as was intended, the altercation would have ended instantly. It happened, however, that Locke moved just at the right moment. Whether it was by accident or design the scattering spectators could not determine. They only knew that Nelson’s fist shot harmlessly over the pitcher’s shoulder, and the next moment they beheld Lefty standing quietly in the aisle, facing his antagonist.

“You quitter!” cried the latter, leaping out from between the seats. “You needn’t think you’re going to get away. I’ll—”

“Cut that out, young feller!” sounded unexpectedly in a voice of authority. “No scrapping allowed on this train.”

[23]

A hand gripped Nelson’s shoulder with no gentle touch. Still sputtering, the busher twisted around, to behold the stalwart conductor, who was accompanied by a square-shouldered brakeman.

“Cut it, I tell you!” repeated the official sharply, observing the look of indecision on Nelson’s face. “This kind of thing don’t go here. Get me?”

Evidently the aggressor did. For a second or two he stood glaring darkly at the conductor from those uncanny, evil-looking eyes. Then, with an angry growl, he shook himself free, and stepped back beside Tethridge.

“Wait!” he growled, his angry glance shifting to where Locke stood quietly in the aisle. “I’ll get you yet, an’ get you good, when there ain’t anybody to hide behind.”

Lefty made no answer. The threat did not disturb him greatly. His lips curved a little at the corners, and there was a whimsical flicker of amusement in the eyes which rested inquiringly on the conductor’s face.

“If you’ve finished your cigar, Mr. Locke,” suggested that official, in a very different tone from the one he had been using, “would you mind going back to the Pullman? This drunk seems to have it in for you bad, and if—”

“I ain’t drunk!” exclaimed the indignant Nelson. “I’m aiming to get square with that gink for calling me a liar, an’ I will if—”

[24]

The conductor waited to hear no more. Though quite able to preserve peace in an emergency, he never lost a chance to use softer measures when they availed. In the present instance, the removal of the famous pitcher to another car would apparently accomplish his purpose, so he lost no time in bringing that about. With a friendly hand on Locke’s arm, and keeping up a flow of pleasant conversation, he made his way down the aisle.

Lefty accompanied him without protest. He disliked anything in the nature of a public rumpus, and was glad to bring the distasteful encounter to an end. At the same time he could not shut his ears to the stream of loud-mouthed taunts which followed him down the car. They brought a touch of color to his cheeks. It was not altogether easy to preserve that attitude of unconsciousness, but he managed it.

[25]

CHAPTER III A MANAGER’S DILEMMA

Back in his Pullman chair, Lefty tried to forget the unpleasant encounter in the smoker. He realized that there was no one but himself to blame for what had happened, and he regretted the impulsiveness which had made it possible for the disagreeable stranger to drag him into an altercation. Of course, they were never likely to run into each other again, Lefty reflected, yet he did not find that possibility one of unqualified satisfaction. Strangely enough, for one who so disliked brawls and public rows, he discovered himself wishing for a chance to take a little of the bumptiousness out of the man who found so much satisfaction in maligning his own profession.

At length, however, he managed by a determined effort to thrust the matter from his mind and turn his attention to more important things. Kennedy, the lately reinstated manager of the famous Blue Stockings, had wired him to take the first train to Deering, where old Jack spent the few months of the “off season” on the farm.

[26]

No reason had been given for this sudden summons to travel over a thousand miles, but Locke had been expecting the message for some time, and was not surprised. It is far from usual for a manager to talk over details of the club personnel and formation with his star pitcher. In the present case the two happened to have been thrown together on more than ordinarily intimate terms in the bush the previous summer, and Kennedy came to know the young Princeton man as few save his closest friends knew him. He came also to have a decided appreciation of Locke’s judgment and ability at sizing up a ball player, and after their return to the Blue Stockings late in the season the informal chats inaugurated in the Middle Western town continued at frequent intervals.

“He’s getting worried about the make-up of the team,” Lefty decided, propping his chin on one hand and staring out over the flat, snow-covered landscape, “and wants to talk it over. I’m not surprised. There’ll have to be several holes plugged before we can think of starting after that pennant in April.”

The manager of a Big League team is never free from worry and responsibility. The moment the last game of the season is over he begins casting about for material to fill gaps and strengthen the team for the grilling struggle of another season. [27]The opening of that season is six months away, to be sure, but frequently that time is all too short for what has to be done. The mere fact of not hearing from Kennedy had comforted Locke with the belief that everything was going well. Now, however, it looked as if the manager’s schemes were not working out quite as he had planned them.

“Wonder where he’s fallen down?” mused Lefty. “There’s third and center—and more twirlers. I wonder just which particular item is troubling him the most?”