Lefty Locke Pitcher-Manager
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“A blind man might hit one in a million if he kept his bat swinging,” scoffed Wiley. “Let’s see you do as much.”
Watson could not do as much; he fanned three times. Then Jones pitched four balls to Tremain, and the doctor placed himself in Watson’s class.
The game had become a pitchers’ battle, with one twirler cutting the batters down with burning speed and shoots, while the other held them in check through the knowledge he had swiftly acquired regarding their shortcomings with the stick. In every way the performance of Jones was the most spectacular, and in the crowd scores of persons were beginning to tell one another that the mute was the greater pitcher.
The truth was, experience in fast company had taught Lefty Locke to conserve his energies; like Mathewson, he believed that the eight players who supported him should shoulder a share of the defensive work, and it was not his practice to “put everything on the ball,” with the cushions clean. Only when pinches came did he tighten and burn them across. Nor was he in that class of pitchers who are continually getting themselves into holes by warping them wide to lure batters into reaching; for he had found that a twirler who followed such a method would be forced to go the limit by cool and heady batters who made a practice of “waiting it out.” Having that prime requisite of all first-class moundmen, splendid control, he sought out an opponent’s weakest spot and kept the ball there, compelling the man to strike at the kind from which he was least likely to secure effective drives. This had led a large number of the fans who fancied themselves wise to hold fast to their often-expressed belief that the southpaw was lucky, but they were always looking for the opposition to fall on him and hammer him all over the lot.
Therefore it was not strange that the crowd, assembled to watch the game in Fernandon, should soon come to regard the mute, with his blinding speed and jagged shoots, as the superior slabman. Apparently without striving for effect, Jones was a spectacular performer; mechanical skill and superabundant energy were his to the limit. But Locke knew that something more was needed for a man to make good in the Big League. Nevertheless, with such a foundation to build upon, unless the fellow should be flawed by some overshadowing natural weakness that made him impossible, coaching, training, and experience were the rungs of the ladder by which he might mount close to the top.
Loyal to the core, Lefty was thinking of the pitching staff of the Blue Stockings, weakened by deflections to the Federals, possibly by his own inability to return. For a little time, even Weegman was forgotten. Anyway, the southpaw had not yet come to regard it as a settled thing that Bailey Weegman would be permitted to undermine and destroy the great organization, if such was his culpable design; in some manner the scoundrel would be blocked and baffled.
The sixth inning saw no break in the run of the game between the Grays and the Wind Jammers. Bemis, O’Reilley, and Schepps all hit Locke, but none hit safely, while Jones slaughtered three of the locals by the strike-out method. As Wiley had stated was the silent man’s custom, he seemed to be seeking revenge on the world for giving him a raw deal.
When Oleson began the seventh with a weak grounder and “got a life” through an error, Lefty actually felt a throb of satisfaction, for it seemed that the test might be forced upon him at last. But the Swede attempted to steal on the first pitch to Rickey, and Sommers threw him out. Rickey then lifted a high fly just back of first base, and Colby put him out of his misery. Plum batted an easy one to second.
“There’s only one thing for me to do,” thought Locke. “I’ve got to work the strike-out stuff in the next two innings, just as if men were on bases, and see if I’ve got it. The game will be over if I wait any longer for a real pinch.”
When Jones had polished off Gates and Sommers, Locke stepped out to face the mute the second time. Having watched the man and analyzed his performance, the southpaw felt that he should be able to obtain a hit. “If I can’t lay the club against that ball,” he told himself, “then that fellow’s putting something on it beside speed and curves; he’s using brains also.”
Cap’n Wiley jumped up from the bench and did a sailor’s hornpipe. “This is the life!” he cried. “The real thing against the real thing! Take soundings, Lefty; you’re running on shoals. You’ll be high and dry in a minute.”
Straight and silent, Jones stood and looked at the Big League player, both hands holding the ball hidden before him. Wiley ceased his dancing and shouting and a hush settled on the crowd. To Locke it seemed that the eyes of the voiceless pitcher were plumbing the depths of his mind and searching out his hidden thoughts; there came to Lefty a ridiculous fancy that by some telepathic method the man on the slab could fathom his purposes and so make ready to defeat them. An uncanny feeling crept upon him, and he was annoyed. Jones pitched, and the batsman missed a marvelous drop, which he had not been expecting.
“Perhaps I’ll have to revise my theory about him not using brains,” was the southpaw’s mental admission.
The next two pitches were both a trifle wide, and Lefty declined to bite at either. For the first time, as if he knew that here was a test, Jones appeared to be trying to “work” the batter. Locke fouled the following one.
“That’s all there is to it,” declared Wiley, “and I’m excruciatingly surprised that there should be even that much. Go ’way back, Mr. Locke!”
Again Jones surveyed Lefty with his piercing eyes, and for the third time he pitched a shoot that was not quite across. As if he had known it would not be over, the batsman made not even the slightest move to swing.
“Some guessing match!” confessed the Marine Marvel. “Now, however, let me give you my plighted word of dishonor that you’re going to behold a specimen of the superfluous speed Jonesy keeps on tap for special occasions. Hold your breath and see if you can see it go by.”
The ball did not go by; Lefty hit it fairly and sent a safety humming to right.
CHAPTER XII
TOO MUCH TEMPTATION
“Is it poss-i-bill!” gasped Cap’n Wiley, staggering and clutching at his forehead. “I am menaced by a swoon! Water! Whisky! I’ll accept anything to revive me!”
Fred Hallett hurried to the pan with his bat. “It’s my turn now,” he said. “We’ve started on him, and we should all hit him.”
Locke signalled that he would steal, and Hallett let the first one pass. Lefty went down the line like a streak, but Schaeffer made a throw that forced him to hit the dirt and make a hook slide. He caught his spikes in the bag and gave his ankle a twist that sent a pain shooting up his leg.
“Safe!” declared the umpire.
Locke did not get up. The crowd saw him drag himself to the bag and sit on it, rubbing his ankle. Schepps bent over him solicitously.
“Dat was a nice little crack, pal,” said the sandlotter, “and a nifty steal. Hope youse ain’t hoited.”
But Lefty had sprained his ankle so seriously that he required assistance to walk from the field. A runner was put in his place, although Wiley informed them that they need not take the trouble. And Wiley was right, for Jones struck Hallett out.
It was impossible for Locke to continue pitching, so Matthews took his place. And the southpaw was left still uncertain and doubtful; the game had not provided the test he courted. Weegman apparently had departed; there was no question in the mind of Charles Collier’s representative, and, angered by the rebuff he had encountered, he was pretty certain to spread the report that the great southpaw was “all in.” He had practically threatened to do this when he declared that every manager and magnate in the business would soon know that Locke’s pitching days were over.
The Wind Jammers, spurred on by Cap’n Wiley, went after Matthews aggressively, and for a time it appeared certain that they were going to worry him off his feet. With only one down, they pushed a runner across in the eighth, and there were two men on the sacks when a double play blighted their prospect of tying up, perhaps of taking the lead, at once.
As Jones continued invulnerable in the last of the eighth, the visitors made their final assault upon Matthews in the ninth. But fortune was against them. The game ended with Wiley greatly disappointed, though still cheerful.
“A little frost crept into my elbow in the far-away regions of the North,” he admitted. “I’ll shake it out in time. If I’d started old Jonesy against Lefty, there would have been a different tale to tell.”
The Wind Jammers were booked to play in Jacksonville the following afternoon, but they remained in Fernandon overnight. Seated on the veranda of the Magnolia, Wiley was enjoying a cigar after the evening meal, and romancing, as usual, when Locke appeared, limping, with the aid of a cane.
“It grieves me to behold your sorry plight,” said the Marine Marvel sympathetically. “I cajole with you most deprecatingly. But why, if you were going to get hurt at all, weren’t you obliging enough to do it somewhat earlier in the pastime? That would have given my faithful henchmen a chance to put the game away on ice.”
“You can’t be sure about that,” returned Lefty. “You collected no more scores off Matthews than you did off me.”
“But you passed us six nice, ripe goose eggs, while he dealt out only one. There was a difference that could be distinguished with the unclothed optic. Nevertheless, it seems to me that Jones had something on you; while he officiated, you were the only person who did any gamboling on the cushions, and what you did didn’t infect the result. What do you think of Jones?”
“Will you lend me your ear while I express my opinion privately?”
“With the utmost perspicacity,” said Wiley, rising. “Within my boudoir–excuse my fluid French–I’ll uncork either ear you prefer and let you pour it full to overflowing.”
In the privacy of Wiley’s room, without beating around the bush, Locke stated that he believed Jones promising material for the Big League, and that he wished to size up the man.
“While I have no scouting commission or authority,” said Lefty, “if Kennedy should manage the Blue Stockings this season, he’d stand by my judgment. The team must have pitchers. Of course, some will be bought in the regular manner, but I know that, on my advice, Kennedy would take Jones on and give him a show to make good, just as he gave me a chance when I was a busher. I did not climb up by way of the minors; I made one clean jump from the back pastures into the Big League.”
“Mate,” said Wiley, “let me tell you something a trifle bazaar: Jones hasn’t the remotest ambition in the world to become a baseball pitcher.”
Locke stared at him incredulously. The swarthy little man was serious–at least, as serious as he could be.
“Then,” asked the southpaw, “why is he pitching?”
“Tell me! I’ve done a little prognosticating over that question.”
“You say he does not talk about himself. How do you–”
“Let me elucidate, if I can. I told you I ran across Jones in Alaska. I saw him pitch in a baseball match in Nome. How he came to ingratiate himself into that contest I am unable to state. Nobody seemed able to tell me. All I found out about him was that he was one of three partners who had a valuable property somewhere up in the Jade Mountain region–not a prospect, but a real, bony-fido mine. Already they had received offers for the property, and any day they could sell out for a sum salubrious enough to make them all scandalously wealthy. They had entered into some sort of an agreement that bound them all to hold on until two of the three should vote to sell; Jones was tied up under this contraction.
“I had grown weary of the vain search for the root of all evil. For me that root has always been more slippery than a squirming eel; every time I thought I had it by the tail it would wriggle out of my eager clutch and get away. I longed for the fleshpots of my own native heath. Watching that ball game in Nome, my blood churned in my veins until it nearly turned to butter. Once more, in my well-fertilized fancy, I saw myself towering the country with my Wind Jammers; and, could I secure Jonesy for my star flinger, I knew I would be able to make my return engagement a scintillating and scandalous success. With him for a nucleus, I felt confident that I could assemble together a bunch of world beaters. I resolved to go after Jones. I went, without dalliance. I got him corralled in a private room and locked the door on him.
“Mate, I am a plain and simple soul, given not a jot or tittle to exaggeration, yet I am ready to affirm–I never swear; it’s profane–that I had the tussle of my life with Jones. Parenthetically speaking, we wrestled all over that room for about five solid hours. I had supplied myself with forty reams of writing paper, a bushel basket full of lead pencils, and two dictionaries. When I finally subdued Jones, I was using a stub of the last pencil in the basket, was on the concluding sheet of paper, had contracted writer’s cramp, and the dictionaries were mere torn and tattered wrecks. In the course of that argument, I am certain I wrote every word in the English language, besides coining a few thousand of my own. I had practically exhausted every form of persuasion, and was on the verge of lying down and taking the count. Then, by the rarest chance, I hit upon the right thing. I wrote a paregoric upon the joys of traveling around over the United States from city to city, from town to town, of visiting every place of importance in the whole broad land, of meeting practically every living human being in the country who was alive and deserved to be met. Somehow that got him; I don’t know why, but it did. I saw his eyes gleam and his somber face change as he read that last wild stab of mine. It struck home; he agreed to go. I had conquered.
“Now, mark ye well, the amount of his salary had not a whit to do with it, and he entertained absolutely no ambish to become a baseball pitcher. He was compelled to leave his partners up there running the mine, and to rely upon their honesty to give him a square deal. You have been told how he promulgates around over every new place he visits and stares strangers out of countenance. Whether or not he’s otherwise wrong in his garret, he’s certainly ‘off’ on that stunt. That’s how I’m able to keep him on the parole of this club of mine.”
“In short, he’s a sort of monomaniac?”
“Perhaps that’s it.”
Lefty did a bit of thinking. “You’ve been touring the smaller cities and the towns in which an independent ball team would be most likely to draw. In the large cities of a Big League circuit there are thousands upon thousands of persons Jones has never met. He could work a whole season in such a circuit and continue to see hosts of strangers every time he visited any one of the cities included. Under such circumstances he would have the same incentive that he has now. If he can be induced to make the change, I’ll take a chance on him, and I’ll see that you are well paid to use your persuasive powers to lead him to accept my proposition.”
“But you stated that you had no legal authority to make such a deal.”
“I haven’t; but I am willing to take a chance, with the understanding that the matter is to be kept quiet until I shall be able to put through an arrangement that will make it impossible for any manager in organized ball to steal him away.”
Wiley shook his head. “I couldn’t get along without him, Lefty; he’s the mainsheet of the Wind Jammers. It would be like chucking the sextant and the compass overboard. We’d be adrift without any instrument to give us our position or anything to lay a course by.”
“If you don’t sell him to me, some manager is going to take him from you without handing you as much as a lonesome dollar in return. You can’t dodge the Big League scouts; it’s a wonder you’ve dodged them as long as you have. They’re bound to spot Jones and gobble him up. Do you prefer to sell him or to have him snatched?”
“What will you give for him?”
“Now you’re talking business. If I can put through the deal I’m figuring on, I’ll give you five hundred dollars, which, considering the conditions, is more than a generous price.”
“Five hundred dollars! Is there that much money to be found in one lump anywhere in the world?”
“I own some Blue Stockings stock, so you see I have a financial, as well as a sentimental, interest in the club. I’m going to fight hard to prevent it from being wrecked. As long as it can stay in the first division it will continue to be a money-maker, but already the impression has become current that the team is riddled, and the stock has slumped. There are evil forces at work. I don’t know the exact purpose these forces are aiming at, but I’m a pretty good guesser. The property is mighty valuable for some people to get hold of if they can get it cheap enough.”
“They’re even saying that you’re extremely to the bad. What do you think about it yourself, Lefty?”
Locke flushed. “Time will answer that.”
“You look like a fighter,” said Wiley. “I wish you luck.”
“But what do you say to my proposition? Give me a flat answer.”
“Five hundred dollars!” murmured the Marine Marvel, licking his lips. “I’m wabbling on the top rail of the fence.”
“Fall one way or the other.”
Heaving a sigh, the sailor rose to his feet, and gave his trousers a hitch. “Let’s interview Jones,” he proposed.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PERPLEXING QUESTION
The following morning Lefty Locke received two letters. One was from the Federal League headquarters in Chicago, urging him to accept the offer of the manager who had made such a tempting proposal to him. The position, it stated, was still his for the taking, and he was pressed to wire agreement to the terms proposed.
The other letter was from Locke’s father, a clergyman residing in a small New Jersey town. The contents proved disturbing. The Reverend Mr. Hazelton’s savings of a lifetime had been invested in a building and loan association, and the association had failed disastrously. Practically everything the clergyman possessed in the world would be swept away; it seemed likely that he would lose his home.
Lefty’s face grew pale and grim as he read this letter. He went directly to his wife and told her. Janet was distressed.
“What can be done?” she cried. “You must do something, Lefty! Your father and mother, at their age, turned out of their home! It is terrible! What can you do?”
Locke considered a moment. “If I had not invested the savings of my baseball career in Blue Stockings stock,” he said regretfully, “I’d have enough now to save their home for them.”
“But can’t you sell the stock?”
“Yes, for half what I paid for it–perhaps. That wouldn’t he enough. You’re right in saying I must do something, but what can I–” He stopped, staring at the other letter. He sat down, still staring at it, and Janet came and put her arm about him.
“Here’s something!” he exclaimed suddenly.
“What, dear?”
“This letter from Federal League headquarters, urging me to grab the offer the Feds have made me. Twenty-seven thousand dollars for three years, a certified check for the first year’s salary, and a thousand dollars bonus. That means that I can get ten thousand right in my hand by signing a Federal contract–more than enough to save my folks.”
Janet’s face beamed, and she clapped her hands. “I had forgotten about their offer! Why, you’re all right! It’s just the thing.”
“I wonder?”
She looked at him, and grew sober. “Oh, you don’t want to go to the Federals? You’re afraid they won’t last?”
“It isn’t that.”
“No?”
“No, girl. If there was nothing else to restrain me, I’d take the next train for Chicago, and put my fist to a Fed contract just as soon as I could. I need ten thousand dollars now, and need it more than I ever before needed money.”
Janet ran her fingers through his hair, bending forward to scan his serious and perplexed face. She could see that he was fighting a battle silently, grimly. She longed to aid him in solving the problem by which he was confronted, but realizing that she could not quite put herself in his place, and that, therefore, her advice might not come from the height of wisdom and experience, she held herself in check. Should he ask counsel of her she would give the best she could.
“I know,” she said, after a little period of silence, “that you must think of your financial interest in the Blue Stockings.”
“I’m not spending a moment’s thought on that now. I’m thinking of old Jack Kennedy and Charles Collier; of Bailey Weegman and his treachery, for I believe he is treacherous to the core. I’m thinking also of something else I don’t like to think about.”
“Tell me,” she urged.
He looked up at her, and smiled wryly. Then he felt of his left shoulder. “It’s this,” he said.
She caught her breath. “But you said you were going to give your arm the real test yesterday. The Grays won, and the score was three to one when you hurt your ankle and were forced to quit. I thought you were satisfied.”
“I very much doubt if the Grays would have won had not Cap’n Wiley insisted upon pitching the opening innings for his team. The man who followed him did not permit us to score at all. I was the only one who got a safe hit off him. The test was not satisfactory, Janet.”
Her face grew white. It was not like Lefty to lack confidence in himself. During the past months, although his injured arm had seemed to improve with disheartening slowness, he had insisted that it would come round all right before the season opened. Yet lately he had not appeared quite so optimistic. And now, after the game which was to settle his doubts, he seemed more doubtful than before. She believed that he was holding something back, that he was losing heart, but as long as there was any hope remaining he would try not to burden her with his worries.
Suddenly she clutched his shoulders with her slender hands. “It’s all wrong!” she cried. “You’ve given up the best that was in you for the Blue Stockings. You’ve done the work of two pitchers. They won’t let you go now. Even if your arm is bad at the beginning of the season, they’ll keep you on and give you a chance to get it back into condition.”
“Old Jack Kennedy would, but I have my doubts about any other manager.”
“You don’t mean that they’d let you go outright, just drop you?”
“Oh, it’s possible they’d try to sell me or trade me. If they could work me off on to some one who wasn’t wise, probably they’d do it. That’s not reckoning on Weegman. He’s so sore and vindictive that he may spread the report that I’ve pitched my wing off. I fancy he wouldn’t care a rap if that did lose Collier the selling price that could be got for me.”
“Oh, I just hate to hear you talk about being traded or sold! It doesn’t sound as if you were a human being and this a free country. Cattle are traded and sold.”
“Cattle and ball players.”
“It’s wrong! Isn’t there any way–”
“The Federals are showing the way.”
“Your sympathy’s with them. You’re not bound to the Blue Stockings; you’re still your own free agent.”
“Under the circumstances what would you have me do?”
At last he had asked her advice. Now she could speak. She did so eagerly.
“Accept the offer the Federals have made you.”
“My dear,” he said, “would you have me do that, with my own mind in doubt as to whether or not I was worth a dollar to them? Would you have me take the ten thousand I could get, knowing all the time that they might be paying it for a has-been who wasn’t worth ten cents? Would that be honest?”
“You can be honest, then,” she hurriedly declared. “No one knows for a certainty, not even yourself, that you can’t come back to your old form. You can go to the manager and tell him the truth about yourself. Can’t you do that?”
“And then what? Probably he wouldn’t want me after that at any price.”
“You can make a fair bargain with him. You can have it put in the contract that you are to get that money if you do come back and make good as a pitcher.”
Lefty laughed. “I think it would be the first time on record that a ball player ever went to a manager who was eager to sign him up, and made such a proposition. It would be honest, Janet; but if the manager believed me, if he saw I was serious, do you fancy he’d feel like coming across with the first year’s salary in advance and the bonus? You see I can’t raise the money I need, and be honest.”