LEFTY O’ THE TRAINING CAMP
[Illustration: A MOMENT LATER THE MANAGER WAS GRIPPING THE SOUTHPAW’S
HAND AND ASKING THE INEVITABLE QUESTIONS.]
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_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GROUCH 11
II THE MAN WITH THE QUEER EYES 18
III A MANAGER’S DILEMMA 25
IV THE UNEXPECTED 32
V THE FACE IN THE MIRROR 38
VI SUSPICIOUS DENIALS 44
VII THE BLUNDER 52
VIII THE TRANSFORMATION 59
IX THE TRAINING CAMP 65
X A PERPLEXING QUESTION 73
XI A VOICE OUT OF THE DARKNESS 78
XII A BIT OF A STAGGERER 87
XIII WHICH ONE? 92
XIV ON THE TRAIL 98
XV THE GUILE OF SAVAGE 106
XVI THE REGULARS ARRIVE 114
XVII THE TRY-OUT OF SAVAGE 122
XVIII THE VANISHING BALL 129
XIX A THING INCREDIBLE 137
XX THE TRAP 143
XXI THE LAST STRAW 151
XXII SAVAGE’S DISAPPEARANCE 155
XXIII THE CATASTROPHE 160
XXIV DIRE PERIL 169
XXV TWO IN ONE 175
XXVI METAMORPHOSIS 184
XXVII ENTER: A GIRL 192
XXVIII THE BETTER MAN DOMINANT 201
XXIX THE ETERNAL FEMININE 206
XXX THE ATLANTA TIGERS 214
XXXI TWO RUNS BEHIND 222
XXXII THE BREAK 227
XXXIII SUSPENSE 232
XXXIV THE EVIL TRANSITION 238
XXXV THE LAST STRAW 244
XXXVI BREAKING A BATTING STREAK 251
XXXVII THE VOODOO CHARM 256
XXXVIII IN THE NIGHT 264
XXXIX THE FACE IN THE CROWD 270
XL BEWILDERING FACTS 280
XLI REVELATIONS 286
LEFTY O’ THE TRAINING CAMP
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.”