THE SPRING BRINGS BASEBALL
Little by little the snow disappeared. During the first days of the
thaw, lethargic city employees chopped paths through the melting ice to
the street drains. Bare edges of the cement walks appeared in places,
and at night the puddles and pools in the street hollows bore a thin,
frozen covering. As the month passed, the crystals became more and more
rare, and green areas of grass appeared on the more exposed portions of
the neighborhood lawns. The children turned from their sport of sailing
sticks and improvised boats down the trickling, artificial brooklets to
take part in games of "Run, sheep, run" and "Hide-and-seek" over the
rapidly softening turf. A pelting, refreshing rain from the south drove
away the last soot-stained vestiges of the snow lying in the protecting
shadows between the houses, and presto, Miss Thomas' little store
displayed a window stock of agates, catseyes, and common clay marbles to
tempt pennies from boyish pockets.
Then, after school, during recess, and for long minutes before the
afternoon session, the alley which flanked the school yard was marked
with rings of varying dimensions. The air resounded with cries of, "No
hudgins," "H'ist," "Your shot," or "You dribbled," as the players
contested for prizes of five- and six-for-a-cent clay marbles.
Occasionally two of the big eighth-grade boys would draw a six-foot
circle in the earth and play for "K'nicks, dime ones," and the game
would bring a crowd, three deep, from the neighboring players to applaud
or gasp at each shot.
Even John, man of business that he was, could not resist the temptation.
The last traces of that autumnal scorn toward "such foolishness"
vanished as he became the owner of two shooters and a pocketful of the
more common marbles.
The clan spirit among the different boyish cliques at school revived
again. Skinny Mosher, who had hugged the warm house during the coldest
days of the winter, caught suddenly up with John and Silvey as they
frolicked home for dinner, and brought the news that a "Jefferson Tough"
had threatened to punch his face in, with no provocation whatsoever. The
long-discussed secret code took a new lease on life, and cipher messages
passed to the various corners of room ten with a frequency which drove
Miss Brown nearly to distraction.
That early April afternoon saw the reunion of the "Tigers" in the Silvey
back yard. They viewed the dilapidated, weather-beaten club house with
reawakened interest. Quoth John,
"It's awful dirty where the snow worked in through the fence. Let's fix
her up." Down into the basement went Bill at the words, and reappeared
with an old broom, a hammer, and some nails.
"A lot of the boards are loose," he said, as the boys grabbed the
implements.
Sid stood around and offered voluble suggestions, but the others fell to
work with a will. At the end of a half-hour the dirt floor was brushed
free of debris with a thoroughness never attained on maternal cleaning
assignments, and the little desk was dragged from its winter shelter of
the house to occupy the customary position of state.
Red Brown stretched out on the springy, alluring sod near the building.
John and Sid, Skinny and Silvey, followed his example.
"Isn't this great?" the red-haired one asked blissfully. Sid reverted to
the cause for the summons of the clan.
"How about the 'Jeffersons'?" he asked.
Babel reigned instantly. Silvey was for picking them off, one by one.
Red counseled a sudden descent in force upon the home haunts of the
enemy. A rear window in the Silvey house creaked upward, and a feminine
voice pierced the sun-filled air.
"Land's sakes, Bill Silvey, get off that wet ground this minute. You'll
catch your death of cold lying there this early in April."
The boy sprang to his feet, while his friends grinned sympathetically.
"And you, John Fletcher," Mrs. Silvey went on, "you needn't laugh. Your
mother won't like it a bit better, if I telephone her. She'll call you
home in a minute!"
They all rose at this. Truly, modern electrical inventions widen the
maternal scope of authority.
"Shucks!" said Skinny, as he brushed some dead grass from his coat. "Now
she's spoiled it all. What'll we do?"
John tossed his battered cap high in the air in a sudden access of
spirits. "One for scrub," he shouted. "First raps for the first game of
scrub. Go home and get your league ball and bat, Sid. I'll bring my
first baseman's glove. Silvey'll find his catcher's mitt. Beat you home!
Beat you home!"
They were off. Down the cement sidewalk they darted, their quick breaths
showing ever so slightly in the crisp air. John stamped up the steps and
into the front hall.
"Mother!" he called. "Mother!"
"Yes, son?" came the voice from the big second floor sewing room.
"Where's my baseball glove?" He kicked against the bottom step of the
stairway impatiently.
"Did you wipe your feet when you came in?" came the disconcerting
inquiry. "I don't want the carpets all over mud."
"Y-yes."
"Go back and wipe them right away. Then come up and tell me what you
want."
He gave his offending shoes a half-rub against the fiber mat on the
porch, and was up by her side in another moment. She looked up from the
basket of ragged stockings she was sorting.
"Now, what is it?"
"My first baseman's glove. The one dad gave me for my birthday. Know
where it is?"
"Where did you leave it?"
"Why, don't you know?" His surprise was genuine. Usually his mother
picked up his boyish belongings and stored them in a place of safety.
"Is that the glove which laid in the coat closet all last November? the
one that I kept telling you to put away before it became lost?"
He nodded. "Please tell me, Mother. The boys are all down at Silvey's,
and I've got to get it _quick_!"
Mrs. Fletcher yielded with a smile. "Seems to me I saw it on your closet
shelf, the other day."
A moment later, a shout told that her memory had served her rightly. The
door slammed, eager feet sprang down the wooden porch steps, and her son
dogtrotted north toward his chum's, as fast as his legs could carry him.
When he arrived, Silvey scaled the stout wire fence on the railroad
property, and hunted three white stones of fair and flat proportions.
"Here's your bases," he called as he heaved the objects into the yard
with a recklessness which threatened destruction to the turf. "Johnny
was first at bat, wasn't he?"
They took their positions in the order of the numbers which they had
called earlier. Silvey stood behind the home plate, Sid DuPree was in
the pitcher's box, Red played first base, and Skinny Mosher stood near
the fence to cover the outfield, second, and third as best he could. Sid
ground the ball into the heel of his heavily padded mitt, as he had seen
professional pitchers do, bent forward, and threw the ball over Silvey's
head against the back wall of the house. "Ya-ah," taunted John as the
catcher scrambled for the ball. "'Fraid to put 'em near me. 'Fraid to
put 'em near me."
Again a window creaked, and again a maternal voice showed that attention
had been drawn to the "Tigers" latest recreation.
"What _are_ you boys trying to do?" fretfully. "Don't you know this
house has windows in it?"
"Go easy," cautioned Bill in an undertone. "Remember, Sid, you haven't
thrown a ball since last summer. I don't want any 'penny lectures'
'cause you smashed some glass."
Sid drew his arm back for the second time. John leaned forward, caught
the slowly moving ball with the full force of the bat, and tore for
first base.
"Over the fence is out, over the fence is out," came the chorus.
"Silvey's turn next."
The ex-batsman took up the position near the fence in disgust. Skinny
moved forward to the pitcher's box, and Sid replaced Bill as catcher.
The muscles of Skinny's long, thin arms tightened as he grasped the ball
for his first pitch of the season.
Suddenly the subdued afternoon babel of the city was dwarfed by a
humming of factory whistles, some long drawn and of deep bass, others
quicker and higher pitched, rising and dying away in succession as they
were supplanted by the distance-mellowed notes of other establishments
with lagging time clocks. Dismay robbed John's face of the grin of a
moment before.
"Five o'clock," he cried as he threw the baseball glove into the
quickening grass. "Jiminy, kids, and the paper wagon comes at ten of!"
Inquiry at the little dingy-windowed delicatessen and milk depot
confirmed his fears. The cart had arrived on time, and his customers
would expect their news sheets that evening.
What a pest the business was growing to be. It wasn't half-bad in winter
when the afternoons were short, but now that spring had arrived, there
were so many delightful demands on a boy's time. He counted the coins in
his pocket, and made a mental calculation of the number of papers
actually needed.
"Give me all you've got," he demanded of the astonished delicatessen
proprietor. That thin-haired, shaky-fingered gentleman counted the
papers on the black news stand.
"There's one for ol' Miss Anderson, an' one for--"
"Never mind them," John broke in excitedly. "Give me all your papers!
You've got to!"
At that, the number was pitifully inadequate for his demands. He
retraced his steps to the corner and hurried over to the suburban
railroad station. There, the leader of the "Jefferson Toughs" was trying
to dispose of the last of his wares.
"Let's have 'em all," said John. His rival gazed at him in amazement.
"Quit your kiddin'," he ejaculated finally.
"Honest 'n truth," John assured him. "Missed the paper wagon, and I've
got to fix my customers, somehow."
Next, he ran westward to the little school store to beg Miss Thomas to
disappoint her steady patrons for just this once. The search led him far
beyond the university buildings and the gray-stone flat which had marked
the limits of their hitching trip in February, down to the business
street with its rattling surface cars which lay a full mile west of
John's home. He returned by a side street, four blocks to the north,
stopping at the numerous little stationery and notion shops on the way.
Even with that, certain staid and substantial customers were horrified
to find that the yellowest of yellow newspapers had supplanted their
conservative favorite, that evening.
He came home tired and footsore, and went wearily to bed after a
half-eaten supper. The business which he had built up so zestfully in
the autumn had enfettered him, and was shaping his leisure moments like
an inexorable machine, and the realization of it gave him moodily
thoughtful moments during the remainder of the week.
Sunday, blessedly work free, was warm and sun-shiny. As soon as he had
eaten dinner, he grabbed his battered cap from the hall chair and
started for the door.
"Going for a walk," he explained to Mrs. Fletcher as she looked up from
the Sunday paper.
"Louise going with you?"
"Not much! Silvey'n me are going on a real walk. We don't want to feed
squirrels on an afternoon like this."
It was as if the entire city's population had turned out to welcome the
arrival of spring. The street leading from the car terminal was thronged
with a constantly moving procession bound for the park. White-faced
stenographers and anaemic clerks came from the dingy boarding-house
districts to the north. Stockily built mechanics swaggered along with
their simpering, gaudily dressed lady loves. Here and there were entire
families of substantial Germans and Swedes, and occasionally, swarthy
Italians and beady-eyed, voluble Jews. Sooner or later, they all lost
themselves in the winding gravel paths of the park, or made their way to
the broad walk along the lake front, where the air was filled with their
polyglot babel.
"Isn't it peachy?" asked John as the boys passed the long, parallel rows
of poplars which marked the edge of the park. "Come on, Bill. Let's go
to the island."
The path led them by the boat landing. All traces of the warming house
which had sheltered so many numbed skaters during the winter had been
removed. In its stead, were piled rows upon rows of yellow,
flat-bottomed boats, one on top of another, with boards separating them.
"Look!" John pointed them out. "That means summer's coming soon, and
fishing, and school vacation." On the island, they found two severely
dressed, angular students from the university who stood beneath a small
brown bird in the branch of a budding maple. As he sunned himself
happily, the taller of the two consulted a book which she held in one
hand in a manner vaguely suggestive of Miss Brown and school
recitations.
"It is a little smaller than Wilson's thrush, Maria," she admitted.
"Still----"
John chuckled; "Nothing but a sparrow." He brushed past a bench on which
was squatted a be-shawled, unwashed, immigrant grandmother. "Come on
down this little path, Bill. Perhaps we can find some birds if we look."
But the season was still a little too early for the arrival of the
robins, the yellowhammers, and the elusive kinglets and thrushes from
the southland. Though the boys stalked in and out the winding,
bush-beset trail, their search startled only nervous-tailed squirrels
and dozens of the feathered gamins which had so sorely puzzled the two
schoolmams. But the dandelions were poking their green shoots through
the deposit of snow-packed autumn leaves, and the moss on the tree
trunks lightened the somber gray of the bark. In one inlet of the
lagoon, John caught a gleam in the water which was not a ripple
reflection of the sun's rays.
"Sunfish," he whispered to Bill.
A bungling pair of grown-ups crashed down the path and drove the wary
feeders to cover in deeper water. The boys waited a few futile minutes
for their return, then dashed noisily over the wooden south bridge, past
the golf links with its dense mass of patiently waiting enthusiasts, and
down the gently sloping road to the stone bridge which marked the
entrance to the yacht harbor.
There, where the black, bobbing buoys marked the moorings of the summer
fleet of skiffs and schooners, of noisy little open motorboats, and
long, heavily powered gasoline cruisers, Silvey found an empty bottle on
the graveled shore. John looked at it reflectively.
"Got some paper?"
Bill found an old spelling sheet in his pocket. John tore off the
cleanest end and, with the curving side of the bottle for a writing
board, scribbled a laborious note.
"Lat 57, Long 64," he began, remembering the inevitable heading of the
missives in sea-faring novels. "Nancy Lee sank this date, August 3,
1872. All hands lost but me. Frank Smith."
"What's that for?"
He worked the note down the narrow glass neck and plugged it with a bit
of driftwood. "Maybe somebody, 'way across the lake, will find this," he
explained, as he threw the receptacle far out on the water. "Then
they'll think a ship's sunk."
"What's 'lat' and 'long'?" asked Silvey, as they watched it bobbing up
and down with the ripples.
"The checkerboard lines on the geography maps," his chum answered
evasively, as they retraced their steps northward.
At the macadam road they hesitated. On the other side lay the smaller
golf course, which offered excellent amusement because of its many
enthusiastic novices at the sport, and the lure of an occasional
shrubbery-hidden ball which might be found by keen eyes. Ahead,
stretched the lake and the broad walk, thronged with laughing, friendly
humanity.
"Let's go the beach way," said John suddenly. Indeed, no spring jaunt
could be complete without a stroll over the clinging, weather-beaten
sand.
They halted first at the long pier, and walked out to the end to catch
the invigorating freshness of the water-kissed south wind. There, a
persistent fisherman, the first of that season's nimrod tribe, leaned
against the life-preserver post.
John leaned cautiously over to see if captive perch were floating back
and forth. Only ruffled water met his gaze.
"Biting any?" he asked.
The fisherman shook his head. "A mite early, I guess."
"Oh, I don't know," John encouraged. "Come on, Sil, let's sit down and
watch. Maybe he'll catch something soon."
So the boys dangled their feet over the edge of the pier until the
lengthening shadows told that it was time to leave for home. They rose
regretfully and resumed the saunter along the broad walk with its many,
occupied benches. Down on the sand, children hazarded spring colds as
they fashioned hills and castles by the lake. Further along, an ardent
youth serenely disregarded photographic rules and pointed his kodak at a
group of laughing girls who stood between him and the setting sun. As
the boys left the park, they passed a group of gray-suited ball players,
which had been using one of the park diamonds near the golf links. John
watched them a minute.
"Most time for our team to get together again," he said.
Silvey nodded. "Sid was talking about it after the game of scrub the
other day. Wants to be captain this year."
John laughed scornfully. As Silvey well knew, he, himself, intended to
be re-elected to that important office. "Let's go home by the big lot
and see what it's like," he suggested.
A few minutes later they clambered over the shaky fence which separated
the field from the sidewalk and neighboring dairy pasturage. Silvey dug
his foot into the yielding turf, which had formed the scene of that
football scrimmage between the "Jeffersons" and the "Tigers."
"'Most dry enough to play on," he observed.
John nodded. The flat, white stone which had been used for a home plate
during the summer had been removed as a hindrance to the gridiron sport,
and the base lines which had been worn into the turf by frequent boyish
footsteps, were almost obliterated by the winter's debris and the rank,
quickening grass. Not an inspiring view by any means, yet John gazed
upon it in dreamy satisfaction.
"Let's make 'er a _real_ home grounds," he said suddenly. "Soon as it
gets drier, we'll bring our rakes over and get this stuff out of the
way;" he kicked a rusty tin can to one side. "Then we'll cut the grass
and make cinder base lines, and everything'll be just peachy."
Silvey beamed, enthralled as usual by John's fertile imagination.
"Then," went on John, as he retraced his steps to the walk, "we'll get
some lumber from new flat buildings and put up a grand stand and call it
'The Tigers' Baseball Park.'"
They halted some minutes later in front of the Silvey house. John's
watch told of at least a quarter of an hour before supper time, and they
perched themselves on the top step to talk of fishing, of the May
vacation of a week which would soon be upon them, of the leaky roof in
the shack, and lastly of the baseball team.
"Joe Menard's folks had to move," said Silvey, as he thought over the
roster of last year's organization.
"We'll get a pitcher somewhere," said John, a trifle impatiently, as he
changed the subject. "So Sid wants to be captain, does he?"
Silvey smiled, as does an adult listening to the vagaries of a child.
"You know him as well as I do."
"But who'll vote for him? There's Red and Skinny and you and me and
Perry and the Harrison kids, all don't like him. If it wasn't for that
baseball and bat, and those gloves of his, he couldn't a' played with us
last year."
Silvey shrugged his shoulders. "He's going around school, saying that
he's going to be captain of the 'Tigers' this year."
"You're president of the club, aren't you?" said John, thoughtfully.
His chum nodded.
"I'll go around and see all the fellows. Any of 'em who won't vote for
me, you tell 'em they'll be dropped from the club. We'll have a meeting
when everything's fixed, and Mr. Sid DuPree won't think himself so
smart."
Never was precinct canvassed more thoroughly by a municipal candidate
than was the membership of the "Tigers" by the two boys during the week
which followed. John dropped the usual walk home with Louise, one day,
that he might talk to Skinny Mosher, and hung around the school yard
another noon, that he might reassure himself of Brown's loyalty. With a
clear majority of six assured over Sid's lone vote, code notices were
sent back and forth between the different members until Miss Brown
threatened to send the responsible parties to the principal's office.
With victory certain, John raced across the school yard and caught up
with a certain maiden whom he had neglected sorely of late.
"We're going to have a ball team election tomorrow," he explained, as he
took possession of her school books. "I've been awfully busy."
"I know," she replied absently. "Sid told me. Says he's going to be
captain."
"Guess not!" John was too pleased with the surprise prepared for his
rival to realize the revelation in her words. "Smarty DuPree hasn't much
show when six of the fellows are going to vote for me."
Conversation lagged. Miss Martin was nervously alert lest she encounter
a friendly greeting from Sid while her escort was with her, and John
became absorbed in the affairs of the morrow. Strangely enough, he
experienced a feeling of relief when he left her at the apartment
building and was able to race back to the shack where Silvey was
waiting.
There the two planned and boasted of combats to take place under his
leadership on the renovated baseball field, until a warning conscience
reminded John that it was nearing paper time.