A BEWILDERING MYSTERY
To be knocked out of the box is a humiliation that every baseball
pitcher has had at times to face. No one has ever escaped it if he has
remained any length of time in the game. But it had happened so seldom
to Joe that it came upon him this time with crushing force.
The crowd, too, seemed stunned. It was almost unbelievable. Baseball
Joe, the king of pitchers, the idol of the fans, the hero so
recently of that wonderful no-hit game about which people were still
talking――Baseball Joe batted out of the box!
But there was the fact that the Bostons were hitting him almost at
will, that they had scored four runs in that inning with only one man
out.
Under similar conditions Joe would have pulled any other of his
pitchers out of the box. So he did not hesitate a moment about yanking
himself out.
He slowly pulled off his glove and walked in to the bench, his face
flushed but his head erect. As he did so the crowd rose like one man
and burst into a volley of cheering that brought a lump into his throat.
It was a spontaneous and overwhelming proof of the sympathy and
affection in which they held him.
McRae, his face full of anxiety and solicitude, came from the dugout to
meet him.
“How about it, Joe?” he asked. “Under the weather?”
“Arm just went dead,” was the reply. “Feels as though it weighed a ton.
Can hardly get them up to the plate. Better let Jim finish the game.”
It was such an unheard of thing for Joe to be replaced on the mound in
the course of a game that nobody had been warming up in the “bull-pen”
and Jim was forced to go in “cold” to take up the pitcher’s burden.
But the responsibility thus suddenly put upon him stiffened him,
and the inning ended without further scoring. And in the succeeding
innings, aided once or twice by Joe’s advice about the kind of balls to
pitch to certain batters, Jim held the Bostons down while his comrades
gave him a run in the eighth that just enabled the Giants to win the
game by the close score of 5 to 4.
This to a certain extent lessened Joe’s chagrin at his sudden collapse.
It had hurt him personally, but it had not been fraught with disaster
to the team, and he was so bound up in their success that this, after
all, was all that counted.
“Don’t think of it twice, Joe,” counseled McRae, at the conclusion of
the game. “The best pitcher on earth has to take his medicine now and
then. The clock can’t strike twelve all the time. You’ll be feeling as
fine as a fiddle to-morrow.”
“I hope so,” replied Joe. “I never gave out so suddenly before. Up to
that inning everything was moving like clockwork. Then in a moment the
arm went limp.”
“Perhaps you’ve been overworking a trifle,” suggested Robbie. “That
no-hit game the other day may have taken a lot out of you. If I were
you, I’d have Dougherty give the arm a good massage this afternoon.
That will probably put it in fighting trim again.”
It was a very quiet Joe who walked home with Jim that afternoon after
Dougherty had outdone himself in a vigorous treatment of his pitching
arm.
“Snap out of it, old man,” urged Jim, as he noted his comrade’s
depression. “You’ve just had a bad day. Most twirlers get something
like that once a month or oftener. You have it less than once a year,
and here you are as glum as a funeral. You can’t expect to be working
miracles all the time.”
“It isn’t that, Jim,” explained Joe. “Of course I feel as sore as the
mischief to have had this thing happen. But I hope I’m enough of a
philosopher to stand for a setback now and then.”
“Well, then, if it isn’t that what is it that’s making you so downcast?”
“Just this,” replied Joe. “I was wondering if possibly this trouble
to-day mightn’t be due to the burns I got in that fire down at the
training camp.”
“Forget it,” counseled Jim, though Joe’s words had stirred up a certain
uneasiness in his own mind. “You don’t have to find any special reason
for having a bad day in baseball. You’ve just been a little off, and
that’s all there is about it. The next time you go into the box you’ll
have them standing on their heads as usual.”
A new turn was given to their thoughts when they entered the hotel and
their eyes fell on a fashionably dressed young man who had evidently
just preceded them and was handing his suitcase to a bellboy.
“Reggie, by all that’s lucky!” cried Joe, rushing up to his
brother-in-law and shaking his hand warmly while Jim grasped with equal
warmth the unoccupied hand.
“How are you, old chaps!” responded Reggie. “Though I needn’t ask, for
I can see you’re top form. Wanted to reach town in time for the game
to-day, but the bally old train was late and I just got in.”
“Come right up to our rooms,” said Joe. “Of course you’ll be our guest
while you’re in town. How long are you going to stay?”
“Not more’n a day or two,” responded Reggie. “The guv’nor doesn’t even
twig that I’m in the city. Thinks I’m in Philly on some business of
his. But I had to run over on a little business of my own. Hope to see
at least one game while I’m here.”
They had little time to do more than get ready for dinner, and the
baseball players forbore to question Reggie further.
“I see you boys are going great guns in the pitcher’s box,” remarked
Reggie as they seated themselves at the table. “Trimmin’ the blighters
as fast as they come along. Nothin’ to it but the Giants, if you keep
it up. The whole country’s talking yet about that no-hit game of yours,
Joe.”
“It’ll be talking about something else to-morrow,” said Joe, with a wry
smile. “I was knocked out of the box to-day.”
“My word!” exclaimed Reggie, his eyes bulging with astonishment.
“You’re spoofin’ me, Joe!”
“Joe just had a bad inning,” explained Jim, and went on to narrate the
events of the afternoon.
“Oh, well,” said Reggie consolingly, “one swallow doesn’t make a
drink――I mean doesn’t make a summer. You know what that poetry fellah
says that even Homer sometimes nods and Milton flaps his wing――or is it
droops his wing? You can’t expect to win all the time, old top. You’ll
get revenge the next time you go on the mound. We all come a cropper
some time. I do myself. To tell the truth, I’m in a bloomin’ mess right
now.”
“How’s that?” asked Joe with quickened interest, as they rose from the
table and proceeded upstairs to his apartment.
“Why, it’s this way,” began Reggie, as he seated himself in a
comfortable chair and carefully pulled out the knife-edged creases
of his trousers. “I’ve been takin’ a little flier in stocks in Wall
Street, an’ I’m afraid I’ve been jolly well done.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Joe. “You know what I think of playing
the market. I hope you haven’t been stuck for much?”
“I’m afraid it may be as much as ten thousand dollars,” admitted Reggie
ruefully.
Joe started from his chair.
“Ten thousand dollars!” he exclaimed, aghast.