Читать книгу Round Up: The Stories of Ring W. Lardner - Lardner Ring - Страница 12

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When we’d came to Boston Ike was hittin’ plain .397. When we got back home he’d fell off to pretty near nothin’. He hadn’t drove one out o’ the infield in any o’ them other Eastern parks, and he didn’t even give no excuse for it.

To show you how bad he was, he struck out three times in Brooklyn one day and never opened his trap when Cap ast him what was the matter. Before, if he’d whiffed oncet in a game he’d of wrote a book tellin’ why.

Well, we dropped from first place to fifth in four weeks and we was still goin’ down. I and Carey was about the only ones in the club that spoke to each other, and all as we did was remind ourself o’ what a boner we’d pulled.

“It’s goin’ to beat us out o’ the big money,” says Carey.

“Yes,” I says. “I don’t want to knock my own ball club, but it looks like a one-man team, and when that one man’s dauber’s down we couldn’t trim our whiskers.”

“We ought to knew better,” says Carey.

“Yes,” I says, “but why should a man pull an alibi for bein’ engaged to such a bearcat as she was?”

“He shouldn’t,” says Carey. “But I and you knowed he would or we’d never started talkin’ to him about it. He wasn’t no more ashamed o’ the girl than I am of a regular base hit. But he just can’t come clean on no subjec’.”

Cap had the whole story, and I and Carey was as pop’lar with him as an umpire.

“What do you want me to do, Cap?” Carey’d say to him before goin’ up to hit.

“Use your own judgment,” Cap’d tell him. “We want to lose another game.”

But finally, one night in Pittsburgh, Cap had a letter from his missus and he come to us with it.

“You fellas,” he says, “is the ones that put us on the bum, and if you’re sorry I think they’s a chancet for you to make good. The old lady’s out to St. Joe and she’s been tryin’ her hardest to fix things up. She’s explained that Ike don’t mean nothin’ with his talk; I’ve wrote and explained that to Dolly, too. But the old lady says that Dolly says that she can’t believe it. But Dolly’s still stuck on this baby, and she’s pinin’ away just the same as Ike. And the old lady says she thinks if you two fellas would write to the girl and explain how you was always kiddin’ with Ike and leadin’ him on, and how the ball club was all shot to pieces since Ike quit hittin’, and how he acted like he was goin’ to kill himself, and this and that, she’d fall for it and maybe soften down. Dolly, the old lady says, would believe you before she’d believe I and the old lady, because she thinks it’s her we’re sorry for, and not him.”

Well, I and Carey was only too glad to try and see what we could do. But it wasn’t no snap. We wrote about eight letters before we got one that looked good. Then we give it to the stenographer and had it wrote out on a typewriter and both of us signed it.

It was Carey’s idear that made the letter good. He stuck in somethin’ about the world’s serious money that our wives wasn’t goin’ to spend unless she took pity on a “boy who was so shy and modest that he was afraid to come right out and say that he had asked such a beautiful and handsome girl to become his bride.”

That’s prob’ly what got her, or maybe she couldn’t of held out much longer anyway. It was four days after we sent the letter that Cap heard from his missus again. We was in Cincinnati.

“We’ve won,” he says to us. “The old lady says that Dolly says she’ll give him another chance. But the old lady says it won’t do no good for Ike to write a letter. He’ll have to go out there.”

“Send him to-night,” says Carey.

“I’ll pay half his fare,” I says.

“I’ll pay the other half,” says Carey.

“No,” says Cap, “the club’ll pay his expenses. I’ll send him scoutin’.”

“Are you goin’ to send him to-night?”

“Sure,” says Cap. “But I’m goin’ to break the news to him right now. It’s time we win a ball game.”

So in the clubhouse, just before the game, Cap told him. And I certainly felt sorry for Rube Benton and Red Ames that afternoon! I and Carey was standin’ in front o’ the hotel that night when Ike come out with his suitcase.

“Sent home?” I says to him.

“No,” he says, “I’m goin’ scoutin’.”

“Where to?” I says. “Fort Wayne?”

“No, not exactly,” he says.

“Well,” says Carey, “have a good time.”

“I ain’t lookin’ for no good time,” says Ike. “I says I was goin’ scoutin’.”

“Well, then,” says Carey, “I hope you see somebody you like.”

“And you better have a drink before you go,” I says.

“Well,” says Ike, “they claim it helps a cold.”