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It says here: “Another great race may be expected in the American League, for Philadelphia and New York have evidently added enough strength to give them a fighting chance with the White Sox and Yankees. But if the fans are looking for as ‘nervous’ a finish as last year’s, with a climax such as the Chicago and New York clubs staged on the memorable first day of October, they are doubtless in for a disappointment. That was a regular Webster ‘thrill that comes once in a lifetime,’ and no oftener.”

“Thrill” is right, but they don’t know the half of it. Nobody knows the whole of it only myself, not even the fella that told me. I mean the big sap, Kane, who you might call him, I suppose, the hero of the story, but he’s too dumb to have realized all that went on, and besides, I got some of the angles from other sources and seen a few things with my own eyes.

If you wasn’t the closest-mouthed bird I ever run acrost, I wouldn’t spill this to you. But I know it won’t go no further and I think it may give you a kick.

Well, the year before last, it didn’t take no witch to figure out what was going to happen to our club if Dave couldn’t land a pitcher or two to help out Carney and Olds. Jake Lewis hurt his arm and was never no good after that and the rest of the staff belonged in the Soldiers’ Home. Their aim was perfect, but they were always shooting at the pressbox or somebody’s bat. On hot days I often felt like leaving my mask and protector in the clubhouse; what those fellas were throwing up there was either eighty feet over my head or else the outfielders had to chase it. I could have caught naked except on the days when Olds and Carney worked.

In the fall—that’s a year and a half ago—Dave pulled the trade with Boston and St. Louis that brought us Frank Miller and Lefty Glaze in exchange for Robinson, Bullard and Roy Smith. The three he gave away weren’t worth a dime to us or to the clubs that got them, and that made it just an even thing, as Miller showed up in the spring with a waistline that was eight laps to the mile and kept getting bigger and bigger till it took half the Atlantic cable to hold up his baseball pants, while Glaze wanted more money than Landis and didn’t report till the middle of June, and then tried to condition himself on wood alcohol. When the deal was made, it looked like Dave had all the best of it, but as it turned out, him and the other two clubs might as well have exchanged photographs of their kids in Girl Scout uniforms.

But Dave never lost no sleep over Glaze or Miller. We hadn’t been in Florida three days before him and everybody on the ball club was absolutely nuts about big Kane. Here was a twenty-year-old boy that had only pitched half a season in Waco and we had put in a draft for him on the recommendation of an old friend of Dave’s, Billy Moore. Billy was just a fan and didn’t know much baseball, but he had made some money for Dave in Texas oil leases and Dave took this tip on Kane more because he didn’t want to hurt Billy’s feelings than out of respect for his judgment. So when the big sapper showed up at Fort Gregg, he didn’t get much of a welcome. What he did get was a laugh. You couldn’t look at him and not laugh; anyway, not till you got kind of used to him.

You’ve probably seen lots of pictures of him in a uniform, but they can’t give you no idear of the sight he was the first day he blew in the hotel, after that clean, restful little train ride all the way from Yuma. Standing six foot three in what was left of his stockings, he was wearing a suit of Arizona store clothes that would have been a fair fit for Singer’s youngest Midget and looked like he had pressed it with a tractor that had been parked on a river bottom.

He had used up both the collars that he figured would see him through his first year in the big league. This left you a clear view of his Adam’s apple, which would make half a dozen pies. You’d have thought from his shoes that he had just managed to grab hold of the rail on the back platform of his train and been dragged from Yuma to Jacksonville. But when you seen his shirt, you wondered if he hadn’t rode in the cab and loaned it to the fireman for a wash-cloth. He had a brown paper suitcase held together by bandages. Some of them had slipped and the raw wounds was exposed. But if the whole thing had fell to pieces, he could have packed the contents in two of his vest pockets without bulging them much.

One of the funniest things about him was his walk and I’ll never forget the first time we seen him go out to take his turn pitching to the batters. He acted like he was barefooted and afraid of stepping on burrs. He’d lift one dog and hold it in the air a minute till he could locate a safe place to put it down. Then he’d do the same thing with the other, and it would seem about a half-hour from the time he left the bench till he got to his position. Of course Dave soon had him pretty well cured of that, or that is, Dave didn’t, but Kid Farrell did. For a whole week, the Kid followed him every step he took and if he wasn’t going fast enough, he either got spiked in the heel or kicked in the calf of his hind leg. People think he walks slow yet, but he’s a shooting star now compared with when he broke in.

Well, everybody was in hysterics watching him make that first trip and he looked so silly that we didn’t expect him to be any good to us except as a kind of a show. But we were in for a big surprise.

Before he threw a ball, Dave said to him: “Now, go easy. Don’t cut loose and take a chance till you’re in shape.”

“All right,” says Kane.

And all of a sudden, without no warning, he whammed a fast ball acrost that old plate that blew Tierney’s cap off and pretty near knocked me down. Tierney hollered murder and ran for the bench. All of us were pop-eyed and it was quite a while before Dave could speak. Then he said:

“Boy, your fast one is a fast one! But I just got through telling you not to cut loose. The other fellas ain’t ready for it and neither are you. I don’t want nobody killed this time of year.”

So Kane said: “I didn’t cut loose. I can send them through there twice as fast as that. I’m scared to yet, because I ain’t sure of my control. I’ll show you something in a couple more days.”

Well when he said “twice as fast,” he was making it a little strong. But his real fast one was faster than that first one he threw, and before the week was over we looked at speed that made it seem like Johnson had never pitched nothing but toy balloons. What had us all puzzled was why none of the other clubs had tried to grab him. I found out by asking him one night at supper. I asked him if he’d been just as good the year before as he was now.

“I had the same stuff,” he said, “but I never showed it, except once.”

I asked him why he hadn’t showed it. He said:

“Because I was always scared they would be a big league scout in the stand and I didn’t want to go ‘up.’ ”

Then I said why not, and he told me he was stuck on a gal in Waco and wanted to be near her.

“Yes,” I said, “but your home town, Yuma, is a long ways from Waco and you couldn’t see much of her winters even if you stayed in the Texas League.”

“I got a gal in Yuma for winters,” he says. “This other gal was just for during the season.”

“How about that one time you showed your stuff?” I asked him. “How did you happen to do it?”

“Well,” he said, “the Dallas club was playing a series in Waco and I went to a picture show and seen the gal with Fred Kruger. He’s Dallas’s manager. So the next day I made a monkey out of his ball club. I struck out fifteen of them and give them one hit—a fly ball that Smitty could have caught in a hollow tooth if he hadn’t drunk his lunch.”

Of course that was the game Dave’s friend seen him pitch and we were lucky he happened to be in Waco just then. And it was Kane’s last game in that league. Him and his “during the season” gal had a brawl and he played sick and got himself sent home.

Well, everybody knows now what a whale of a pitcher he turned out to be. He had a good, fast-breaking curve and Carney learned him how to throw a slow ball. Old Kid Farrell worked like a horse with him and got him so he could move around and field his position. At first he seemed to think he was moored out there. And another cute habit that had to be cured was his full wind-up with men on bases. The Kid starved him out of this.

Maybe I didn’t tell you what an eater he was. Before Dave caught on to it, he was ordering one breakfast in his room and having another downstairs, and besides pretty near choking himself to death at lunch and supper, he’d sneak out to some lunch-room before bedtime, put away a Hamburger steak and eggs and bring back three or four sandwiches to snap at during the night.

He was rooming at the start with Joe Bonham and Joe finally told on him, thinking it was funny. But it wasn’t funny to Dave and he named the Kid and Johnny Abbott a committee of two to see that Kane didn’t explode. The Kid watched over him at table and Johnny succeeded Bonham as his roommate. And the way the Kid got him to cut out his wind-up was by telling him, “Now if you forget yourself and use it with a man on, your supper’s going to be two olives and a finger-bowl, but if you hold up those runners, you can eat the chef.”

As I say, the whole world knows what he is now. But they don’t know how hard we worked with him, they don’t know how close we came to losing him altogether, and they don’t know the real story of that final game last year, which I’ll tell you in a little while.

First, about pretty near losing him: As soon as Dave seen his possibilities and his value to us, he warned the boys not to ride him or play too many jokes on him because he was simple enough to take everything in dead earnest, and if he ever found out we were laughing at him, he might either lay down and quit trying or blow us entirely. Dave’s dope was good, but you can’t no more prevent a bunch of ball players from kidding a goofer like Kane than you can stop the Century at Herkimer by hollering “Whoa!” He was always saying things and doing things that left him wide open and the gang took full advantage, especially Bull Wade.

I remember one night everybody was sitting on the porch and Bull was on the railing, right in front of Kane’s chair.

“What’s your first name, Steve?” Bull asked him.

“Well,” says Kane, “it ain’t Steve at all. It’s Elmer.”

“It would be!” says Bull. “It fits you like your suit. And that reminds me, I was going to inquire where you got that suit.”

“In Yuma,” said Kane. “In a store.”

“A store!” says Bull.

“A clothing store,” says Kane. “They sell all kinds of clothes.”

“I see they do,” said Bull.

“If you want a suit like it, I’ll write and find out if they’ve got another one,” says Kane.

“They couldn’t be two of them,” says Bull, “and if they was, I’ll bet Ed Wynn’s bought the other. But anyway, I’ve already got a suit, and what I wanted to ask you was what the boys out West call you. I mean, what’s your nickname?”

“ ‘Hurry,’ ” says the sap. “ ‘Hurry’ Kane. Lefty Condon named me that.”

“He seen you on your way to the dining-room,” said Bull.

Kane didn’t get it.

“No,” he said. “It ain’t nothing to do with a dining-room. A hurricane is a kind of a storm. My last name is Kane, so Lefty called me ‘Hurry’ Kane. It’s a kind of a storm.”

“A brainstorm,” says Bull.

“No,” said Kane. “A hurricane is a big wind-storm.”

“Does it blow up all of a sudden?” asked Bull.

“Yeah, that’s it,” says Kane.

“We had three or four of them on this club last year,” said Bull. “All pitchers, too. Dave got rid of them and he must be figuring on you to take their place.”

“Do you mean you had four pitchers named Kane?” says the big busher.

“No,” said Bull. “I mean we had four pitchers that could blow up all of a sudden. It was their hobby. Dave used to work them in turn, the same afternoon; on days when Olds and Carney needed a rest. Each one of the four would pitch an innings and a half.”

Kane thought quite a while and then said: “But if they was four of them, and they pitched an innings and a half apiece, that’s only six innings. Who pitched the other three?”

“Nobody,” says Bull. “It was always too dark. By the way, what innings is your favorite? I mean, to blow in?”

“I don’t blow,” says the sap.

“Then,” said Bull, “why was it that fella called you ‘Hurry’ Kane?”

“It was Lefty Condon called me ‘Hurry,’ ” says the sap. “My last name is Kane, and a hurricane is a big wind.”

“Don’t a wind blow?” says Bull.

And so on. I swear they kept it up for two hours, Kane trying to explain his nickname and Bull leading him on, and Joe Bonham said that Kane asked him up in the room who that was he had been talking to, and when Joe told him it was Wade, one of the smartest ball players in the league, Hurry said: “Well, then, he must be either stewed or else this is a damn sight dumber league than the one I came from.”

Bull and some of the rest of the boys pulled all the old gags on him that’s been in baseball since the days when you couldn’t get on a club unless you had a walrus mustache. And Kane never disappointed them.

They made him go to the club-house after the key to the batter’s box; they wrote him mash notes with fake names signed to them and had him spending half his evenings on some corner, waiting to meet gals that never lived; when he held Florida University to two hits in five innings, they sent him telegrams of congratulation from Coolidge and Al Smith, and he showed the telegrams to everybody in the hotel; they had him report at the ball park at six-thirty one morning for a secret “pitchers’ conference”; they told him the Ritz was where all the unmarried ball players on the club lived while we were home, and they got him to write and ask for a parlor, bedroom and bath for the whole season. They was nothing he wouldn’t fall for till Dave finally tipped him off that he was being kidded, and even then he didn’t half believe it.

Now I never could figure how a man can fool themself about their own looks, but this bird was certain that he and Tommy Meighan were practically twins. Of course the boys soon found this out and strung him along. They advised him to quit baseball and go into pictures. They sat around his room and had him strike different poses and fix his hair different ways to see how he could show off his beauty to the best advantage. Johnny Abbott told me, after he began rooming with him, that for an hour before he went to bed and when he got up, Kane would stand in front of the mirror staring at himself and practising smiles and scowls and all kinds of silly faces, while Johnny pretended he was asleep.

Well, it wasn’t hard to kid a fella like that into believing the dames were mad about him and when Bull Wade said that Evelyn Corey had asked who he was, his chest broke right through his shirt.

I know more about Evelyn now, but I didn’t know nothing than except that she was a beautiful gal who had been in Broadway shows a couple of seasons and didn’t have to be in them no more. Her room was two doors down the hall from Johnny’s and Kane’s. She was in Florida all alone, probably because her man friend, whoever he was at that time, had had to go abroad or somewheres with the family. All the ball players were willing to meet her, but she wasn’t thrilled over the idear of getting acquainted with a bunch of guys who hadn’t had a pay day in four or five months. Bull got Kane to write her a note; then Bull stole the note and wrote an answer, asking him to call. Hurry went and knocked at her door. She opened it and slammed it in his face.

“It was kind of dark,” he said to Johnny, “and I guess she failed to recognize me.” But he didn’t have the nerve to call again.

He showed Johnny a picture of his gal in Yuma, a gal named Minnie Olson, who looked like she patronized the same store where Kane had bought his suit. He said she was wild about him and would marry him the minute he said the word and probably she was crying her eyes out right now, wishing he was home. He asked if Johnny had a gal and Johnny loosened up and showed him the picture of the gal he was engaged to. (Johnny married her last November.) She’s a peach, but all Kane would say was, “Kind of skinny, ain’t she?” Johnny laughed and said most gals liked to be that way.

“Not if they want me,” says Kane.

“Well,” said Johnny, “I don’t think this one does. But how about your friend, that Miss Corey? You certainly can’t call her plump, yet you’re anxious to meet her.”

“She’s got class!” said Kane.

Johnny laughed that off, too. This gal of his, that he’s married to now, she’s so far ahead of Corey as far as class is concerned—well, they ain’t no comparison. Johnny, you know, went to Cornell a couple of years and his wife is a college gal he met at a big house-party. If you put her and Evelyn beside of each other you wouldn’t have no trouble telling which of them belonged on Park Avenue and which Broadway.

Kane kept on moaning more and more about his gal out West and acting glummer and glummer. Johnny did his best to cheer him up, as he seen what was liable to happen. But they wasn’t no use. The big rube “lost” his fast ball and told Dave he had strained his arm and probably wouldn’t be no good all season. Dave bawled him out and accused him of stalling. Kane stalled just the same. Then Dave soft-soaped him, told him how he’d burn up the league and how we were all depending on him to put us in the race and keep us there. But he might as well have been talking to a mounted policeman.

Finally, one day during the last week at Fort Gregg, Johnny Abbott got homesick himself and put in a long-distance call for his gal in New York. It was a rainy day and him and Kane had been just laying around the room. Before the call went through Johnny hinted that he would like to be alone while he talked. Kane paid no attention and began undressing to take a nap. So Johnny had to speak before an audience and not only that, but as soon as Kane heard him say “Darling” or “Sweetheart,” or whatever he called her, he moved right over close to the phone where he wouldn’t miss nothing. Johnny was kind of embarrassed and hung up before he was ready to; then he gave Kane a dirty look and went to the window and stared out at the rain, dreaming about the gal he’d just talked with.

Kane laid down on his bed, but he didn’t go to sleep. In four or five minutes he was at the phone asking the operator to get Minnie Olson in Yuma. Then he laid down again and tossed a while, and then he sat up on the edge of the bed.

“Johnny,” he says, “how far is it from here to New York?”

“About a thousand miles,” said Johnny.

“And how far to Yuma?” said Kane.

“Oh,” says Johnny, “that must be three thousand miles at least.”

“How much did that New York call cost you?” asked Kane.

“I don’t know yet,” said Johnny. “I suppose it was around seven bucks.”

Kane went to the writing table and done a little arithmetic. From there he went back to the phone.

“Listen, girlie,” he said to the operator, “you can cancel that Yuma call. I just happened to remember that the party I wanted won’t be home. She’s taking her mandolin lesson, way the other side of town.”

Johnny told me afterwards that he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Before he had a chance to do either, Kane says to him:

“This is my last day on this ball club.”

“What do you mean?” said Johnny.

“I mean I’m through; I’m going home,” says Kane.

“Don’t be a fool!” says Johnny. “Don’t throw away the chance of a lifetime just because you’re a little lonesome. If you stay in this league and pitch like you can pitch, you’ll be getting the big money next year and you can marry that gal and bring her East with you. You may not have to wait till next year. You may pitch us into the world’s series and grab a chunk of dough this fall.”

“We won’t be in no world’s series,” says Kane.

“What makes you think so?” said Johnny.

“I can’t work every day,” says Kane.

“You’ll have help,” says Johnny. “With you and Carney and Olds taking turns, we can be right up in that old fight. Without you, we can’t even finish in the league. If you won’t do it for yourself or for Dave, do it for me, your roomy. You just seen me spend seven or eight bucks on a phone call, but that’s no sign I’m reeking with jack. I spent that money because I’d have died if I hadn’t. I’ve got none to throw away and if we don’t win the pennant, I can’t marry this year and maybe not next year or the year after.”

“I’ve got to look out for myself,” says Kane. “I tell you I’m through and that’s all there is to it. I’m going home where my gal is, where they ain’t no smart Alecks kidding me all the while, and where I can eat without no assistant manager holding me down to a sprig of parsley, and a thimbleful of soup. For your sake, Johnny,” he says, “I’d like to see this club finish on top, but I can’t stick it out and I’m afraid your only hope is for the other seven clubs to all be riding on the same train and hit an open bridge.”

Well, of course Johnny didn’t lose no time getting to Dave with the bad news, and Dave and Kid Farrell rushed to the sapper’s room. They threatened him and they coaxed him. They promised him he could eat all he wanted. They swore that anybody who tried to play jokes on him would either be fined or fired off the club. They reminded him that it cost a lot of money to go from Florida to Yuma, and he would have to pay his own way. They offered him a new contract with a five-hundred-dollar raise if he would stay. They argued and pleaded with him from four in the afternoon till midnight. When they finally quit, they were just where they’d been when they started. He was through.

“All right!” Dave hollered. “Be through and go to hell! If you ain’t out of here by tomorrow noon, I’ll have you chased out! And don’t forget that you’ll never pitch in organized baseball again!”

“That suits me,” says Kane, and went to bed.

When Johnny Abbott woke up about seven the next morning, Hurry was putting his extra collar and comb in the leaky suitcase. He said:

“I’m going to grab the eleven-something train for Jacksonville. I got money enough to take me from here to New Orleans and I know a fella there that will see me the rest of the way—if I can find him and he ain’t broke.”

Well, Johnny couldn’t stand for that and he got up and dressed and was starting out to borrow two hundred dollars from me to lend to Kane, when the phone rang loud and long. Kane took off the receiver, listened a second, and then said “Uh-huh” and hung up.

“Who was it?” asked Johnny.

“Nobody,” says Kane. “Just one of Bull Wade’s gags.”

“What did he say?” Johnny asked him.

“It was a gal, probably the telephone operator,” said Kane. “She said the hotel was on fire and not to get excited, but that we better move out.”

“You fool!” yelled Johnny and run to the phone.

They was no gag about it. The hotel had really caught fire in the basement and everybody was being warned to take the air. Johnny tossed some of his stuff in a bag and started out, telling Kane to follow him quick. Hurry got out in the hall and then remembered that he had left his gal’s picture on the dresser and went back after it. Just as he turned towards the door again, in dashed a dame with a kimono throwed over her nightgown. It was Evelyn Corey herself, almost in the flesh.

“Oh, please!” she said, or screamed. “Come and help me carry my things!”

Well, here was once that the name “Hurry” was on the square. He dropped his own suitcase and was in her room in nothing and no-fifths. He grabbed her four pieces of hand baggage and was staggering to the hall with them when a bellhop bounced in and told them the danger was over, the fire was out.

This seemed to be more of a disappointment than Evelyn could stand. Anyway, she fainted—onto a couch—and for a few minutes she was too unconscious to do anything but ask Kane to pour her a drink. He also poured himself one and settled down in the easy chair like he was there for the day. But by now she had come to and got a good look at him.

“I thank you very much,” she said, “and I’m so exhausted with all this excitement that I think I’ll go back to bed.”

Kane took his hint and got up.

“But ain’t I going to see you again?” he asked her.

“I’m afraid not,” says Evelyn. “I’m leaving here this evening and I’ll be getting ready from now till then.”

“Where are you headed for?” Kane asked her.

“For home, New York,” she said.

“Can’t I have your address?” said Kane.

“Why, yes,” said Evelyn without batting an eye. “I live at the Ritz.”

“The Ritz!” says Kane. “That’s where I’m going to live, if they ain’t filled up.”

“How wonderful!” said Evelyn. “Then we’ll probably see each other every day.”

Kane beat it down to the dining-room and straight to Dave’s table.

“Boss,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Your what!” says Dave.

“My mind,” says Kane. “I’ve decided to stick.”

It was all Dave could do not to kiss him. But he thought it was best to act calm.

“That’s fine, Hurry!” he said. “And I’ll see that you get that extra five hundred bucks.”

“What five hundred bucks?” says Kane.

“The five hundred I promised you if you’d stay,” says Dave.

“I hadn’t heard about it,” said Kane. “But as long as I ain’t going home, I’m in no rush for money. Though I’m liable to need it,” he says, “as soon as we hit New York.”

And he smiled the silliest smile you ever seen.

I don’t have to tell you that he didn’t live at the Ritz. Or that Evelyn Corey didn’t live there neither. He found out she hadn’t never lived there, but he figured she’d intended to and had to give it up because they didn’t have a suite good enough for her.

I got him a room in my boarding-house in the Bronx and for the first few days he spent all his spare time looking through city directories and different telephone directories and bothering the life out of Information, trying to locate his lost lady. It was when he had practically give up hope that he told me his secret and asked for help.

“She’s all I came here for,” he said, “and if I can’t find her, I ain’t going to stay.”

Well, of course if you went at it the right way, you wouldn’t have much trouble tracing her. Pretty near anybody in the theatrical business, or the people that run the big night clubs, or the head waiters at the hotels and restaurants—they could have put you on the right track. The thing was that it would be worse to get a hold of her than not to, because she’d have give him the air so strong that he would have caught his death of cold.

So I just said that they was no question but what she had gone away somewheres, maybe to Europe, and he would hear from her as soon as she got back. I had to repeat this over and over and make it strong or he’d have left us flatter than his own feet before he pitched two games. As it was, we held him till the end of May without being obliged to try any tricks, but you could see he was getting more impatient and restless all the while and the situation got desperate just as we were starting on our first trip West. He asked me when would we hit St. Louis and I told him the date and said:

“What do you want to know for?”

“Because,” he says, “I’m going home from there.”

I repeated this sweet news to Dave and Kid Farrell. We finally called in Bull Wade and it was him that saved the day. You remember Bull had faked up a note from Evelyn to Kane down at Fort Gregg; now he suggested that he write some more notes, say one every two or three weeks, sign her name to them, send them to Bull’s brother in Montreal and have the brother mail them from there. It was a kind of a dirty, mean thing to do, but it worked. The notes all read about the same——

“Dear Mr. Kane:—I am keeping track of your wonderful pitching and looking forward to seeing you when I return to New York, which will be early in the fall. I hope you haven’t forgotten me.”

And so on, signed “Your friend and admirer, Evelyn Corey.”

Hurry didn’t answer only about half of them as it was a real chore for him to write. He addressed his answers in care of Mr. Harry Wade, such and such a street number, Montreal, and when Bull’s brother got them, he forwarded them to Bull, so he’d know if they was anything special he ought to reply to.

The boys took turns entertaining Kane evenings, playing cards with him and staking him to picture shows. Johnny Abbott done more than his share. You see the pennant meant more to Johnny than to anybody else; it meant the world’s series money and a fall wedding, instead of a couple of years’ wait. And Johnny’s gal, Helen Kerslake, worked, too. She had him to her house to supper—when her folks were out—and made him feel like he was even handsomer and more important than he thought. She went so far as to try and get some of her gal friends to play with him, but he always wanted to pet and that was a little too much.

Well, if Kane hadn’t stuck with us and turned out to be the marvel he is, the White Sox would have been so far ahead by the Fourth of July that they could have sat in the stand the rest of the season and let the Bloomer Girls play in their place. But Hurry had their number from the first time he faced them till the finish. Out of eleven games he worked against them all last year, he won ten and the other was a nothing to nothing tie. And look at the rest of his record! As I recall it, he took part in fifty-eight games. He pitched forty-three full games, winning thirty-six, losing five and tying two. And God knows how many games he saved! He had that free, easy side-arm motion that didn’t take much out of him and he could pitch every third day and be at his best.

But don’t let me forget to credit myself with an assist. Late in August, Kane told me he couldn’t stand it no longer to just get short notes from the Corey gal and never see her, and when we started on our September trip West, he was going to steal a week off and run up to Montreal; he would join us later, but he must see Evelyn. Well, for once in my life I had an idear hit me right between the eyes.

The Yuma gal, Minnie Olson, had been writing to him once a week and though he hardly ever wrote to her and seemed to only be thinking of Corey, still I noticed that he could hardly help from crying when Minnie’s letters came. So I suggested to Dave that he telegraph Minnie to come East and visit with all her expenses paid, wire her money for her transportation, tell her it would be doing Kane a big favor as well as the rest of us, and ask her to send Kane a telegram, saying when she would reach New York, but to be sure and never mention that she wasn’t doing it on her own hook.

Two days after Dave’s message was sent, Kane got a wire from El Paso. She was on her way and would he meet her at the Pennsylvania Station on such and such a date. I never seen a man as happy as Hurry was when he read that telegram.

“I knew she was stuck on me,” he said, “but I didn’t know it was that strong. She must have worked in a store or something since spring to save up money for this trip.”

You would have thought he’d never heard of or seen a gal by the name of Evelyn Corey.

Minnie arrived and was just what we expected: a plain, honest, good-hearted, small-town gal, dressed for a masquerade. We had supper with her and Kane her first night in town—I and Johnny and Helen. She was trembling like a leaf, partly from excitement over being in New York and amongst strangers, but mostly on account of seeing the big sap again. He wasn’t no sap to her and I wished they was some dame would look at me the way she kept looking at Hurry.

The next morning Helen took her on a shopping tour and got her fixed up so cute that you couldn’t hardly recognize her. In the afternoon she went to the ball game and seen Kane shut the Detroit club out with two hits.

When Hurry got a glimpse of her in her Fifth Avenue clothes, he was as proud as if he had bought them himself and it didn’t seem to occur to him that they must have cost more than she could have paid.

Well, with Kane happy and no danger of him walking out on us, all we had to worry about was that the White Sox still led us by three games, with less than twenty left to play. And the schedule was different than usual—we had to wind up with a Western trip and play our last thirteen games on the road. I and Johnny and Dave was talking it over one day and the three of us agreed that we would be suckers not to insist on Miss Olson going along. But Dave wondered if she wouldn’t feel funny, being the only girl.

“I’ll make my gal go, too,” said Johnny.

And that’s the way it was fixed.

We opened in St. Louis and beat them two out of three. Olds was trimmed, but Carney and Kane both won. We didn’t gain no ground, because the White Sox grabbed two out of three from Washington. We made a sweep of our four games in Detroit, while the Sox was winning three from Philadelphia. That moved us up to two and a half games from first place. We beat Cleveland three straight, Kane licking them 6 to 1 and holding Carney’s one run lead through the eighth and ninth innings of another game. At the same time, Chicago took three from Boston.

So we finally struck old Chi, where the fans was already counting the pennant won, two and a half games behind and three to go—meaning we had to win all three or be sunk.

I told you how Kane had the Chicago club’s number. But I didn’t tell you how Eddie Brainard had been making a monkey of us. He had only worked against us six times and had beat us five. His other game was the nothing to nothing tie with Hurry. Eddie is one sweet pitcher and if he had been the horse for work that Kane was, that last series wouldn’t have got us nowheres. But Eddie needs his full rest and it was a cinch he wouldn’t be in there for more than one game and maybe part of another.

In Brainard’s six games against us, he had give us a total of four runs, shutting us out three times and trimming us 3 to 2, 4 to 1 and 2 to 1. As the White Sox only needed one game, it was a cinch that they wouldn’t start Eddie against Kane, who was so tough for them, but would save him for Carney or Olds, whichever one worked first. Carney hadn’t been able to finish a game with Chicago and Olds’ record wasn’t much better.

Well, we was having breakfast in our hotel the morning we got in from Cleveland, and Kane sent for Dave to come to the table where him and Johnny Abbott and the two gals was eating.

“Boss,” he says, “I’m thinking of getting married and so is Johnny here, but they ain’t neither of us can do it, not now anyway, unless we grab some of that world’s series jack. And we can’t get into the series without we win these three games. So if I was managing this ball club, I’d figure on that and know just how to work my pitchers.”

“Maybe I’ve thought about it a little myself,” says Dave. “But I’d like to listen to your idears.”

“All right,” says Kane. “I’d start Kane today, and I’d start Kane tomorrow, and I’d start Kane the day after that.”

“My plan is a little different,” said Dave. “Of course you start today, and if you win, why, I want to play a joke on them tomorrow. I intend to start Olds so they’ll start Brainard. And if the game is anywheres near close at the end of the third or fourth innings, you’re going in. It will be too late for them to take Brainard out and expect him to be as good the third day. And if we win that second game, why, you won’t have to beg me to pitch the last one.”

You’ll think I’m getting long-winded, but they ain’t much more to tell. You probably heard the details of those first two games even if you was on the Other Side. Hurry beat them the first one, 7 to 1, and their one run was my fault. Claymore was on second base with two men out in the sixth innings. King hit a foul ball right straight up and I dropped it. And then he pulled a base-hit inside of Bull, and Claymore scored. Olds and Brainard started the second game and at the end of our half of the fourth innings, the score was one and one. Hurry had been warming up easy right along, but it certainly was a big surprise to the Chicago club and pretty near everybody else when Dave motioned him in to relieve Olds. The White Sox never came close to another run and we got to Brainard for one in the eighth, just enought to beat him.

Eddie had pitched his head off and it was a tough one for him to lose. But the best part of it was, he was through and out of the way.

Well, Johnny and Kane had their usual date with the two gals for supper. Johnny was in his bathroom, washing up, when the phone rang. Kane answered it, but he talked kind of low and Johnny didn’t hear what he was saying. But when Hurry had hung up, he acted kind of nervous and Johnny asked him what was the matter.

“It’s hard luck,” said Kane. “They’s a friend of mine from Yuma here, and he’s in trouble and I’ve got to go over on the North Side and see him. Will you take both the gals to supper yourself? Because I may not be back till late. And don’t tell Min who I’m going to see.”

“How could I tell her when you ain’t told me?” said Johnny.

“Well,” said Kane, “just tell her I’m wore out from working so hard two days in a row and I went right to bed so I’d be all right for tomorrow.”

Johnny was kind of worried and tried to coax him not to go. But Kane ducked out and didn’t come in till midnight. Johnny tried to find out where he’d been and what had happened, but he said he was too sleepy to talk. Just the same, Johnny says, he tossed around and moaned all night like he was having a nightmare, and he usually slept like a corpse.

Kane got up early and went down to breakfast before Johnny was dressed. But Johnny was still worried, and hustled up and caught him before he was out of the dining-room. He was hoping Hurry would explain his getting in late and not sleeping. Kane wouldn’t talk, though, and still acted nervous. So Johnny finally said:

“Hurry, you know what this game today means to me and you ought to know what it means to you. If we get trimmed, a lot of people besides ourselves will be disappointed, but they won’t nobody be as disappointed as me. I wished you’d have had a good sleep last night and if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go up in the room and rest till it’s time to go to the ball yard. If you’re anywheres near yourself, this Chicago club is licked. And for heaven’s sakes, be yourself, or your roomy is liable to walk out into Lake Michigan tonight so far that I can’t get back!”

“I’m myself,” says Kane and got up and left the table, but not quick enough so that Johnny didn’t see tears in his eyes.

That afternoon’s crowd beat all records and I was tickled to death to see it, because Hurry had always done his best work in front of crowds that was pulling against him. He warmed up fine and they wasn’t nobody on our club, nobody but Kane himself and two others, who didn’t feel perfectly confident that we were “in.”

The White Sox were starting Sam Bonner and while he had beat us three or four times, we’d always got runs off him, and they’d always been lucky to score at all against Kane.

Bonner went through the first innings without no trouble. And then we got the shock of our lives. The first ball Hurry pitched was high and outside and it felt funny when I caught it. I was used to that old “zip” and I could have caught this one in my bare hand. Claymore took a cut at the next one and hit it a mile to left center for three bases. King hit for two bases, Welsh was safe when Digman threw a ground ball into the seats, and Kramer slapped one out of the park for a homer. Four runs. The crowd was wild and we were wilder.

You ought to have heard us on that bench. “Yellow so-and-so” was the mildest name Hurry got called. Dave couldn’t do nothing but just mumble and shake his fists at Kane. We was all raving and asking each other what in hell was going on. Hurry stood in front facing us, but he was looking up in the stand and he acted like he didn’t hear one word of the sweet remarks meant for his ears.

Johnny Abbott pulled me aside.

“Listen,” he says. “This kid ain’t yellow and he ain’t wore out. They’s something wrong here.”

By this time Dave had found his voice and he yelled at Kane: “You so-and-so so-and-so! You’re going to stay right in there and pitch till this game is over! And if you don’t pitch like you can pitch, I’ll shoot you dead tonight just as sure as you’re a yellow, quitting——!”

We’d forgot it was our turn to bat and Hildebrand was threatening to forfeit the game before he could get Bull Wade to go up there. Kane still stood in front of us, staring. But pretty soon Dave told young Topping to run out to the bull pen and warn Carney and Olds to both be ready. I seen Topping stop a minute alongside of Kane and look up in the stand where Kane was looking. I seen Topping say something to Kane and I heard Kane call him a liar. Then Topping said something more and Hurry turned white as a sheet and pretty near fell into the dugout. I noticed his hand shake as he took a drink of water. And then he went over to Dave and I heard him say:

“I’m sorry, Boss. I had a bad inning. But I’ll be all right from now on.”

“You’d better!” says Dave.

“Get me some runs is all I ask,” says Kane.

And the words wasn’t no sooner out of his mouth when Bull smacked one a mile over Claymore’s head and came into the plate standing up. They was another tune on the bench now. We were yelling for blood, and we got it. Before they relieved Bonner, we’d got to him for three singles and a double—mine, if you must know—and the score was tied.

Say, if you think you ever seen pitching, you ought to have watched Kane cut them through there the rest of that day. Fourteen strike-outs in the last eight innings! And the only man to reach first base was Kramer, when Stout dropped an easy fly ball in the fifth.

Well, to shorten it up, Bull and Johnny Abbott and myself had some luck against Pierce in the seventh innings. Bull and Johnny scored and we licked them, 6 to 4.

In the club-house, Dave went to Hurry and said:

“Have you got anything to tell me, any explanation of the way you looked at the start of that game?”

“Boss,” said Kane, “I didn’t sleep good last night. Johnny will be a witness to that. I felt terrible in that first innings. I seemed to have lost my ‘fast.’ In the second innings it came hack and I was all right.”

And that’s all he would say.

You know how we went ahead and took the big series, four games out of five, and how Hurry gave them one run in the three games he pitched. And now you’re going to know what I promised to tell you when we first sat down, and I hope I ain’t keeping you from a date with that gal from St. Joe.

The world’s series ended in St. Louis and naturally I didn’t come back East when it was over. Neither did Kane, because he was going home to Yuma, along with his Minnie. Well, they were leaving the next night, though most of the other boys had ducked out right after the final game. Hurry called me up at my house three or four hours before his train was due to leave and asked me would I come and see him and give him some advice. So I went to the hotel and he got me in his room and locked the door.

Here is what he had to say:

On the night before that last game in Chi, a gal called him up and it was nobody but our old friend Evelyn Corey. She asked him to come out to a certain hotel on the North Side and have supper with her. He went because he felt kind of sorry for her. But when he seen her, he lost his head and was just as nuts about her as he’d been at Fort Gregg. She encouraged him and strung him along till he forgot all about poor Minnie. Evelyn told him she knew he could have his pick of a hundred gals and she was broken-hearted because they was no chance for her. He asked her what made her think that, and she put her handkerchief to her eyes and pretended she was crying and that drove him wild and he said he wouldn’t marry nobody but her.

Then she told him they had better forget it, that she was broke now, but had been used to luxury, and he promised he would work hard and save up till he had three or four thousand dollars and that would be enough for a start.

“Four thousand dollars!” she says. “Why, that wouldn’t buy the runs in my stockings! I wouldn’t think of marrying a man who had less than twenty thousand. I would want a honeymoon in Europe and we’d buy a car over there and tour the whole continent, and then come home and settle down in some nice suburb of New York. And so,” she says, “I am going to get up and leave you right now because I see that my dream won’t never come true.”

She left him sitting in the restaurant and he was the only person there outside of the waiters. But after he’d sat a little while—he was waiting till the first shock of his disappointment had wore off—a black-haired bird with a waxed mustache came up to him and asked if he wasn’t Hurry Kane, the great pitcher. Then he said: “I suppose you’ll pitch again tomorrow,” and Kane said yes.

“I haven’t nothing against you,” says the stranger, “but I hope you lose. It will cost me a lot of money if you win.”

“How much?” said Kane.

“So much,” says the stranger, “that I will give you twenty thousand dollars if you get beat.”

“I can’t throw my pals,” said Kane.

“Well,” said the stranger, “two of your pals has already agreed to throw you.”

Kane asked him who he referred to, but he wouldn’t tell. Kane don’t know yet, but I do. It was Dignan and Stout, our short-stopper and first baseman, and you’ll notice they ain’t with our club no more.

Hurry held out as long as he could, but he thought of Evelyn and that honeymoon in Europe broke him down. He took five thousand dollars’ advance and was to come to the same place and get the balance right after the game.

He said that after Johnny Abbott had give him that talk at the breakfast table, he went out and rode around in a taxi so he could cry without being seen.

Well, I’ve told you about that terrible first innings. And I’ve told you about young Topping talking to him before he went down to the bull pen to deliver Dave’s message to Carney and Olds. Topping asked him what he was staring at and Hurry pointed Evelyn out to him and said she was his gal.

“Your gal’s grandmother!” said Topping. “That’s Evelyn Corey and she belongs to Sam Morris, the bookie. If I was you, I’d lay off. You needn’t tell Dave, but I was in Ike Bloom’s at one o’clock this morning, and Sam and she were there, too. And one of the waiters told me that Sam had bet twenty thousand dollars on the White Sox way last spring and had got six to one for his money.”

Hurry quit talking and I started to bawl him out. But I couldn’t stay mad at him, especially when I realized that they was a fifty-three-hundred-dollar check in my pocket which I’d never have had only for him. Besides, they ain’t nothing crooked about him. He’s just a bone-headed sap.

“I won’t tell Dave on you,” I said, and I got up to go.

“Wait a minute,” says Kane. “I confessed so I could ask you a question. I’ve still got that five thousand which Morris paid me in advance. With that dough and the fifty-three hundred from the series, I and Min could buy ourself a nice little home in Yuma. But do you think I should ought to give it back to that crook?”

“No,” said I. “What you ought to do is split it with young Topping. He was your good luck!”

I run acrost Topping right here in town not long ago. And the first thing he said was, “What do you think of that goofey Kane? I had a letter from him and a check. He said the check was what he owed me.”

“Twenty-five hundred dollars?” I says.

“Two hundred,” said Topping, “and if I ever lent him two hundred or two cents, I’ll roll a hoop from here to Yuma.”