Читать книгу The Baseball MEGAPACK ® - Zane Grey - Страница 8

JACK AND THE BEAN BALL, by Samuel G. Camp

Listen. I’m gonna ask you one of them hypocritical questions. Suppose, some time, you went to a ball game. Getting right down to brass tacks, suppose the Long Branch Cubans was playin’ the Royal Giants—you might say the Claros versus the Colorado Maduros. Get me? And suppose, just about the time the hostilities is due to begin, one, two, three guys appear from nowhere in particular, the first one carryin’ a rock about the size of a bushel basket, the second guy carryin’ a sledge, and the third a couple of empty pop-bottle cases.

And suppose them three birds walks into the diamond and dumps down them various articles just outside the pitcher’s box—an’ beats it.

Say, what’s gonna happen? What’s the idea? Well, think it over. The possibilities is immense!

“Say!” says the fella I’m with, “let’s get outa here! It looks like there’s gonna be trouble!”

Well, I dunno but what he’s right, but—“Aw, let’s take a chance.” I says. “Let’s see it through—I’m interested!”

So we seen it through, an’—it reminded me of Jack Adams and the bean ball.

This guy wasn’t no conscript: he was a volunteer. Way down yonder in the trainin’ camp, he shows up on the ball lot one day and tells the Old Man that after lookin’ over all the teams in both leagues he guesses us Destroyers has the one best chance of landin’ that old world’s seriousness dough, and so he has decided to join out with us, and with him on the team they won’t be nothin’ to it.

“Fine!” says the Old Man. “Great! This’ll be the first year I was ever sure of gettin’ into the big series, not to say nothin’ of coppin’ it—before the mayor had throwed out the ball for the season’s openin’ game! Here we got the series on ice and we haven’t even went north yet! Fine business! That’s gonna save me a lot of worry! But, say! Would you be insulted if I was to ask you to show me what you got before we sign a contract?”

A certain number of these nuts is due to show up every year durin’ the spring practise, and the quickest way of gettin’ rid of ’em is to give ’em what they ask for—which is a try-out.

“Nothin’ like that,” says Jack. “I’m always willin’ to show goods; and besides, when you see what I got I’ll be able to get a better contract.”

“Hmmm,” says the Old Man. “In that case, maybe I had ought to show you the dotted line right now and save the club money. But—just what do you do?”

“Me?” says Jack. “I’m a hitter. I don’t claim to be no great shakes as a fielder, though I haven’t never had no trouble getting by in the outfield. But me, I’m a natural-born hitter! Cobb, Speaker, Baker, none of them guys has a thing on me! I bust ’em on the nose all over the lot and out of it! Honest, I ain’t lyin’! It’s a gift! Spitters, mudders, smokers, fadeaways, emery balls—bam! See ’em drift! I eat ’em up! Honest! It comes natural. Southpaws, righthanders, it makes no difference to me! I can hit any kind of ball pitched anyhow! Honest I can! It’s a gift! I—”

“Lay off!” says the Old Man. “Hittin’ ain’t your only gift. Come hither! If you can hit just one third of what you claim, you’re the guy I been lookin’ for since fourteen years ago last March. Let’s go take a look at them goods.”

Well, this was when we was ’most ready to go north, along toward the last of the spring practise, and so the pitchers had got to where they wasn’t afraid to put somethin’ on the ball—them as had anythin’. And so the Old Man steers Jack over to where Speed Williams was warmin’ up and tells Speed to turn his wolf loose onto Jackie.

“Whiff this bird a couple of times,” the Old Man says to Speed, “after which we get right back to business. Trainin’ trips is no place for levity.”

“Take your choice,” the Old Man says to Jack, pointin’ to a pile of bats.

“Bats don’t make no difference to me,” says Jack, pickin’ up the first one he come to. “I’d as lief have one bat as another. Any guy that has to have a certain kind of bat ain’t a natural-born hitter. I just grab any old stick, and walk right out to the rubber, and give that old pill a ride, Watch me!”

“Let’s go!” says the Old Man.

Now I always had a sort of idea what a natural-born hitter would look like—or what he wouldn’t—an’, whilst this bug was pulling his stuff to the Old Man, I says to myself: “Him a natural-born hitter? He looks more like a thirty-third degree college prof.” Yes, sir, you can take it from me, this guy Adams was there all seventeen ways with the noble brow stuff and the classic features.

And now listen! I don’t claim to be no seventh son of a seventh son nor nothin’ like that, and so it couldn’t’ve been nothin’ more than just a plain, common, ordinary hunch, but right then and there I says to myself:

“Gee! Ain’t it gonna be a shame if some day one of them old bean balls you hear about, and which is liable to come along most any time, collides with that regular, delicately shaped head to which all them classical features and things is attached! A shame? It’ll be a total wreck!”

No, sir; you could see at a glance that Jack’s head-piece wasn’t calculated to stand no such wear and tear as that. Most any regular roughnecked, low-browed ball tosser, such as I, can take the count from one of them bean balls and live to kill the man that throwed it. But if I was a pitcher, I wouldn’t take no chance on manslaughter with Jackie.

But let’s go, as the Old Man said.

Speed Williams unhooks his fast one, an’—wham! This guy Adams rode it clear out of the lot!

“Huh!” says the Old Man. “Hey, you,” he yells at Speed, “put somethin’ on that ball! We can’t waste all day monkeyin’ with this here busher! Strike ’im out! Strike ’im out!”

Well, barrin’ the usual exceptions, they ain’t no tougher bird in the big leagues to bat against than Speed Williams—an’, barrin’ no exceptions at all, Speed has the meanest spitter that ever give a man floatin’ kidney swingin’ at it. And—

And Jack busted that spitter clean out of commission. He could’ve made three home runs off that hit and come in standin’ up!

“Hmmm,” says the Old Man, beginnin’ to look kind of serious and—scared. I guess maybe he thought he was seein’ things. Well, I don’t know as I blame him. It would make most anybody rub their eye.

“That’s enough for you!” says the Old Man to Speed. “Here, Dempsey,” he says to another first-string pitcher, “you give the poet lariat, or the professor, or whatever he is, a whirl! Show up this natural-born hitter and show him up quick—get me? Come on, now—the old jazz! Slip it to him!”

“That’s right!” sings Jack. “Bring ’em on! Bring ’em all on! The more the merrier, no fear an, no favor!”

And believe me, if he showed anythin’ to them pitchers—an’ he did!—it wasn’t favor. That bird simply rapped everythin’ to all corners of the lot and out of it! He loops and whizzes ’em all over the place—an’ every one right on the nose! If you hadn’t knowed what was goin’ on, you might’ve thought it was the drumfire on the western front—the sound of them balls explodin’ up against Jack’s bat. On the level. I never before seen no such exhibition of the fine art of pastin’ that old pill! Never!

And so—well, if I was to try and describe that bird, I guess I’d say—now—that he was what you might call a natural-born hitter!

No, sir, I wouldn’t say that this guy had oversubscribed himself by a single share: he was all he said he was. And—well, leave it to the Old Man. When we hiked north, Jack Adams, the natural-born hitter, was with us—as a regular.

The rock, the sledge, and the pop-bottle cases? I’m workin’ back to ’em right now.

They was better fielders than Jack, and guys which was faster on the bases, Cobb, for instance; but if one man can make a team, and one man can do that little thing, Jack Adams made us Destroyers. The Old Man put Jack in the clean-up position, and I’ll tell the world Jackie cleaned up! Doubles, triples, and four-baggers trickled off that bird’s bat like water offen a duck’s back.

He was sure a terror to pitchers, for one thing, because he was always crowdin’ the plate. You take a guy which crowds the plate, and about the only way you can get him to stand back is to shoot a good fast one right on a line with the place you seen him last and about head high; if he’s still there—well, you win your point, or that plate-crowder goes clean out of the game and maybe to the hospital.

That’s the old bean ball!

But Jack—well, somehow he was so sort of delicate appearin’ ’round about where a bean ball lands if you don’t happen to duck it—an’ sometimes you don’t—that most of them pitchers didn’t dast to take a chance on beanin’ him. Nobody goes to the chair from choice.

Oh, of course, sometimes a pitcher would go crazy and shoot one at Jack—an’ Jackie always ducked ’em. Then him and the pitcher would chatter at each other till both of ’em got sore. And then, sometimes Jackie would—an’ sometimes he wouldn’t—wade right into the diamond and take after that pitcher with his bat. After which, of course, Jackie spent the rest of that perfect day on the bench.

Jack was sure some pitcher-baiter and umpire-baiter. On the average, I should say he was throwed out of about every third game, sometimes sooner and sometimes later. But we should worry. By—it must’ve been along, about the last of August, that bird had batted up the Destroyers into the lead by a good nine games. Us for the Big Series, and the winner’s end at that!

And then—

I guess I must’ve noticed it as soon as anybody: Jack wasn’t crowdin’ the plate no more. And his hittin’ fell off a little.

Well, with a lead like that, we didn’t think nothin’ much about it till it seemed like the symptoms—whatever they was symptoms of—begin to get a little more pronounced. Jack was standin’ just a little too far back from the plate for the best results in bustin’ the well-known pesky pill. And his hittin’ fell off quite a little.

The Old Man didn’t say nothin’ for a game or two—sometimes these natural-born hitters and things is best left alone to work out their own troubles but finally it gets so the Old Man see where they was somethin’ had to be did, or said, and trust the Old Man to say it!

The next time Jack is due at the plate—“Listen here!” says the Old Man, “I been noticin’ where you’re standin’ too far back from the plate. From where you’re standin’ a man couldn’t hit the ball with two bats on end. Whazza matter with you? You gettin’ ball-shy, or yeller, or lazy or what? Now, see here! You go out there and deliver! Stand right up to that old plate like you used and gimme that hit! Get me? Gimme that hit!”

Well, Jack didn’t say nothin’—which was an awful bad sign—an’ on the level as he walked out to the plate, I could’ swear his knees was shakin’! It didn’t seem as if no such could be possible, but—

Well, Pete Horton was pitchin’ for the Pawnee that day, and where Pete got the hunch you can search me, but the first ball Pete sends up to Jack is one of them regular old bush-league roundhouse outcurves. That ball was so slow that the reporters was wirin’ bulletins to their papers statin’ the exact location of the sphere at the present moment of time— “The ball is now six foot from the pitcher and is expected to cross the plate about 6:30”—somethin’ like that.

It woulddn’t’ve fooled a schoolboy.

Sometimes—generally—them slow outs starts in your direction, but you can see ’em bendin’ away from you all the way up to the plate. And I guess this one must’ve looked to Jack like as if it was comin’ at him.

Because, anyways, Jack had edged up to the plate like the Old Man told him, but when that ball leaves Pete’s hand, about half and hour before it got to the catcher Jack drops flat and rolls away from the play a good forty foot—no tumble-weed had nothin’ on him! Right now he holds the rollin’ record in both leagues, both for speed and distance.

Well, of course, the stands went crazy and everybody else—but none of them had anythin’ on the Old Man! Rave? I wouldn’t repeat it.

The Old Man had took three guesses when he sent Jack up to the plate that time, and he win with the first one: somehow or other Jack Adams had developed the worst case of ball-shyness ever known to science!

Of course, gettin’ into the World’s Series don’t mean nothin’ to a ball club or a ballplayer—not a thing! A fat part in a Broadway success don’t mean nothin’ to an actor, and the championship don’t mean nothin’ to a fighter, certainly not! And so it didn’t mean nothin’ to us Destroyers when that nine game lead of ours fade away till you wouldn’t notice it, and it’s up to us to win our last game with the Pawnees if we’re gonna grab the old flag and get into the big seriousness.

Anyways, that’s what happened.

The Old Man started Jack in a couple of games, after the time Jack fell—an’ rolled—for that sand-lot outcurve of Pete Horton’s; but nothin’ doin’. Jack pulls away from the plate at every pitch and he can’t hit a lick. No mistake, Jackie is plumb scared to death of that ball, and he ain’t takin’ no chances. The pitchers made a monkey of him; all the sport pages carries half a column advertisin’ the fact that Jack Adams, the Destroyers’ celebrated natural-born hitter, has blew up with a report that made the Black Tom disaster sound like somebody crackin’ one of Harry Stevens’s peanuts, an’—the Old Man yanks Jack for keeps.

That is, y’ understand, till we can find out what’s his trouble and maybe get him goin’ again.

Well, the Old Man has Jack up on the mat and throws the third degree into him like if he had said just one half of the same things to me I would’ve killed him where he stood and went to the chair with a song; but the Old Man didn’t get no satisfaction. Jack didn’t do nothin’ but stall and beat ’round the bush, and so finally the Old Man knowed just as much about what was Jack’s trouble as he did in the first place.

Of course, they was somethin’; a man doesn’t go into one of them slumps without they’s a cause for it.

But anyways, so then the Old Man gives up tryin’ to find out what was the cause, and starts in tryin’ to cure the result, as you might say.

Believe me, the Old Man’s methods was what you might call radical!

Nobody—not even Mister J. J. McGraw—has anythin’ on the Old Man when it comes to the sort of English, plain and fancy, straight and reverse, which peels the hide right often you; and he feeds this to Jack in liberal doses before, after, and durin’ each meal and just before retirin’. The rest of the time he has Jack backed up against a fence—so he can’t pull away-bein’ pitched to by every pitcher in the string and anybody that’ll volunteer.

But it didn’t do no good. No, sir; Jack is afraid that every ball pitched to him is gonna bean him; and when the Old Man tries him out away from that fence—well, if anythin’, he backs away more than ever.

Well, I dunno; it didn’t look to me like Jack was fitted by nature to stop no bean balls, like I was tellin’ you, and so— At that, maybe if we could find out just what it was that brung on this attack of ball shyness—just what started Jack worryin’—

But, as I was sayin’, it comes down to where that last game with the Pawnees would make or break us, and Jack still out of the game.

The night before that game, early in the evenin’—I guess the Old Man had been ridin’ him again—Jack comes to my room lookin’ for sympathy. Somebody must’ve gave him the wrong address. After he went out I seen a little bundle of letters layin’ on the bed. It was hot and Jack had throwed down his coat there. So-Well, on the quiet, I had been pullin’ a little Phineas Jenks stuff on the strange case of Jack Adams ever since the Old Man tells me to pick up any little tiling I can an’—it looks like I’m justified.

Ten minutes later I enters the Old Man’s room like a half-back goin’ through a hole in the line. It seems like the Old Man is harnessin’ himself all up to go to a show or somethin’—tryin’, I guess, to forget how to-morrow, as sure as shootin’, we’re gonna drop that last game to the Pawnees and kiss our chance at the Big Series good-by.

“Can the frivolities, boss,” I says, “here’s business!”

“What’s broke?” asts the Old Man.

“I got the goods on the natural-born flivver,” I says.

“Exhibit A,” I says, “one letter from ‘Your Lovin’ Ameliar’ to ‘My Own Dearest Jack’—ouch!—containin’ amongst other things which I blush to repeat a solemn warnin’ to dearest Jack not to let none of them brutal baseball pitchers get him in the head with no baseball, because just think what would happen, and she encloses two clippin’s from the papers showin’ where only this last week two fatal accidents went to the hospital on account of bein’ hit on the head with them baseballs; and if you love me, Jack, be careful and don’t take no chances of lettin’ anybody hit you with no baseball, because she hears they is throwed with terrific speed, an’—so on.

“Exhibit B,” I says. “Another letter containin’ among the outpourin’s of Ameliar’s fond and lovin’ heart another solemn warnin’ not to go and let.no pitcher bean him, and two more clippin’s.

“Exhibit C,” I says. “Similar.

“Exhibit D,” I says. “The same, except this time they’s three clippin’s instead of two. Must be about this time them brutal pitchers was wagin’ a campaign of ruthlessness.

“Exhibit E,” I says—

“Gimme them letters!” says the Old Man. Listen. The finest cure in the world, for some complaints, is ridicule!

And the Old Man sure had somethin’ to work on!

* * * *

Anyways, when we went up against them Pawnees, next day, for the fatal game, the Old Man takes a chance. Jack is back in the line-up—in the old clean-up position.

If he’s game again, it’s a cinch we win; if not—good-night!

Us Destroyers was shakin’ dice some when Jack walks out to the plate. Right then they was two gone and a man on second.

It’s Pete Horton pitchin’, again, but this time Pete don’t try no roundhouse outs at Jack—nothing like that! This game is for blood, and no funny business; an’, thinks Pete, if this guy Adams has dreamed that he’s gonna make a comeback, here’s where I wake him up and scare him to death into the bargain—with just one pitch!

Jack had crowded up to the plate like old times. And Pete unhooks with the old beaner—an’ everythin’ he’s got—straight at that fragile-lookin’ dome of Jack’s!

As I was sayin’, you can take it from me it had the crowd guessin’ some when these three guys dumps down that big rock, the sledge, and them pop-bottle cases outside the pitcher’s box and beats it.

Goin’ back, y’ understand, to the begin in’ of that game between the Long Branch Cubans and them Royal Giants.

Then a couple of fellas wades into the diamond and one of them begins ballyhooon’ a line of stuff about how “Iron-Head” Barry, which is the other one and which now makes his bow to the audience—about how Iron-Head Barry, the guy with the cast-iron bean, or somethin’, will now oblige by lettin’ any gentleman in the crowd bust that rock, using the sledge, of course, whilst the rock is balanced on, and supported solely by—an’ absolutely no trickery nor subterfuge as you can see for yourself—the head of Iron-Head Barry!

An so then Iron-Head Barry sits down an waits for somebody to come along and kindly bust that boulder over his bean. Finally a big beef which played with the Cubans—an’ if he was a Cuban then I’m a Chinaman—a big beef comes to the front and picks up the sledge. Iron-Head, perched on them pop-bottle cases piled one on top of the other, balances that hundred pound rock on his head, keepin’ it from tippin’ with the tips of his fingers.

The big beef with the sledge gets into position, takes a wind-up and bam!

“O-o-o-f!” says Iron-Head.

Him and the rock is both intact though that blow would’ve killed an elephant.

“Come again!” says Iron-Head, fixin’ the rock so’s it rests a little more comfortably on his bald spot. “Put the jazz into it! Don’t mind me!”

And so then the big beef spits on his hands, an’—zowie!

“Woof!” says Iron-Head, and rises smilin’ from among the fragments—that rock had split into a thousand pieces! And absolutely no trickery—I seen it. After which the ballyhoo artist passes the hat. Get me?

* * * *

That beaner Pete Horton unhooks at Jack—well, it beans him! And bounds clean up into the press stand like it was shot there out of a gun! And Jack—that ball didn’t have no more effect on him than as if he had been struck by an idea—fact! He never even blinks! All he does is look surprised, then sore, and then—wade into the diamond swingin’ a long black bat and looking for Horton! Pete hadn’t hurt him—no, sir! Iron-Head Barry had nothin’ on Jack Adams! But he was insulted, see?

Well, Pete applies to the ump for protection, and gets it; and Jack—well, under the circumstances, instead of gettin’ the bench, Jack gets his base on a dead ball.

And they wasn’t never a deader ball!

Yeh—we win the game with the Pawnees; and how Jack Adams’s battin’ busted up the world seriousness is history.

And I guess that’s pretty near the finish—except a couple of morals—I ain’t no piker—an’ a letter.

As the feller says: most of us spends our life worryin’ about things that never happen—or can’t. And as the feller didn’t say: bone, like gold, is where you find it.

As for the letter, it’s one I sent to Mrs. Ameliar Jack Adams, about a month after we win the Big Series, along with a little trick automatic—a sort of weddin’ present.

“Dear madam,” I says, “the enclosed is strictly for home defense; but if you ever feel like usin’ it on Jack, why, go right ahead, and no jury wouldn’t never convict you—an’ shoot low!”