busher like me, just breaking in, had crust enough to tell him that.
But if we thought that Mac was going to bear any hard feelings toward Donoghy, we was wrong. The next day, more than half of us nearly had a duck fit, when at morning practice, Mac hung around Donoghy, and played to his vanity like he was the smallest of things living in the camp.
And more than half of us were of the opinion that Mac was beginning to get yellow! Think of sucking around a guy like Donoghy just because he pulled the laugh on you! It was like in school-days, when the bully made the gang laugh at you, and you try to toady to him so’s he won’t do it no more! Remember?
The next day it rained hard, and for two following days it poured. Then it was that Mac and Donoghy hung together—or rather, Mac shadowed Donoghy like he was a detective on a bank robber’s trail. We couldn’t understand it. Even though I didn’t say nothing, and pretended to Mac that I still thought he was the greatest ever, I got to feeling underneath that he was growing yellow in his old days.
Then on the third day, when it cleared up, but was too wet to think of playing, Donoghy and Mac came into the lobby dressed for a fishing trip on the river.
“I know where there’s a great lot of pike, Jim,” purred Mac to the big fellow, “and we’ll get ’em.”
“Huh,” returned Jim, in that patronizing manner of his, “I guess you don’t know so much. Don’t forget that a high ball don’t mean a stolen base!”
It wasn’t what he said, as the way he said it that made my blood boil. And as we watched Mac’s face, darned if he didn’t smile a sickly sort of smile, and say:
“I guess you’re right, Jim. Come on!” And I imagine over half of us right then felt our opinion of Johnny MacGinley sink fifty points!
All during the remaining week of the camp it was the same. We managed to win one of the three games, and it was Mac who did it with a single, but that didn’t soothe us much. What we had to stand from Big Jim Donoghy was more than enough, and it was all on account of MacGinley. If he only had had backbone enough, he could have called the big stiff, and let us have peace.
They went fishing twice more that week, and then we started to break camp.
I guess most of us was darn glad to get away from Donoghy and his laughing hyenas because they was getting our goats. Even Caplan was beginning to see that murder was growing in our hearts.
We left at ten o’clock on Sunday night, and who should come down to the train but Donoghy. You can guess what he was there for. The way he roasted Mac was pitiful, and the little third-baseman took it all, with a sickly grin. I was glad when the thick smoke drifted back, and shut him out of sight. It looked like a bad season for us, for if ever there was a guy to egg the bleachers on to pester a fellow, it was Big Jim Donoghy! And I could see what was coming! And to think that Mac, ordinarily as scrappy as a game-cock, took all of it, without fighting back! That’s what we on the Mammoths couldn’t understand!
I guess you remember how the first part of the season went. We was lucky not to play the Birds until the last series with our eastern rivals, or else half of us rookies would have broken down under the criticism. It didn’t take Big Jim long to tell the whole story to the newspaper men, and they laughed long and loud as they wrote about it to their public. Before you could say “safe,” all the fans in the United States knew about how Big Jim Donoghy put it over on Johnny MacGinley.
No matter where we played, the bleachers yelled long and loud at Mac. It got so that they went a little further, and started to bawling us out for playing on the same team with a “bone-head!”
And then we played the Birds on their home grounds. I’ll never forget them games. From the time that old Klein yelled “play” until the last man was put out in the fourth game, the bleachers kept reminding Mac how Big Jim—their Big Jim—had put it over on him.
We lost all four of those games. You can’t doubt it. They trimmed us so proper that Caplan got three more white hairs. And it was Mac who kicked away two of the games. Once he got caught on the hidden ball trick by Jim himself, and the next game he dropped a little pop-up in the ninth. It was sickening. There was no doubt of it, in our minds, Mac was losing his nerve. When a fellow loses his nerve in baseball, he might as well pack up his little grip, and move off, for if there is any game in the world where pure grit is a necessary adjunct to being a great player, baseball is it.
Well, we played worse and worse, and along in July we were a bad fifth, with the Birds leading by about ten full games. It looked mighty like Caplan was going to retire with a bad taste in his mouth, and not a man on the team but wasn’t sorry for him. If only Mac hadn’t made that foolish move, we would have been out there tearing the league wide open, and one of the whitest managers would retire at the end of the season with a happy smile. But it looked bad for us, and the boys were getting peevish.
It seemed that every series that we played with the Birds was a nightmare. Even when we opened with them at the Polo Grounds, they managed to break even with us, and we should have won all four games. So, at the beginning of August we was eight full games behind them, and only two months left to make our great leap toward first place.
All this time Mac was digging alone, playing his usual steady game, just as long as we didn’t play the Birds.
Then, we developed some of the team play that made us justly famous, and tore off seven straight wins. It sent us along like an express train, and at the end of August we was snapping at the heels of the Birds, only three full games behind, and going strong.
Say, were those boys happy? You could see Caplan beginning to get his smile back, and everyone of us was plugging like a good fellow.
“Keep it up, boys,” old Whitey Caplan would say to us, as we ran out of our dug- out for each game. “Just this year, you know!” And we would go out strong in our confidence, and satisfied that what we were doing was for the whitest fellow in the game. And strange to say, Mac was beginning to regain some of the feeling of the boys.
Then, one night, while we was making a long jump to Cincinnati, we met up with the Birds, who was making the jump to St. Louis. They was going on the same train, and what they didn’t say to poor Mac was a caution. He took it all with that silly grin on his lined features, but never made a come-back.
Big Jim and him got into a game of poker with a couple of other of the boys, and the manager of the Birds rubbed it into Mac like he was a dunce. Whatever hand Mac held he played wrong, and I guess he must have lost about fifteen bucks before Caplan sounded taps, and we ducked to our berths.
Owing to the fact that two ball teams was traveling on the same train, there wasn’t much room, and I found myself chucked into a lower with Mac. You can guess my feelings. For the past four months, I had done nothing but get bawled out because I played alongside of him, and to say that I felt like snapping at him, would be but telling the truth.
I turned my back to him, as he got undressed, and closed my eyes tight, so that he would think I was asleep. But, squinting at him, I was surprised to see that he was actually smiling, and the smile was one of happiness! It was the first time he had done it for three months at least. As he crawled in, he whispered soft:
“Happy!”
The boys had nicknamed me that.
I grunted, making believe that I was falling asleep.
He laid his hand on my shoulder and I turned around.
“Happy,” he smiled down at me “Listen, lad, I got it! You have been the only fellow who has not laid into me since that big bum pulled something on me! But Happy, I got it! Lad, shake me hand. I tried long to discover it—but I got it now! Play your head off for the rest of the season, lad, and watch old Mac. Try to cheer the fellows up, but don’t say anything about me! For, lad, just as sure as God made little apples, we are going to win that pennant!”
And with a little sigh of contentment, he slapped the light into the wall, and laid down. And I could feel some of the confidence that he had put into his speech. What he had got I couldn’t