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