“Honest, Tom, I didn’t think that these here big leaguers would fall for that melodrama. I played out on the coast with that stiff, and there was a half dozen men out there that he didn’t dare try to spike. If one of these guys would knock his block off—”
“But he’s within his rights,” I argued. “He has the right of way on the base-line, and if a player gets in his way—”
“Yeh! That sounds good, it does; but you forget that Ty Cobb and a lot of the other best base-runners in the world don’t spike men all the time. Just because a runner has the right of way doesn’t give him license to deliberately poke his spikes into a man’s shins or ankles every chance. There’s such a thing as abusing a privilege, an’—”
“And you think some one ought to knock his block off, eh?”
“Yes. If he ever tries that stunt with me!”
“Didn’t he ever on the coast?”
“Yeh—a bunch of times. But he never got by with it. Once his spikes slammed into my shin guards in San Francisco, but they didn’t cut through. Good thing for him they didn’t, too.”
“Is he yellow?”
Nellie was as honest as the day is long. “No, he ain’t. But then again he ain’t a fool, and he don’t take chances with men who won’t stand for it. If he ever tries his shenanigans with me—”
“Sandy tells me that you and he ain’t any particular friends?”
“No!” he exploded the word. “We ain’t. And one of these days I’m going to get him. You watch.”
I did.
* * * *
We jumped around our Eastern trip and then received the Eastern teams at home. It was quite some time before we played the Reds again, and by then Davis was universally spoken of as the Wild Man. His list of victims was appallingly long. And every time news of a fresh spiking appeared in the papers, I watched Nelligan, and I saw his jaw get grimmer and grimmer.
The very first day of our second series with the Reds, they put me in the box and Nellie behind the bat. We were playing at home and the park was fairly jammed. For the first time in years the Panthers—that’s us—were near the top of the heap and going like a house afire.
The Wild Man was first at bat. As he stood there at the plate, swinging his bats while the team was getting into position, I heard a little dialogue between Nelligan and Davis.
Said Nelligan: “You’ve been spiking these guys around the circuit, Davis, and getting away with it. Maybe you’re within your rights according to the rules of the National Commission. But if you try any funny business with me there’s going to be trouble, see?”
Davis laughed superciliously.
“Scared already, Nellie? I got the right of the base-line—see? And if you happen to be there, why—well, I ain’t gonna make any difference between you and anyone else. Get that?”
Davis flied out to Shay that time at bat, and the next time he singled and died on first. The third time up he sacrificed a runner, but the fourth time he poled out a double to left.
That was in the ninth inning.
We were three runs ahead and had the game sewed up, but still we weren’t taking chances. A baseball game’s never over until the last man’s out, specially when you’re playing Scrappy Connor’s bunch. And every time Davis had come to bat there’d been nasty words between him and Nellie.
Sure enough, next man up slammed out a daisy cutter over second, and Davis started like a streak around third for home. Man, could he run! He just simply burned up the turf.
Sandy MacPherson, out in center, choked the ball and lined it home. He has a great wing, has Sandy. Mike Donnelley had run from first to back up Nelligan, and Shay had come in from right to look out for the initial corner.
I watched.
Davis was digging down that third base-line like a streak of greased lightning, and I saw his forehead furrowed as he kept one eye on Nelligan. As for Nellie, he had taken his proper position at the plate, legs apart, braced, and with all the room in the world for a runner to slide in between. The umpire was standing there watching like a hawk. And the look in Nelligan’s eyes that minute wasn’t the pleasantest thing I ever saw.
The ball spanked into Nellie’s glove at the very instant Davis slid.
As I said, he had all the chance in the world to slide through Nellie’s legs—but nothing doing! His left leg goes through all right—but he deliberately slams his right leg against Nellie’s shin. I learned a few minutes later that the spikes cut right through the side of the guard and into the flesh.
He was safe, and as he arose from the ground and brushed the dust from his uniform Nelligan stepped close to him, his eyes shining redly.
“Y’r a dirty dog!” he said. “And if you ain’t as yellow as you are rotten, you’ll fight me after the game!”
Oh! Davis was there with the goods, all right, and after we put the next man out, arrangements were made for the scrap. Nellie hadn’t been spiked so very badly, thanks to the shin guards, and he was hopping mad—wild almost.
* * * *
The fight was strictly private and less than a dozen of us saw it.
For those who didn’t, I have always felt sorry. Those two men, Nellie weighing a little more, but Davis having the advantage of height and reach and skill, fought stripped to the waist there in the clubroom and with bare fists. Freddy Lewis of the Panthers refereed.
That fight was the worst thing, and the cleanest, I ever saw. Davis was simply wild, but I guess he’s rather decent after all, for he fought one of the cleanest and gamest fights ever. But their hate! Why, every blow struck by either man had hate as well as muscle and venom behind it. And it was the kind of hate you read about in books.
Nellie started right off by boring in, shoulders hunched and guard low.
Davis stood off and peppered him with left jabs until he got too close, and then he’d step in and shoot his right for the body or hook it to the jaw. And, of course, the minute he’d get close Nellie would uncork and they’d mix things like wildcats.
“There’s a woman in this!” gasped Gerald Stanley, our crack twirler, as they paused pantingly for a second to stare at each other. “Nothin’ else could make men fight like that!”
But this ain’t a story of the fight those two men had there in the clubhouse, although if I live to be as old as Methusaleh I’ll never see another one as vicious—or as clean.
Finally, when both men were so cut up and exhausted that all they could do was stand there and patter futile little blows that hurt the giver more than the receiver, we stepped in and put a stop to hostilities.
And was either man satisfied?
They were not. Most decidedly not. We rubbed them down and bandaged them up. They stood up near each other then, with us standing by ready to jump in if either started the fireworks again—and they stared into each other’s eyes coldly.
“I’ll get you one of these days, Nelligan!” muttered Davis.
“And I’ll get you, Davis!” snapped Nellie, evenly. “This don’t end things. One of these days I’m going to show you up for the four-flush you are!”
Then they separated, glaring furiously at each other.
When Shay—he was our manager—got wise to what had happened (and he couldn’t very well miss it seeing that Nellie’s face looked more like a pound of chopped beef than anything else I can think of just now), you can bet that he raised some Cain.
He docked every man jack of us who had anything to do with it—and then cornered me and asked for details of the scrap. And during the rest of that season—until