Harold MacGrath

“ First, Lynn took out of his pocket a document and spread it out. “Know what this is?” She shook her head. “Well, it's a transfer of stock. One thousand shares at two-hundred and fifty the share. At eight per cent a year, it's a tidy sum for a ball-player. It's my inheritance, Nellie..... Swan is a low rat, and so am I. But I didn't know I was a sneak until I met you. That first day I saw you and you said you were sorry—I must have fallen in love with you then. I love you with all I am, Nellie. Will you marry me?” ”

“ The sport is only a hinge to a door. Lynn pitched great ball, but he didn't win the pennant by a wonderful play in the last half of the ninth. He just did his share; that was all. A ball-player of the first class; but his fame was based upon his good looks and romantic misfortune rather than his ability as a pitcher.
Jenkins, while kindly and likable, was rather a quiet man, flocking by himself. Naturally he gravitated toward Lynn, whom he genuinely liked. In the home town he took Lynn to his own hotel and introduced him to everybody; and Lynn decided to live there. ”

“ The boy came in with a rush, but paused abruptly.
“The Dummy!” he gasped.
“I asked him in to supper. Be careful how you talk. He reads the lips.”
“Well, you're a queer bird!” Tommy stepped forward and awkwardly offered his hand. He was pulled two ways: admiration for a great pitcher and tolerant contempt for the affliction. “How'll I talk to him?”
“You don't have to talk,” said Nellie, wondering if Lynn had caught anything of this dialogue.
“Gee! But this flat is an asylum. Broken-down cats and dogs, and now deaf ball-players. Well, that let's me out. But this guy can pitch ball. ”

“ If he made good against the big fellows, McGuire informed him that he would have no cause to worry about the future. He added frankly that he was sorry to have a deaf man on the team. The whole fighting machinery would have to be readjusted; he and Lynn would have to invent a series of signals. The last thing in the world McGuire purposed to do was to run out to the mound and ask for Lynn's pad and pencil.
Late in May the whole baseball world was watching McGuire's remarkable find. The players, from Mississippi to Boston Harbor, called Lynn the Dummy. ”

“ As Lynn turned away from the plate, dusting himself, Murphy looked at McGuire, who grinned.
“I don't say I'll give him a contract, Murph; but that was pretty work. He outthought Swan; and yet Swan pitched a perfectly logical ball. But a deaf man, handing you a pad and pencil every time you want to talk to him!” ”

“ It'll be hard work to coach him. But that boy is a pitcher. That fly to left was donated. I couldn't put it anywhere else. A clean-looking chap. It's a tough world.”
“Give him a bat, Mac, and let me shoot him a few,” pleaded Swan.
“You'll have your chance,” growled McGuire.
He did rather a cruel thing because he was angry. He switched the players all over the lot so that each might have a swing at the dummy's ball. In all, Lynn pitched eighty-three balls, which would be grueling work for an old hand among friends. And all they got was one safe hit. ”

“ No real ball-team would take a man who blew up when some one yodeled. Then that Princeton pitcher beaned me. Broke my left ear all to smash. For three or four days I was stone-deaf, Nellie. Then my right ear came around; and except you're on the wrong side of me, I can hear as well as anybody. And then the idea came to me: It didn't matter how I got into the big league, so long as I got there. Nobody would yodel at a man who couldn't hear it. Outside of that kink in my cosmos, I was a good pitcher, good as the average. So I played up to the world that I was deaf, to everyone except Dad. ”

“ I tell you they can pitch.”
“Quoits, maybe, but not big-league ball. Murph, as a scout you're a corking good Kelly-pool shark. You rounded up seven tin cans for me. There isn't a pitcher in that bunch.” The two passed out into the street. “And say, it seems the whole country knows I haven't a real string of pitchers this season. While I was lighting my cigar, a lad touches my arm and asks me for a job as pitcher. Then he takes out a tab and pencil and shoves 'em along to me. Deaf as a post!” ”

“ I had an idea that I knew best what Bobby Lynn was capable of doing. If Mother had been alive, she would have backed me up.”
“Bobby!” she mused. His mother had called him that.
“When I told Dad that I wanted to play professional ball, he let out a roar. He contended that so long as a man played games of sport for fun, it was healthy, but to make a business of it was not. The amateur sportsman can go anywhere into any life; but the professional suddenly finds himself something of a pariah And the life is short. ”

“ And I was lucky. McGuire needed a pitcher. His stock-holders wouldn't give him money to buy one, and he didn't dare exchange players. That's why I went to him. Murphy knew what I could do, and he backed me. It seemed all fair and square until I met you. I had to play the sneak to the girl I loved! Lord, but it hurt! Yet I didn't dare tell you, until I'd won or lost. Tommy'll go into the office where Dad and my brothers can watch him. He will have my job there. Oh, Nellie, will you forgive me?”
“Bobby, Bobby!” was all she said.
But the way she said it was enough for any man with one good ear. ”

“ McGUIRE clipped the end of his cigar and eyed it thoughtfully. McGuire was unhappy. He had a stone wall for an infield, and only Texas leaguers could get by the boys in the outfield. What he lacked was a third pitcher, and he needed that man badly. Seven try-outs, and all of them more or less fizzles—not a big-league man in the bunch! In two weeks the spring training would be over, and he would be going north with only two reliable pitchers on his string, to do battle. He saw how it would be. He'd have to pay through the nose for the third man—cash and players he could not spare. ”

“ Outside the majors, these college boys are the grand ball-players.”
McGuire nodded. “But you finally wired me this Lynn was no good, that he blew up.”
“Listen: These college lads are always on the hunt for queer stunts. It entered their beans one day to stand on the foul line and yodel like Fritz-Emmet used to, and then to caterwaul—not the players, mind you, but the regular college boys. They did it just as a lark—nothing behind it. But gee, somehow it got to this boy Lynn. Two men on bases, one out. He ups and throws the first wild ball I'd seen him pitch. The man on second romps home. ”

“ As he introduced Lynn, he wrote down the name of the party of the second part, as they say. Lynn did a lot of handshaking. Jenkins suddenly scratched his chin, grinned and wrote two full pages on the tab.
“That girl back of the cigar-stand is Nellie Milliken,” he wrote. “She's the whitest little skirt that ever rooted for baseball or church—no nonsense, no lallygagging. She likes you or she don't, and you find it out the moment the game is called. She cottons to me because I'm married and got a couple of kids; and she and the Missus are great pals. She works because she has to. ”

“ Jenkins explained. “Fusses you up at first. It gives you the jump sometimes when he answers you like he could hear. But he's a born pitcher, Nellie; and there's going to be series-dough for the Missus next winter.”
“It must be dreadful,” said the girl in an aside. “He's the nicest-looking ball-player I ever saw.”
That was the beginning. The girl went thoughtfully back to her work, and Lynn played a very poor game of Kelly. Thereafter, when the team was home, you were likely to find Lynn at the cigar-stand from ten-thirty to ten-forty in the morning and from five-fifty to six at night. ”

“ The kid brother is always the kid. To work up through that unconscious prejudice would have been impossible. My father couldn't see it. And he's the squarest old sport in the world. People have got the idea that he cut me off, disowned me, because I wanted to play baseball. ”