Octavus Roy Cohen

“ And up in the grandstand sat Dollye and old man Baldwin.
But when men are playing under the strain we were, there’s bound to be a break sooner or later. This one came in the eleventh and Riverview got the benefit of it. With one man down, the Riverview third-baseman laid a nasty little grounder between short and second. The two players made a dive for it, collided, and the man was safe on first. He stole second on a robber’s decision and was sacrificed to third. A weak hitter is next at bat, and of course the Riverview manager, knowing that a hit means a run, substitutes a pinch-clouter. ”

“ My beliefs are mine. Unfortunately they weren’t Tommy Carlton’s, the best pal I ever had. We met in the Cincy training-camp one spring when scouts had been working under orders to harvest the country’s ivory crop. Neither of us knew just how we got there, and we knew it was too good to last, so when we were farmed out, as a battery, to a Class C league, we didn’t shed any sad salt tears,
But we’d earned the right to call ourselves ex-major-leaguers, and Mary Pickford didn’t have nothing on us with this self-advertising stuff. ”

“ But all my loyalty to Rosedale wasn’t nothing to my loyalty for Tommy. I and him had been pals since we met in the Cincy camp, and I knew if we won that game, Dollye was going to marry him. I tell you, it’s ’ell to see a good man go wrong.
With two strikes and no balls on the batter and a man on third with two down and one run needed to win. I knew the Riverview manager was going to take a chanst. I knew as well as I knew my own given name that the guy was going to try to steal home. ”

“ Tommy finds me gasping for wind on the porch.
“It’s working!” he piped. “By to-morrow’s game they’ll be cutting each other’s throats to get at the ball. She'll be at every game and if she don’t inject a little pep, then I’ll eat it.”
“Where'd you get her?”
“Old Baldwin vamped to New York and landed her, somehow. Took her out of the Follies, after first making sure that she really knows something about baseball. The whole infield is trying to make a date with her for to-morrow night. How do you like her looks?”
“Too good,” I gloomed. always raises trouble.” ”

“ Tommy and me scratched our heads in chorus and tried to dope out the trouble, which wasn’t any harder than figuring when the war’ll end. It wasn’t until we was preparing for the six-o’clock eats that Tommy hit on it.
“I got it!” he chortles. “Those guys are real ball-players. But they haven’t any pep!”
“You've hit it!” I says. “Their spirit is nix. They get around like a bunch of plow-horses. They look like they was training for the glee-club.”
“If they really can play,” insists Tommy, “it’s up to me to make ’em do it. And it'll be harder than teaching ’em the game. ”

“ IN the first place a ball-player hasn’t any business falling in love—at least not unless he contemplates an immediate marriage. Me, for instance, and women have always gotten along about as well as pickles and ice cream. ”

“ Dollye Baldwin.
“My Gawd!” howls Tommy, “the duplicity of the woman. She promised to marry me!”
“And me,” seconds Steele.
“And me,” raves Browne.
“And me too,” from Richardson. And so the chorus went around.
“Clam down,” I counseled. “Clam down! After all, she was paid to put pep in this team, and she done it. She wasn’t hired to be a wife-in-chief. Besides, we lost and all bets were off. It strikes me that she’s hit on a dandy compromise!”
But even my sound logic didn’t seem to make them very happy! Men is funny things where women is concerned! ”