Harmony | Page 8

time I started.'

"Mike was sent home the next day, and we didn't see him again. He
was shipped to Minneapolis before we got back. And the rest o' the
season I might as well of lived in a cemetery w'ile we was on the road.
Art was so bad that I thought onct or twict I'd have to change roommies.
Onct in a w'ile he'd start hummin' and then he'd break off short and
growl at me. He tried out two or three o' the other boys on the club to
see if he couldn't find a new tenor singer, but nothin' doin'. One night
he made Lefty try the tenor. Well, Lefty's voice is bad enough down
low. When he gets up about so high, you think you're in the stockyards.
"And Art had a rotten year in baseball, too. The old boy's still pretty
near as good on a fly ball as anybody in the league; but you ought to
saw him before his legs begin to give out. He could cover as much
ground as Speaker and he was just as sure. But the year Mike left us, he
missed pretty near half as many as he got. He told me one night, he
says:
"'Do you know, Bill, I stand out there and pray that nobody'll hit one to
me. Every time I see one comin' I think o' that one I dropped for Mike

in St. Louis, and then I'm just as li'ble to have it come down on my
bean as in my glove.'
"'You're crazy,' I says, 'to let a thing like that make a bum out o' you.'
"But he kept on droppin' fly balls till Ryan was talkin' about settin' him
on the bench where it wouldn't hurt nothin' if his nerve give out. But
Ryan didn't have nobody else to play out there, so Art held on.
"He come back the next spring---that's a year ago--feelin' more cheerful
and like himself than I'd saw him for a long w'ile. And they was a kid
named Burton tryin' out for second base that could sing pretty near as
good as Mike. It didn't take Art more'n a day to find this out, and every
mornin' and night for a few days the four of us would be together,
hittin' her up. But the kid didn't have no more idea o' how to play the
bag than Charley Chaplin. Art seen in a minute that he couldn't never
beat Cragin out of his job, so what does he do but take him out and try
and learn him to play the outfield. He wasn't no worse there than at
second base; he couldn't of been. But before he'd practised out there
three days they was bruises all over his head and shoulders where fly
balls had hit him. Well, the kid wasn't with us long enough to see the
first exhibition game, and after he'd went, Art was Old Man Grump
again.
"'What's the matter with you?' I says to him. 'You was all smiles the
day we reported and now you could easy pass for a undertaker.'
"'Well,' he says, 'I had a great winter, singin' all the w'ile. We got a
good quartette down home and I never enjoyed myself as much in my
life. And I kind o' had a hunch that I was goin' to be lucky and find
somebody amongst the bushers that could hit up the old tenor.'
"'Your hunch was right,' I says. 'That Burton kid was as good a tenor as
you'd want.'
"'Yes,' he says, 'and my hunch could of played ball just as good as him.'
"Well, sir, if you didn't never room with a corpse, you don't know what

a whale of a time I had all last season. About the middle of August he
was at his worst.
"'Bill,' he says, 'I'm goin' to leave this old baseball flat on its back if
somethin' don't happen. I can't stand these here lonesome nights. I ain't
like the rest o' the boys that can go and set all ev'nin' at a pitcher show
or hang round them Dutch gardens. I got to be singin' or I am
mis'rable.'
"'Go ahead and sing,' says I. 'I'll try and keep the cops back.'
"'No,' he says, 'I don't want to sing alone. I want to harmonize and we
can't do that 'cause we ain't got no tenor.'
"I don't know if you'll believe me or not, but sure as we're settin' here
he went to Ryan one day in Philly and tried to get him to make a trade
for Harper.
"'What do I want him for?' says Ryan.
"'I hear he ain't satisfied,' says Art.
"'I ain't runnin' no ball players' benefit