Horseshoes | Page 7

knowed he'd had
a whale of a year and that his luck was right with him; but I never
dreamed a man could have the Lord on his side as strong as Speed did
in that World's Serious! I might as well tell you all the dope, so long as
you wasn't there.
The first game was on our grounds and Connie give us a talkin' to in
the clubhouse beforehand.
"The shorter this serious is," he says, "the better for us. If it's a long
serious we're goin' to have trouble, because McGraw's got five pitchers
he can work and we've got about three; so I want you boys to go at 'em
from the jump and play 'em off their feet. Don't take things easy,
because it ain't goin' to be no snap. Just because we've licked 'em
before ain't no sign we'll do it this time."
Then he calls me to one side and ast me what I knowed about Parker.

"You was with the Cubs when he was, wasn't you?" he says.
"Yes," I says; "and he's the luckiest stiff you ever seen! If he got stewed
and fell in the gutter he'd catch a fish."
"I don't like to hear a good ball player called lucky," says Connie. "He
must have a lot of ability or McGraw wouldn't use him regular. And
he's been hittin' about .340 and played a hang-up game at third base.
That can't be all luck."
"Wait till you see him," I says; "and if you don't say he's the luckiest
guy in the world you can sell me to the Boston Bloomer Girls. He's so
lucky," I says, "that if they traded him to the St. Louis Browns they'd
have the pennant cinched by the Fourth o' July."
And I'll bet Connie was willin' to agree with me before it was over.
Well, the Chief worked against the Big Rube in that game. We beat 'em,
but they give us a battle and it was Parker that made it close. We'd gone
along nothin' and nothin' till the seventh, and then Rube walks Collins
and Baker lifts one over that little old wall. You'd think by this time
them New York pitchers would know better than to give that guy
anything he can hit.
In their part o' the ninth the Chief still had 'em shut out and two down,
and the crowd was goin' home; but Doyle gets hit in the sleeve with a
pitched ball and it's Speed's turn. He hits a foul pretty near straight up,
but Schang misjudges it. Then he lifts another one and this time
McInnes drops it. He'd ought to of been out twice. The Chief tries to
make him hit at a bad one then, because he'd got him two strikes and
nothin'. He hit at it all right--kissed it for three bases between Strunk
and Joyce! And it was a wild pitch that he hit. Doyle scores, o' course,
and the bugs suddenly decide not to go home just yet. I fully expected
to see him steal home and get away with it, but Murray cut into the first
ball and lined out to Barry.
Plank beat Matty two to one the next day in New York, and again
Speed and his rabbit's foot give us an awful argument. Matty wasn't so

good as usual and we really ought to of beat him bad. Two different
times Strunk was on second waitin' for any kind o' wallop, and both
times Barry cracked 'em down the third-base line like a shot. Speed
stopped the first one with his stomach and extricated the pill just in
time to nail Barry at first base and retire the side. The next time he
throwed his glove in front of his face in self-defense and the ball stuck
in it.
In the sixth innin' Schang was on third base and Plank on first, and two
down, and Murphy combed an awful one to Speed's left. He didn't have
time to stoop over and he just stuck out his foot. The ball hit it and
caromed in two hops right into Doyle's hands on second base before
Plank got there. Then in the seventh Speed bunts one and Baker trips
and falls goin' after it or he'd of threw him out a mile. They was two
gone; so Speed steals second, and, o' course, Schang has to make a bad
peg right at that time and lets him go to third. Then Collins boots one
on Murray and they've got a run. But it didn't do 'em no good, because
Collins and Baker and McInnes come up in the ninth and walloped 'em
where Parker couldn't reach 'em.
Comin' back to Philly on the train that night, I says