The Baseball MEGAPACK ®. Zane Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ picked himself up. There was a hard look on his face. Straight to the coacher’s box at first he went, with the fanatics throwing hats and canes into the air.

      Standing on first Big Jim Donoghy had a wild look in his eye.

      Mac took his station without a word. The mice had disappeared, frightened at the noise, into the stands.

      “You big bum,” shouted Mac to the big manager. “Play ball! What are you waiting for? Get in the game! Come on, umps!”

      Big Jim Donoghy was boiling over. He walked over to Mac, threatening the little figure.

      “You—you—” A string of curses fell on the air.

      And then he crumpled up, as Mac replied.

      “Afraid of mice, eh, Jim?” he asked sweetly. “Come on, get in the game!”

      You know the rest. Six times we scored in that memorable inning. And when we ran to the clubhouse that night we were jubilant. The next games were worse. There was no holding us. We waded through the Birds like they were canvas-back ducks well-done.

      And Big Jim was surely finished. Mac haunted the coacher’s box. He kept up a string of talk that would have done credit to a vaudeville actor.

      That’s the story. Brains and strategy did it. Do you know why Mac didn’t say nothing, but hung around Big Jim Donoghy? To find out just what he found out. He is a bull-dog, is Mac—and that’s why he’s our manager now! Think of a big guy like Donoghy being afraid of mice! Well, we all got some vulnerable spot, and that was his. But, it took a brainy fellow like MacGinley to find it out! Even the elephant ain’t got no love for a mouse, and Donoghy is the nearest thing to a human elephant I ever saw!

      JACK AND THE BEAN BALL, by Samuel G. Camp

      Listen. I’m gonna ask you one of them hypocritical questions. Suppose, some time, you went to a ball game. Getting right down to brass tacks, suppose the Long Branch Cubans was playin’ the Royal Giants—you might say the Claros versus the Colorado Maduros. Get me? And suppose, just about the time the hostilities is due to begin, one, two, three guys appear from nowhere in particular, the first one carryin’ a rock about the size of a bushel basket, the second guy carryin’ a sledge, and the third a couple of empty pop-bottle cases.

      And suppose them three birds walks into the diamond and dumps down them various articles just outside the pitcher’s box—an’ beats it.

      Say, what’s gonna happen? What’s the idea? Well, think it over. The possibilities is immense!

      “Say!” says the fella I’m with, “let’s get outa here! It looks like there’s gonna be trouble!”

      Well, I dunno but what he’s right, but—“Aw, let’s take a chance.” I says. “Let’s see it through—I’m interested!”

      So we seen it through, an’—it reminded me of Jack Adams and the bean ball.

      This guy wasn’t no conscript: he was a volunteer. Way down yonder in the trainin’ camp, he shows up on the ball lot one day and tells the Old Man that after lookin’ over all the teams in both leagues he guesses us Destroyers has the one best chance of landin’ that old world’s seriousness dough, and so he has decided to join out with us, and with him on the team they won’t be nothin’ to it.

      “Fine!” says the Old Man. “Great! This’ll be the first year I was ever sure of gettin’ into the big series, not to say nothin’ of coppin’ it—before the mayor had throwed out the ball for the season’s openin’ game! Here we got the series on ice and we haven’t even went north yet! Fine business! That’s gonna save me a lot of worry! But, say! Would you be insulted if I was to ask you to show me what you got before we sign a contract?”

      A certain number of these nuts is due to show up every year durin’ the spring practise, and the quickest way of gettin’ rid of ’em is to give ’em what they ask for—which is a try-out.

      “Nothin’ like that,” says Jack. “I’m always willin’ to show goods; and besides, when you see what I got I’ll be able to get a better contract.”

      “Hmmm,” says the Old Man. “In that case, maybe I had ought to show you the dotted line right now and save the club money. But—just what do you do?”

      “Me?” says Jack. “I’m a hitter. I don’t claim to be no great shakes as a fielder, though I haven’t never had no trouble getting by in the outfield. But me, I’m a natural-born hitter! Cobb, Speaker, Baker, none of them guys has a thing on me! I bust ’em on the nose all over the lot and out of it! Honest, I ain’t lyin’! It’s a gift! Spitters, mudders, smokers, fadeaways, emery balls—bam! See ’em drift! I eat ’em up! Honest! It comes natural. Southpaws, righthanders, it makes no difference to me! I can hit any kind of ball pitched anyhow! Honest I can! It’s a gift! I—”

      “Lay off!” says the Old Man. “Hittin’ ain’t your only gift. Come hither! If you can hit just one third of what you claim, you’re the guy I been lookin’ for since fourteen years ago last March. Let’s go take a look at them goods.”

      Well, this was when we was ’most ready to go north, along toward the last of the spring practise, and so the pitchers had got to where they wasn’t afraid to put somethin’ on the ball—them as had anythin’. And so the Old Man steers Jack over to where Speed Williams was warmin’ up and tells Speed to turn his wolf loose onto Jackie.

      “Whiff this bird a couple of times,” the Old Man says to Speed, “after which we get right back to business. Trainin’ trips is no place for levity.”

      “Take your choice,” the Old Man says to Jack, pointin’ to a pile of bats.

      “Bats don’t make no difference to me,” says Jack, pickin’ up the first one he come to. “I’d as lief have one bat as another. Any guy that has to have a certain kind of bat ain’t a natural-born hitter. I just grab any old stick, and walk right out to the rubber, and give that old pill a ride, Watch me!”

      “Let’s go!” says the Old Man.

      Now I always had a sort of idea what a natural-born hitter would look like—or what he wouldn’t—an’, whilst this bug was pulling his stuff to the Old Man, I says to myself: “Him a natural-born hitter? He looks more like a thirty-third degree college prof.” Yes, sir, you can take it from me, this guy Adams was there all seventeen ways with the noble brow stuff and the classic features.

      And now listen! I don’t claim to be no seventh son of a seventh son nor nothin’ like that, and so it couldn’t’ve been nothin’ more than just a plain, common, ordinary hunch, but right then and there I says to myself:

      “Gee! Ain’t it gonna be a shame if some day one of them old bean balls you hear about, and which is liable to come along most any time, collides with that regular, delicately shaped head to which all them classical features and things is attached! A shame? It’ll be a total wreck!”

      No, sir; you could see at a glance that Jack’s head-piece wasn’t calculated to stand no such wear and tear as that. Most any regular roughnecked, low-browed ball tosser, such as I, can take the count from one of them bean balls and live to kill the man that throwed it. But if I was a pitcher, I wouldn’t take no chance on manslaughter with Jackie.

      But СКАЧАТЬ