The Baseball MEGAPACK ®. Zane Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ fact that Jack Adams, the Destroyers’ celebrated natural-born hitter, has blew up with a report that made the Black Tom disaster sound like somebody crackin’ one of Harry Stevens’s peanuts, an’—the Old Man yanks Jack for keeps.

      That is, y’ understand, till we can find out what’s his trouble and maybe get him goin’ again.

      Well, the Old Man has Jack up on the mat and throws the third degree into him like if he had said just one half of the same things to me I would’ve killed him where he stood and went to the chair with a song; but the Old Man didn’t get no satisfaction. Jack didn’t do nothin’ but stall and beat ’round the bush, and so finally the Old Man knowed just as much about what was Jack’s trouble as he did in the first place.

      Of course, they was somethin’; a man doesn’t go into one of them slumps without they’s a cause for it.

      But anyways, so then the Old Man gives up tryin’ to find out what was the cause, and starts in tryin’ to cure the result, as you might say.

      Believe me, the Old Man’s methods was what you might call radical!

      Nobody—not even Mister J. J. McGraw—has anythin’ on the Old Man when it comes to the sort of English, plain and fancy, straight and reverse, which peels the hide right often you; and he feeds this to Jack in liberal doses before, after, and durin’ each meal and just before retirin’. The rest of the time he has Jack backed up against a fence—so he can’t pull away-bein’ pitched to by every pitcher in the string and anybody that’ll volunteer.

      But it didn’t do no good. No, sir; Jack is afraid that every ball pitched to him is gonna bean him; and when the Old Man tries him out away from that fence—well, if anythin’, he backs away more than ever.

      Well, I dunno; it didn’t look to me like Jack was fitted by nature to stop no bean balls, like I was tellin’ you, and so— At that, maybe if we could find out just what it was that brung on this attack of ball shyness—just what started Jack worryin’—

      But, as I was sayin’, it comes down to where that last game with the Pawnees would make or break us, and Jack still out of the game.

      The night before that game, early in the evenin’—I guess the Old Man had been ridin’ him again—Jack comes to my room lookin’ for sympathy. Somebody must’ve gave him the wrong address. After he went out I seen a little bundle of letters layin’ on the bed. It was hot and Jack had throwed down his coat there. So-Well, on the quiet, I had been pullin’ a little Phineas Jenks stuff on the strange case of Jack Adams ever since the Old Man tells me to pick up any little tiling I can an’—it looks like I’m justified.

      Ten minutes later I enters the Old Man’s room like a half-back goin’ through a hole in the line. It seems like the Old Man is harnessin’ himself all up to go to a show or somethin’—tryin’, I guess, to forget how to-morrow, as sure as shootin’, we’re gonna drop that last game to the Pawnees and kiss our chance at the Big Series good-by.

      “Can the frivolities, boss,” I says, “here’s business!”

      “What’s broke?” asts the Old Man.

      “I got the goods on the natural-born flivver,” I says.

      “Exhibit A,” I says, “one letter from ‘Your Lovin’ Ameliar’ to ‘My Own Dearest Jack’—ouch!—containin’ amongst other things which I blush to repeat a solemn warnin’ to dearest Jack not to let none of them brutal baseball pitchers get him in the head with no baseball, because just think what would happen, and she encloses two clippin’s from the papers showin’ where only this last week two fatal accidents went to the hospital on account of bein’ hit on the head with them baseballs; and if you love me, Jack, be careful and don’t take no chances of lettin’ anybody hit you with no baseball, because she hears they is throwed with terrific speed, an’—so on.

      “Exhibit B,” I says. “Another letter containin’ among the outpourin’s of Ameliar’s fond and lovin’ heart another solemn warnin’ not to go and let.no pitcher bean him, and two more clippin’s.

      “Exhibit C,” I says. “Similar.

      “Exhibit D,” I says. “The same, except this time they’s three clippin’s instead of two. Must be about this time them brutal pitchers was wagin’ a campaign of ruthlessness.

      “Exhibit E,” I says—

      “Gimme them letters!” says the Old Man. Listen. The finest cure in the world, for some complaints, is ridicule!

      And the Old Man sure had somethin’ to work on!

      * * * *

      Anyways, when we went up against them Pawnees, next day, for the fatal game, the Old Man takes a chance. Jack is back in the line-up—in the old clean-up position.

      If he’s game again, it’s a cinch we win; if not—good-night!

      Us Destroyers was shakin’ dice some when Jack walks out to the plate. Right then they was two gone and a man on second.

      It’s Pete Horton pitchin’, again, but this time Pete don’t try no roundhouse outs at Jack—nothing like that! This game is for blood, and no funny business; an’, thinks Pete, if this guy Adams has dreamed that he’s gonna make a comeback, here’s where I wake him up and scare him to death into the bargain—with just one pitch!

      Jack had crowded up to the plate like old times. And Pete unhooks with the old beaner—an’ everythin’ he’s got—straight at that fragile-lookin’ dome of Jack’s!

      As I was sayin’, you can take it from me it had the crowd guessin’ some when these three guys dumps down that big rock, the sledge, and them pop-bottle cases outside the pitcher’s box and beats it.

      Goin’ back, y’ understand, to the begin in’ of that game between the Long Branch Cubans and them Royal Giants.

      Then a couple of fellas wades into the diamond and one of them begins ballyhooon’ a line of stuff about how “Iron-Head” Barry, which is the other one and which now makes his bow to the audience—about how Iron-Head Barry, the guy with the cast-iron bean, or somethin’, will now oblige by lettin’ any gentleman in the crowd bust that rock, using the sledge, of course, whilst the rock is balanced on, and supported solely by—an’ absolutely no trickery nor subterfuge as you can see for yourself—the head of Iron-Head Barry!

      An so then Iron-Head Barry sits down an waits for somebody to come along and kindly bust that boulder over his bean. Finally a big beef which played with the Cubans—an’ if he was a Cuban then I’m a Chinaman—a big beef comes to the front and picks up the sledge. Iron-Head, perched on them pop-bottle cases piled one on top of the other, balances that hundred pound rock on his head, keepin’ it from tippin’ with the tips of his fingers.

      The big beef with the sledge gets into position, takes a wind-up and bam!

      “O-o-o-f!” says Iron-Head.

      Him and the rock is both intact though that blow would’ve killed an elephant.

      “Come again!” says Iron-Head, fixin’ the rock so’s it rests a little more comfortably on his bald spot. “Put the jazz into it! Don’t mind me!”

      And so then the big beef spits on his hands, СКАЧАТЬ