Sometimes it takes very little to upset the poise of a Big League team. Even when a winning organization is running smoothly, an injury to a single player may throw the whole machinery out of mesh. To an outsider—a mere spectator who has not studied the peculiarities of baseball at close range—this often seems unaccountable. To him, in a club with first-class substitutes waiting to fill the position of any man, there seems to be no reason why the loss of a regular player should make such a remarkable difference in the work of the entire outfit.
Few outsiders realize how evenly matched the clubs often are in the first division. Many times the action of an astute manager in replacing a player who seems to be doing splendid work in his position with another player, apparently no better, has turned a losing club into a winner, the secret of this being that the man substituted fitted in more nicely with the fine adjustment of the great machine, like a perfectly made pinion in the works of a watch.
It is not drawing it too fine to compare a first-class Big League team to a high-grade watch. Time after time the spectators wonder at the clockwork precision of the living machine upon the field. Now and then, at rare intervals, of course, this piece of machinery temporarily goes wrong; but a little oiling or adjusting puts it right again, and it once more resumes its accurate, methodical, mechanical course.
The pitching staff may be likened to the mainspring of the watch. Without pitchers of the highest grade any club, no matter how strong it may be in other departments, is badly handicapped; with such a staff it often happens that a team of otherwise inferior caliber makes no end of trouble and worriment for the leaders. And, despite his ill-advised handling of Lefty Locke, no one knew this better than Al Carson.
When it became known that Lefty had been fined and suspended, some of his teammates attempted to condole with him in a cheerful, joshing way, but not one of them repeated such advances; for he cut them short with such snappy, savage abruptness that they were justified in their resentment of his manner.
The second game of the series between the Specters and the Blue Stockings proved to be a slugging match, in which each team used three pitchers. Pink Dillon, starting for the visitors, was pounded off the mound in the second inning and replaced by Orth. He lasted until the seventh, and then gave way to Grist, who took up the burden with the locals leading by one run. Even “Old Reliable” was not respected by the Specters, who slashed his slants mercilessly. Nevertheless, by a great batting rally in the ninth, the Blue Stockings tied up the score. But Grist was forced to work like a horse for three more long innings before his teammates got to Jim Donovan and hammered out the run which finally gave them the game fourteen to thirteen.
The newspaper reporters called it a “swat fest.” In his wire to the Blade, Jack Stillman, on the road for his paper with the Blue Stockings, vaguely hinted at future trouble for Carson on account of the condition of his pitching staff. Besides Carson himself, no one realized better than Stillman the peril of this crucial period in the great struggle.
Under suspension, Lefty Locke was not on the bench with his teammates. Stillman, who had twice tried to get an interview with Lefty, saw him soberly watching the struggle from a portion of the stand near the reporters’ section, and wondered what really had happened to change this fine, open-hearted fellow into a gloomy grouch.
“I’ll get at him again,” thought the reporter. “He’s got to talk to me. He can’t stand me off like an iceberg.”
But after the game Locke disappeared with the crowd that disappointedly melted away, and Stillman was compelled to postpone his interview.
With his ears open for everything connected with his business, the newspaper man that night heard something which sent him in search of Carson for confirmation. However, he obtained little satisfaction from the manager. Then, remembering his desire to have another talk with Locke, he tried to find Lefty, and failed. The southpaw was not in his room, and none of the players seemed to know where he could be located.
In Dirk Nelson’s room Stillman found Kid Lewis and Jack Daly lounging and talking things over with the catcher. Being well liked by the entire team, he was invited to join them.
“We was just figgerin’ on our chances to-morrer,” said Daly. “We’ve got to have another one of the games here to keep us afloat on the roller.”
“If the Specters play the way they did to-day,” said Stillman, “you ought to cop one more, anyhow.”
“Huh!” grunted the Kid, twisting off a chew of tobacco with his square teeth, “seems to me we didn’t shine like stars of the first magnitude this P.M. Why, with old Peter on the firing line we was barely able to rake in the plum by one measly run.”
“And the way Grist had to go, he won’t be in any shape to-morrow,” said Nelson. “Neither Orth nor Dillon can hold this bunch of sack swipers, and, besides pitching yesterday, Locke’s suspended. We’ve got a couple of reserves, but Handy’s arm is broke in the middle, and Carney has been sick for a month. Excuse my tears.”
“I wish you’d tell me,” said Stillman, “what’s the matter with Locke, anyhow.”
“Tell us,” invited the trio in chorus.
The reporter shook his head. “I’ve tried to find out, but he won’t talk to me. Anybody would think,” he added in an injured way, “that I was his worst enemy; and I was about the only news man who pulled hard for him all the way after he joined the Hornets in the South last spring.”
“He’s sick,” cried Nelson, thumping his knee. “If he ain’t, he’s crazy, and oughter be shut up somewhere with the rest of the bugs. Think of him going wrong just now! Wouldn’t it make a parson use bad language!”
“I heard something to-night,” said Stillman. “I wonder if you fellows have got wind of it? There’s a rumor that Carson has a deal on.”
“What sort of a deal?” asked Daly.
“A trade. They say he got busy on the wire this morning, and that he’s trying to make arrangements to trade Locke off for another pitcher.”
“Who says so?” snapped Lewis.
“I don’t believe it!” shouted Daly.
“Thunder!” breathed Nelson.
“You know I can’t go round blowing the source of my information,” said Stillman, “but it seemed to come straight enough.”
“Perhaps it is straight,” said Nelson. “Carson ain’t never took to Locke. But who’s the man he’s after?”
“You couldn’t guess,” said the reporter. “I won’t prolong your agony. If the report is true, it’s Chick O’Brien, of the Wolves.”
Even with the warning he had given them, this statement seemed to strike them like a bursting bombshell. The Wolves, although in the second division, had harried the leaders all through the season, mainly by the marvelous work of O’Brien, and it was generally agreed that with a first-division team behind him Chick would show himself one of the great pitchers in the business.
“Sufferin’ snakes!” cried Lewis, his face glowing and his eyes snapping. “If we could get Chick now, I’d begin right away planning how to spend my post-season money.”
“Me, too,” agreed Daly.
“There’s nothing to it,” announced Nelson. “You couldn’t pry O’Brien away from the Wolves with a twenty-thousand dollar lever. Old Frazer wouldn’t let him go for two youngsters like Locke and a barrel of money to boot. Every manager in the league has been after him, and Frazer’s held on with the grip of death, knowing the Wolves would go plumb into the sub-cellar without Chick.”
“Collier’s got the dough to buy almost anything, and he’s a plunger when he gets started,” said Stillman. “I reckon he’d be willing to lose money this season to cop the championship again. Anyhow, Carson wouldn’t deny that he was trying to put such a deal across. He wouldn’t say anything about it.”
“Whether it’s true or not, the story is bad for Locke,” said Nelson; “and if it gets to his ears it’s going to make him worse than he is.”
“Or brace him up,” put in Daly. “Mebbe it will do that.”
Of course, the rumor spread swiftly, and in short order every man on the team had heard of it, save Locke himself. For reasons, no one told Lefty.
The fears of the Blue Stockings seemed justified when the Specters walked away with the third game of the series by a score of eight to two. Such a defeat, instead of disheartening them, seemed to fire them with desperation, and the fourth and final game proved to be another terrific battle, in which the two teams seesawed from start to finish, resorting to every legitimate device and trick as opportunities arose. Nevertheless, only for a fluke in the eighth inning, the locals doubtless would have taken the game.
With two down and two on the cushions, Herman Brock banged the ball into deep left, and it went bounding to the fence, with Forbes in hot pursuit. The fielder had been playing deep, knowing Brock’s menace as a slugger, and, but for an unforeseen freak of fate, he doubtless would have secured the ball and held the enemy to a single run. It happened, however, that close to the ground there was a small hole in the fence—a hole barely large enough to push an ordinary baseball through; and never before had the sphere sought out that little opening hidden by a thin fringe of grass. Now, with seeming perverseness, it went straight through the hole, giving Brock a homer and putting the visitors again in the lead.
Orth had been wabbling, and Carson had wisely kept Dillon warming up all through the game. Now, when the Specters came to bat again, the manager took a chance and sent Pink to the hillock.
Strange as it seemed, the slants and benders of this second-string pitcher, which had been so easy for the locals to fathom two days before, now proved tremendously puzzling. And, though the fighting “ghosts” became menacing in both the eighth and ninth, they could not quite succeed in pushing a runner round the course.
Therefore, for all of the tattered condition of their pitching staff, the Blue Stockings broke even in the series with their most dangerous rivals.
But they were now to invade the territory of the Terriers, always to be feared, and the dark cloud swung lower.