Boyle stood his ground and protected his head with his arms. The blows staggered him, but Roxy didn’t have enough weight to back them up. The heavier catcher reached out, blocked his swings and threw a punch of his own.
Crack!
His meaty fist sent Roxy crashing into a locker door that opened into the aisle and the game hurler went down. Swearing violently, Boyle went after him, throwing one punch after the other. The room began to dance before Roxy’s eyes.
Stunned by the unexpectedness of the fight and cowed by Deacon Boyle’s rep as a back alley fighter, the other players held back. Roxy Carter was taking his lumps unassisted. The insensate Boyle might have wrecked the pennant chances of the Hawks beyond repair if the big green kid hadn’t suddenly loomed in the doorway.
One big hand plucked Boyle backwards and spun him around.
The catcher’s mouth showed his astonishment. He recognized Oll in the split second before the kid’s huge right hand rocked him off his feet. A left hook, even harder than the right, sent him crashing to the floor.
He was flat on his back, out. The dazed Roxy was helped to his feet by suddenly remorseful teammates. He sat down heavily on a bench and struggled to open his eyes. He got them wide-open and grinned.
Deacon Boyle was a silent heap on the floor. Roxy looked around some more and spotted the big, wide-shouldered kid standing by, looking bashful about something.
“Say—” he began and groaned. Blood was running from his split lips. Oll held out a handkerchief in his thick fingers, and Roxy took it.
“Don’t talk, Mr. Carter,” the kid said. “You’re bleeding bad.”
Roxy nodded and winced. He shook his head.
“The Deacon really gets some cute ideas. Thanks.”
The rookie smiled down at him proudly and said, “Shucks. It was a pleasure, Mr. Carter.”
“Good thing you happened by, that’s all. He would have killed me.”
Suddenly, as if sensing a bond between them, Oll dropped on the bench beside him. “What happened? I always thought catchers and pitchers were pals.”
“Don’t you believe it!” Roxy shot it out, dabbing at his mouth with the handkerchief. “Take me and Boyle there. We get along like married people— And hey!—it’s all your fault, too!”
Oll looked hurt.
“I don’t see what you mean, Mr. Carter.”
Roxy was not to be turned. “Back there in the seventh—and don’t call me Mister Carter—I gave you a high, hard one when Deac signaled for a curve. You got four bases on it and he got ulcers. He gets mad as a wet hen when I shake off his sign. He’s funny that way.”
“I really got hold of that one, didn’t I?” The kid wasn’t bragging; he simply said it.
Roxy stopped wiping his mouth in bewilderment. “Say, what the hell are you doing in here anyway? I’ve been in baseball ten years and never saw an opponent in the rival locker room yet.”
Oll’s big, pleasant face dropped like one of Roxy’s own deliveries. He compressed his lips so that his nostrils flared. A deep, red flush made his face comical.
“Well—I—you see—”
“Out with it. You spying on us for the Browns or something?”
“Oh, no, no!” The kid was vehement in his protests. “Nothing like that. It’s just that this was my first game of major league ball—”
“Go on.”
“Well, I got a homer today in my first at bat, pinch hitting besides, and I sorta wondered—”
Roxy looked at the red handkerchief in his hands. “I suppose I owe you a favor. If you hadn’t come by when you did—”
“Well,” Oll rushed it out, “I was wondering, seeing as how you’re my first homer victim, could I have your autograph, Mr. Carter?”
THE WILD MAN, by Octavus Roy Cohen
I can’t say just where the grudge between Pat Nelligan and Bill Davis started. Sandy MacPherson claims to have known them both when they were in the Pacific Coast League, and he says that there’s a girl mixed up in it somewhere, but I can’t swear to that. All I know is that they were drafted into our circuit at the same time, and that both of them made names for themselves before the season was a month under way.
We got Nelligan when the draft maze was unraveled. He reported at our Texas training camp—short, stocky, silent, and confident; a little too short for a backstop, perhaps, but he assayed one hundred percent when it came to ability.
He was one of the finds of the season.
Nothing got by him and he had a way of pegging down to second that was a revelation: a crouch and a snap, and presto!—the ball was sizzling across the diamond like a bullet. And it always came just a little to the left of second, and low, where the man covering the base merely had to hold it and let the runner slide to his own destruction.
I wasn’t surprised to see the bucko catching honors with Thomson, our first string receiver, right from the start of the season. You see, Nelligan wasn’t absolutely green: he’d had one season in the Kitty and one in the Pacific Coast, and he seemed to know the ins and outs of the game by instinct.
Out on the coast, Davis had accumulated something of a rep as a star base-runner. And, of course, he was drafted by Scrappy Connor, of the Reds. Scrappy was always on the lookout for men who would get into a game and fight for it with all their might—and take chances, and all that—but I think he was a little taken aback with the way Davis buckled down to the job.
He put Davis in center the opening day of the season—they were stacked up against St. Louis—and what did the youngster do but spike two of the Cardinal basemen right off the reel. And before the series ended he had spiked two more.
I kept on thinking it was accidental until we met the Reds in the first series together.
Then I saw he was a deliberate base pirate—one of that class of runners which scares the basemen off the bags and then takes all kinds of chances. There was never an attempt on his part to slide around a baseman. Just a dash, a leap—and spikes straight for the baseman’s shin.
I didn’t suspect that anything was wrong between Nelligan and Davis during that first series, because our youngster was on the bench with a split finger.
Of course, when I saw Sandy Macpherson talking interestedly to Nelligan, I asked him what was up, and he told me that he had been looking for fireworks between Nelligan and Davis. And when I cornered him, he just shrugged and told me to wait until the first series together when Nelligan worked behind the bat.
Of all the men I’ve ever known, I think I’d least rather have Nelligan as an enemy. Clean as a hound’s tooth he is, and honest, but Lordy! That square jaw of his and the level, gray eyes are enough to strike terror to the heart of an ordinary mortal.
And after Sandy had tipped me off to the fact that there was something doing between them, I watched Nelligan more closely, and I saw an ugly look come into his eyes at sight of Davis. That night, curiosity got the better of me, and I cornered Nellie, as we called him, in the hotel billiard room. I gassed about everything from the European war to bush league averages and finally shifted around to the topic I’d started out to discuss in the first place.
“You hear what they’re calling Bill Davis now?” I asked casually.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw his eyes narrow into viciously glinting slits and his fists balled involuntarily—and then relaxed slowly.
“What?”