Keystone Kids (3 page)

“Who’s that?”

“Sssh. Not so loud, Bob. That must be Tucker, the boy who led the league in batting a few years ago.” The figure passed by once more and Spike hailed him.

“Say, Mister, is there any place here we could get us a sandwich?”

“You’re the Russell boys from Nashville, aren’t you? Heard all sorts of good things about you boys. I’m Roy Tucker.” He entered and shook hands with them. “Our dining car is up front three-four cars. We’ve also got our own lounge car, too; that’s the one beyond the diner. Say, lemme know if I can help any. I only came up myself a few years ago.”

They looked at each other. Private diners, private lounge cars. Boy, is this a life!

“Let’s go, Bobby.”

They went out and moved toward the front of the car, pulling and tugging on the door until they discovered that the handle pulled sideways instead of directly backward. From the platform of the car they noticed several players saying good-by to elegant ladies beside the train. Porters with more baggage shoved past. Then the next car, another softly lighted interior, and the next. Spike read the names as they passed, Boerlikon, Carlton Club, Wiscasset, Lorna Doone, Loch Lomond. At last the diner, even more elaborate than the sleeping cars. They were dazzled for a second by the white tablecloths, the silver, and the pink lamps on every table.

The waiter seated them and handed each one a menu. “Anything to drink?” asked the chief attendant, dressed in a uniform like a rear admiral. They both shook their heads and then began to study the menu, as long a menu as they had ever seen.

Bob glanced across the table at Spike. What prices, his eyes said. Nothing to eat for less than a dollar seventy! Why, we’ll be bankrupt if we have to eat in Pullmans.

Other players sauntered in, sat down, and ordered with a casual air. Spike noticed large steaks brought to them, and some drank beer with their dinners, meals that must have been even more expensive than their own. Spike and Bob ate silently and quickly. Then the former paid the bill and left a quarter on the table. No, it wasn’t a dime here and a dime there, but a dime here and a quarter there.

They went out, eyed by the bored-looking players at the tables in the ornate diner. Loch Lomond. Lorna Doone. Wiscasset. Carlton Club. Boerlikon. The train seemed never to end. At last they reached their room.

Spike sat down to figure the cost of the meal. Why, it was about what two meals a day for a week cost in Mrs. Hampton’s boarding-house in Nashville.

A figure stood in the doorway. “You boys eaten?” It was the secretary. He had a handful of papers in his hand and looked weary.

Spike stood up. “Yessir. We were just out to the diner.”

“Good! The newspaper boys want a story tonight, and I’ll bring ’em back a little later most likely.”

It was a command. “Yessir. Mr. Hanson, please, now these dining cars, seems like they’re mighty expensive. You reckon me and Bob could get us a sandwich or something on these trains?”

Hanson stood rocking back and forth with the motion of the car, not saying anything at all for a minute. Then a grin came over his face. “You don’t mean to say you
paid
for your grub?”

“Yessir. Four sixty, counting the tip.”

Four sixty! And two meals a day at Mrs. Hampton’s boarding-house only cost four bucks fifty a week!

“You shouldn’t have done that. You boys have signing privileges. You see, you sign for your meals. Just write your name and Brooklyn Baseball Club on the checks.”

“You mean we should order whatever we want from the menu and then write our names down?”

“That’s it. I’ll try to get you your money back tonight. But in the future you sign for all your meals.”

He went on down the car. Bob was fumbling on the wall where a row of gadgets and buttons were placed. “Wonder what some of these things do?” He pushed a button. Far off in the distance was a soft tinkle like the sound of temple bells. Spike had heard it before supper and wondered what it meant. In a few seconds the porter stuck his nose in their doorway.

“You gentlemen call?” Bob’s expression was blank. The porter disappeared.

An hour later the secretary was back again. He had half a dozen men at his heels. They filed into the small bedroom, filling it completely until there was no space whatever to stand in, and one or two of them blocked the doorway, looking over each other’s shoulders. Strangers, all of them, strangers and more strangers. It was like a kind of secret service examination. If only someone they knew had been there, Grouchy, for instance.

“Spike, shake hands with Jim Foster of the
Times.
You’ll see plenty of him before Christmas. And this is Rog Stevens of the
Tribune
, and here’s Stan King of the
Telegram
and Tommy Heeney of the
Brooklyn Eagle
and Ed Morgan of the
Sun.
Boys, this is his brother Bob. Bob, meet the boys.”

They shook hands all round. They made the two boys dizzy as they eyed them queerly, got out pencils, and began writing on the backs of envelopes or on folded sheets of paper. What did they find to write about?

The Russell boys of the Dodgers....

G
INGER
C
RANE CAME
into the hotel room with Johnny Cassidy, the third base coach. The manager was dressed in a delicate fawn-colored gabardine cut by an expensive tailor. He threw a newspaper on a table, one of the few tables unoccupied by papers, suitcases of leather with silver fastenings, magazines, and other belongings. The room was large with elaborate furniture, a davenport with a silk brocade covering, heavy armchairs, and fancy tables. Ginger was entirely at home in this luxury. He walked across to an adjoining bath and presently reappeared, wiping his hands on a towel.

“Shoot! We needed that game the worst way. That’s a tough one to drop right at this point.”

“Can’t win ’em all,” rejoined the coach philosophically.

The manager was hardly in a philosophical mood. How can you be philosophical when you’re the one who carries the team on your shoulders, when you sit out there on the bench and see your men helpless and almost hitless in a critical game against the leaders, when you sweat under a hot September sun as your chances for the lead dwindle and dwindle before your eyes?

“We oughta had that one! The team isn’t hitting. When a team isn’t hitting, what can you do? Look at Case! Look at Red Allen! Look at Harry Street! I suppose he’ll claim he can’t hit because he was moved to third! Roy Tucker’s the only man who’s hitting.”

Cassidy sank into an armchair. He tried to be consoling and cool the boss off. The boss hated to lose and of all games this was surely a tough one to drop. “Aw, they’re not playing bad baseball, Ginger. They’re playing good ball, only they’re facing hot pitching. Everywhere we go we have to meet the hot ones. That’s why they aren’t hitting.”

“Shoot! When a team has no pep, when they just play all-right baseball and nothing more, well, what then? What you gonna do?” He sank into an easy chair himself. “We should have had that game. Leaving New York last week we were only two games behind. Now look; we’re three and a half!”

“Well, we still got a month, haven’t we?”

“A month! A month! Six months wouldn’t do if we don’t start to hit. It’s enough to make a guy nuts when you consider a train wreck is better than a nice, sunshiny afternoon.”

Was the boss really getting the jitters? Cassidy looked up. “How do you figure that one?”

“Why, in a train wreck a man at least has an even chance of getting out alive. But baseball always hits a team in its most vulnerable spots. We went into that tailspin on that sunny day in Boston when Swanny and I both picked up charleyhorses the same afternoon. Train wreck, my eye! We wouldn’t have lost both of us at the same time!”

Cassidy tried to change the subject from gloomy things. “Well, I like this boy out there at short. The more I see of him the better I like him. He’ll do. That was a smart move, Ginger.”

Cassidy flipped open a newspaper and turned to the sports pages. He reached up to pull on the light of a lamp over his shoulder. It didn’t go on. He yanked again with no result. This was sufficient to set off the explosion. Ginger jumped from his chair for the telephone.

“Manager!” There was anger in his voice and on his face the same hard, cruel look as when he edged up to umpires in a close game, his jaw out, stuck up to theirs. “Hey, Clarkson! This is Crane talking. How about fixing the light in this room, in the big room to my suite?”

There was a reply, the usual reply.

Ginger immediately went to work. “Now, look, that’s the old runaround, the same old runaround, see, and I’m sick and tired of it. I don’t want any more of it. I spoke to the room clerk last night; nothing doing; I speak to the room clerk this morning; still nothing doing. Never mind what they said... I don’t care what they told you... that’s your funeral. If my ballclub doesn’t win games, the boss takes it out on me, not the players. And I want that light fixed and fixed now, y’understand? This club brings you a good many thousand dollars every summer, and this is not the only hotel in town, nosir; we can go to the Schenley, we can go to the Fort Pitt, we can go to.... Never mind that, you get an electrician here and get him right away.”

He slammed the phone down. “There, now let’s see if we can get a little service around this place.”

Cassidy in the meanwhile, used to the explosions of his boss, had changed quietly over to another chair where the light functioned, and was reading the sports pages. “Hey, listen, Ginger! Here’s what Foster says about this Russell boy. ‘He wasn’t very impressive the first night out from New York as he sat in a drawing room on the train with his kid brother and “mistered” the baseball writers. But as soon as Spike put on his monkey suit and started working at short, you didn’t have to look long to realize the Dodgers had a find. Tall and lanky and quick, he’s as fast or faster getting back for the short ones as anyone in the league.’ ”

The manager only half listened. He wasn’t really interested in sports writers or in the two Russell boys, either. He was interested in Ginger Crane’s troubles, especially his losing ballclub. “He may do, he may do. Tell you, John, I’ll shake up this club and every man on it until I find a winning combination.”

“D’ja notice him this afternoon in the fifth? Is that kid fast!” continued Cassidy. “You should have heard him rave over in Cinci that night when he came out on the field and saw real lights for the first time. Took one look around. ‘Wow!’ he says. ‘What lights!’ ”

“Yeah,” replied the manager absent-mindedly. “There just aren’t any good lights in the minors. And the lower you get, the worse they are, too. Heck, where’s that electrician?”

“The kid was telling me he was playing in the Sally League or somewhere down South where they had a light pole behind the plate, one on the right field foul line, and one on the left field line. Center field was black. One night the center fielder brought a flashlight out on the field, and the umpire threw him out of the game for kidding.”

“Yeah... I don’t doubt... I wouldn’t wonder in the least.” The manager was walking nervously up and down the room. “Where’s that dad-ratted electrician...”

“Personally, I hardly blame the boy, myself. I’ve seen some of these bush league plants, and I want to tell you I’ve got more light in my bathroom to shave by than they have to play ball with.”

“Where’s that electrician?” stormed Ginger.

The team’s failure to catch up on the leaders was telling; he was nervous and only able to show his nerves alone in his suite with someone like the coach around. “Shoot! How long’s it take for them...”

There was a timid knock at the door. The manager with his quick reaction was there in two steps and flung it open. Outside stood a panting boy in a faded pair of trousers, a tired-looking polo shirt, and old shoes well worn at the toes. In short, a typical hotel employee. “You an electrician?” He glared at the hatless boy.

“Why... yessir. That is, I worked as an electrician...”

“O.K. C’mon in. Don’t stand there yawping. C’mon in and fix my light. I’m sick and tired of asking you people to do things and never having them done. Now get busy and no backtalk.”

The boy entered cautiously. He looked at the light socket. Then he changed bulbs with no result, and next produced an ancient penknife from his pocket and unscrewed the lamp socket. His movements were quick and capable; his manner had lost its timidity; he was an expert now and the two high-priced ballplayers watching were useless dunderers of no help in this particular crisis. He forgot them. Untwisting a wire, he cut away some sheathing, cut the rubber tubing from it, tinkered a minute at the wire with a blade from his penknife, rewound it again. With a screwdriver attached to the knife he replaced the socket and screwed it in, placed a bulb in it, pulled the chain. The light went on.

“There you are, sir.”

“O.K. Thanks. It’s about time.”

“Yessir. Now, sir, please can I...” He was standing by the door, holding the handle for support.

“No! Get out! Get out, d’you hear me?” No longer was Ginger the useless dunderer in matters electrical; he was the twenty-five-thousand-dollar manager of the Dodgers with a faltering ballclub on his shoulders. “Get out! That’s all, just get out.” He went over and slammed the door.

The coach looked up from his paper across the room. “Seems as if I’d seen that boy somewhere before.”

“Yeah. He was sort of familiar, wasn’t he?”

Then another knock came on the door, not a timid respectful one, either. A man stood outside in overalls, with screwdrivers and other tools in little patch pockets of the trousers.

“You gotta light here needs fixing?”

For once the manager was speechless. “Why, no. He fixed it for us.”

“Who fixed it?” The hour was late, the night was hot, and he had just received a call-down from the manager, so he was in no pleasant mood. To a hotel electrician the boss of the Dodgers was not a twenty-five-thousand-dollar big shot, but simply the cranky gent in 1016 who was causing all the trouble.

“The electrician. He only just came up here.”