CHAPTER XXVIGAINING GROUND
“What the deuce did you go and tell him for?” Jack Stillman demanded pettishly.
“Because I had to,” retorted Lefty, with some asperity. He was tired of the whole subject, and desired to forget it. “Don’t be a fool, Jack. There wasn’t anything else to do.”
The reporter shrugged his shoulders. There was a note of finality in his friend’s voice which he knew better than to disregard.
“Well, all I can say is I’m thankful my conscience isn’t so blamed sensitive,” he sighed. “He’ll be so swelled up there won’t be any enduring him. Heaven knows he’ll be chesty enough, as it is, when he sees the papers.”
“What do you mean, Jack?” Lefty asked curiously.
The reporter scowled. “Same old dope about ‘Marvelous Cub Twirler Discovered by Astute Manager,’” he explained sardonically. Stillman had a trick of talking in capitals which made onefairly see the glaring headlines. “It’s the same every spring, only this year there are a lot more kids around than usual who can handle a murder case or robbery a heap better than they can a Big League training season.”
Lefty grinned. “Oh, you mean they’re giving him a puff on account of yesterday?”
“A puff isn’t quite the word. I wish you could have seen some of the rot Temple, of theBlade, doped out. He wanted my opinion on it; said he was a bit new to this, you know. I smoothed down the story a little, but I’m dead sure a lot more will rant as bad, or worse. Most of ’em seem to think because the regulars had a landslide it was due to Elgin’s pitching. They don’t figure out that Redmond’s bum work had anything to do with it.”
“What’s the odds?” Lefty laughed. “You did the same thing last year, didn’t you?”
“Not quite. I knew something about baseball to start with, and Johnny Hargreaves tipped me off to a whole lot more.”
“Still, Elgin really did do pretty well,” Locke remarked slowly. “Anybody must concede that much.”
“No better than he has half a dozen times before,” the reporter retorted. “That’s all I saidin my story, but when I found the way the rest were piling it on, I had to stick in another paragraph. Otherwise I’d be getting a wire from the chief to wake up and take notice.”
“After all, I don’t believe it amounts to a terrible lot,” Lefty said carelessly. “You can’t fool Brennan, and his opinion is really the only one that counts.”
Nevertheless, as he joined the squad a little later for the morning jog out to the grounds, Lefty could not help feeling a twinge of regretful envy. If he had only been allowed to go on the slab for the cubs the day before, he had a notion that Elgin’s performance would not have seemed quite so brilliant. Those laudatory newspaper notices might have had someone else as the object of their praise, and, though he knew how little such plaudits really counted, Lefty was a very human sort of fellow, after all.
According to his promise, Al Ogan put the southpaw in the box that afternoon, and Locke pitched for six innings to such purpose that the game resulted in a tie in spite of the fact that the regulars were in as good a form as ever, and seemed to work a little harder than usual.
From that time on, Locke’s companions began to thaw. Once they realized that Lefty’s first disastrousexhibition had not been a sample of his usual form, they endeavored to make up for past unpleasantness.
Perhaps their new friendliness was hastened by the newspaper prominence of Bert Elgin. Few men can view unmoved the sudden elevation to fame of a comrade, especially when they feel that this elevation has not been especially merited. Newspapers began to drift in from all the big cities, in which Elgin was heralded as “Brennan’s New Find,” “A Second Matty,” “By Far the Most Promising Recruit of the Season,” and so on.
Then followed pictures of the new pitcher in every variety of pose; his style was dissected and analyzed; his progress was noted; for, having launched this boom, the reporters felt under the necessity of pushing it along.
All of these things were not calculated to soothe the spirits of the other cubs, whose existence was noted by scant sentences scattered thinly throughout the sporting columns. They looked askance on Elgin, and the latter, not bearing up well under prosperity, gave them plenty to criticize. He developed an irritatingly jaunty air, which was flaunted at all times. He grew very familiar with most of the newspaper men, andwhen on the slab gave decided evidence of mannerisms, which tried the patience and aroused the ire of his fellow players.
Unfortunately for them, his ability to pitch increased rather than lessened, so that their sarcastic utterances rather lost point. A man can make all sorts of a fool of himself off the slab, he may even go through ridiculous posings and posturings while winding up, but when his work is as uniformly good as Bert Elgin’s was, criticism is usually superfluous.
The days passed swiftly, with the most of the squad showing an increase in efficiency. They were hitting better, running faster, and throwing more accurately. The regulars were rapidly perfecting their teamwork, and the cubs beginning to learn the importance of something more than the rudiments of “inside” baseball. Some of them took to it like ducks to water, and absorbed intricate secret signals and caught on to the theory of certain movements as if they had been brought up on nothing else from their cradles. These were the men who would push forward to the front ranks. The slower-brained recruits were doomed.
Lefty Locke enjoyed that week more than any similar space of time he could remember. Baseball as a science had always interested him tremendously.He had spent a great deal of time studying out different plays and the reasons for them, but up to now these mental exercises had been generally limited to the more obvious sort, though he did not realize that at the time.
He knew it, however, the moment the Hornets began to pick up and show what they could do when they were in trim; and, though the discovery was something of a blow to his self-esteem, it only goaded him to constant effort and increased mental agility to keep up the pace.
Therefore his work steadily improved. While, perhaps, not so spectacular and dashing as Bert Elgin’s, it showed evidence of thought and clear judgment; and very soon it became apparent that he was crowding his rival close, if not actually surpassing him in general ability and resourcefulness.
The one drawback to an otherwise pleasant period was Janet Harting’s behavior. She and Lefty had come perilously close to their first quarrel, and all because of his absolute refusal, not alone to make up his differences with Bert Elgin, but to tell her of what those differences consisted.
After her first coolness she had been very nice about it, but somehow Lefty had a feeling that she was not quite the same. She was pleasant and cordial, and went twice to the baseball park tosee him pitch before she and her father left Ashland for the mineral springs at Billings. In spite of all that, however, Lefty sensed the faint rift in their friendship, and it troubled him.
Instinctively he laid it to Elgin, whom he knew visited Miss Harting almost as frequently as he did, and he despised the man more than ever for it. It was one of those cases, however, in which a person can do nothing. Locke simply had to sit still and let events take their course. He worried and fussed a bit at first, but presently his whole mind became so engrossed in the struggle to make good and win out that he ceased to be actively troubled over something which he could not remedy.
After all, if he could only manage to outpitch Elgin on the diamond and prove himself the better player, there was more than a chance of his showing, at the same time, the girl he cared for that he was the better man.