Part 20 (1/2)

”That poor umpire got his this afternoon,” he said. ”With McRae on one side and Everett on the other I thought he'd be pulled to pieces.”

”He was sure up against a hard proposition,” agreed Joe. ”The next hardest was in a play that happened when I was on the Pittston team. A fellow poled out a hit that went down like a shot between left and center. A lot of carriages were parked at the end of the field and a big coach dog ran after the ball, got it in his mouth and skipped down among the carriages where the fielders couldn't get at him. It would have doubled you up to have seen them coaxing the brute to be a good dog and give the ball up. In the meantime, the batter was tearing around the bases and made home before the ball got back.”

”And how did his Umps decide it?” asked Iredell, with interest.

”He was flabbergasted for a while,” replied Joe, ”but he finally called it a two-base hit and let it go at that.”

”An umpire's life is not a happy one,” laughed Iredell. ”He earns every dollar that he gets. I suppose that's what some of us fellows will be doing, too, when we begin to go back.”

”It will be a good while before you come to that, Dell,” Joe replied.

”You've played a rattling game at short this year, and you're a fixture with the Giants.”

”I don't know about that,” said the shortstop slowly. ”Fixtures sometimes work loose, you know.”

”It won't be so in this case,” said Joe, purposely misunderstanding him.

”McRae wouldn't let go of you.”

”Not if he could help it,” responded Iredell.

”Well, he doesn't have to worry about that just yet,” said Joe. ”How long does your contract have to run?”

”A year yet,” replied Iredell. ”But contracts, you know, are like pie crust, they're easily broken.”

”What do you mean by that?” demanded Joe sharply.

”Oh, nothing, nothing at all,” said Iredell, a little nervously, as though he had said more than he intended. ”But to tell the truth, Joe, I'm sore on this whole question of contracts. It's like a yoke that galls me.”

”Oh, I don't know,” responded Joe. ”A good many folks would like to be galled that way. A good big salary, traveling on Pullmans, stopping at the best hotels, posing for pictures, and having six months of the year to ourselves. If that's a yoke, it's lined with velvet.”

”But it's a yoke, just the same,” persisted Iredell stubbornly. ”Most men in business are free to accept any offer that's made to them. We can't. We may be offered twice as much as we're getting, but we have to stay where we are just the same.”

”Well, that's simply because it's baseball,” argued Joe. ”You know just as well as I do that that's the only way the game can be carried on. It wouldn't last a month if players started jumping from one team to another, or from one league to another. The public would lose all interest in it, and it's the public that pays our salaries.”

”Pays our salaries!” snapped Iredell. ”Puts money in the hands of the owners, you mean. They get the feast and we get the crumbs. What's our measly salary compared with what they get? I was just reading in the paper that the Giants cleaned up two hundred thousand dollars this year, net profit, and yet it's the players that bring this money in at the gate.”

”Yes,” Joe admitted. ”But they are the men who put up the capital and take the chances. Suppose they had lost two hundred thousand dollars this year.

We'd have had our salaries just the same.”

Just then Burkett and Curry came along and dropped into seats beside the pair.

”h.e.l.lo, Red,” greeted Joe, at the same time nodding to Burkett. ”How are your ribs feeling, after that bear hug you got this afternoon?”

Curry grinned.

”That's all right,” he said. ”But he never touched me with the ball. And that umpire was a b.o.o.b not to give me the run.”

”What were you fellows talking about so earnestly?” asked Burkett, with some curiosity.

”Oh, jug-handled things like baseball contracts,” responded Iredell.