watched.
Davis was digging down that third base-line like a streak of greased lightning, and I saw his forehead furrowed as he kept one eye on Nelligan. As for Nellie, he had taken his proper position at the plate, legs apart, braced, and with all the room in the world for a runner to slide in between. The umpire was standing there watching like a hawk. And the look in Nelligan’s eyes that minute wasn’t the pleasantest thing I ever saw.
The ball spanked into Nellie’s glove at the very instant Davis slid.
As I said, he had all the chance in the world to slide through Nellie’s legs—but nothing doing! His left leg goes through all right—but he deliberately slams his right leg against Nellie’s shin. I learned a few minutes later that the spikes cut right through the side of the guard and into the flesh.
He was safe, and as he arose from the ground and brushed the dust from his uniform Nelligan stepped close to him, his eyes shining redly.
“Y’r a dirty dog!” he said. “And if you ain’t as yellow as you are rotten, you’ll fight me after the game!”
Oh! Davis was there with the goods, all right, and after we put the next man out, arrangements were made for the scrap. Nellie hadn’t been spiked so very badly, thanks to the shin guards, and he was hopping mad—wild almost.
* * * *
The fight was strictly private and less than a dozen of us saw it.
For those who didn’t, I have always felt sorry. Those two men, Nellie weighing a little more, but Davis having the advantage of height and reach and skill, fought stripped to the waist there in the clubroom and with bare fists. Freddy Lewis of the Panthers refereed.
That fight was the worst thing, and the cleanest, I ever saw. Davis was simply wild, but I guess he’s rather decent after all, for he fought one of the cleanest and gamest fights ever. But their hate! Why, every blow struck by either man had hate as well as muscle and venom behind it. And it was the kind of hate you read about in books.
Nellie started right off by boring in, shoulders hunched and guard low.
Davis stood off and peppered him with left jabs until he got too close, and then he’d step in and shoot his right for the body or hook it to the jaw. And, of course, the minute he’d get close Nellie would uncork and they’d mix things like wildcats.
“There’s a woman in this!” gasped Gerald Stanley, our crack twirler, as they paused pantingly for a second to stare at each other. “Nothin’ else could make men fight like that!”
But this ain’t a story of the fight those two men had there in the clubhouse, although if I live to be as old as Methusaleh I’ll never see another one as vicious—or as clean.
Finally, when both men were so cut up and exhausted that all they could do was stand there and patter futile little blows that hurt the giver more than the receiver, we stepped in and put a stop to hostilities.
And was either man satisfied?
They were not. Most decidedly not. We rubbed them down and bandaged them up. They stood up near each other then, with us standing by ready to jump in if either started the fireworks again—and they stared into each other’s eyes coldly.
“I’ll get you one of these days, Nelligan!” muttered Davis.
“And I’ll get you, Davis!” snapped Nellie, evenly. “This don’t end things. One of these days I’m going to show you up for the four-flush you are!”
Then they separated, glaring furiously at each other.
When Shay—he was our manager—got wise to what had happened (and he couldn’t very well miss it seeing that Nellie’s face looked more like a pound of chopped beef than anything else I can think of just now), you can bet that he raised some Cain.
He docked every man jack of us who had anything to do with it—and then cornered me and asked for details of the scrap. And during the rest of that season—until nearly the end, he didn’t let Nelligan so much as wander a foot away from the bench when we were stacked up against the Reds.
The race that year was one of the hottest in major league history.
Our bunch had been fighting with the Highlanders and the Buccaneers since mid-July for first place, and we shared it between us. I remember that on the second of August all three of us were tied for first place—a mighty unusual thing in any league.
The Reds? Oh, they weren’t in the pennant race at all, but they were scrapping with the Sailors for the leadership of the second division and were giving trouble to every one of the leading trio. Connor had gotten together one of those untrue-to-form teams which disrupt dope books and make baseball the fascinating game that it is.
They’d lose a couple of series to the tail-enders and then knock the stuffing out of the leaders. And Bill Davis was leading the league in stolen bases and swelling the hospital expenses of all the clubs.
And the funny part of it was that he was clever and never spiked a man unless that man was in his way. Nine times out of ten he could have avoided, it, but it was his policy to scare ’em; and while mighty few of our basemen had any yellow in their make-ups, it takes more than the usual amount of nerve to stand up again a flying, glinting set of spikes when they’ve got a hundred and seventy pounds of body behind ’em.
Early in September we took four straight from the Sailors and clawed our way into first place. Then came the Reds. And in the very first game of the series Thomson, our star catcher, broke his leg sliding for second!
Every game counted—every run counted, and there wasn’t a thing for Shay to do but to put Nellie behind the bat. Gardner, our third catcher, was a good enough man, but he was green and his whip wasn’t what it should have been. And the Reds were playing pennant ball at that particular time.
We needed a real man behind the bat—and it was Nellie—or run a big risk of dropping a majority of the games in the Reds’ series.
Gardner finished out the game in which Thomson broke his leg—and which he won, by the way—but four men stole on him; Davis twice—and that night Shay closeted himself with Nellie. I heard the details of the conversation later.
Shay started out paternal-fashion by lecturing Nellie. He instructed him in team-spirit and stressed the importance of burying private differences for the sake of the team. He told him that it was the duty every man owed to his club, and all that sort of stuff. Nellie was a sincere little guy and he took it all in serious as a judge.
“And so,” Shay winds up, “I’ve got to put you in regularly from now to the end of the season. We have a chance for that pennant, but it’s only a fighting chance, and unless we keep a maximum of efficiency and fighting strength we’re going to be nosed out at the finish.
“It’s up to you to forget that you and the Wild Man are enemies and play the best way you can for the team. I ain’t asking you to swallow anything from him, or to let him run you away from the plate if he gets near home—but I am putting you on your honor not to get mixed up with him in a fight or anything—and so put yourself out of the game for days and days. We need you and—”
And, of course, Nellie agreed.
That was a pretty rotten position for Nellie and
